The demand for non-fungible tokens has picked up steam again with three projects making notable headlines in the past week.
Cats have once again clogged the Ethereum Blockchain
In order to fund the production of the upcoming TV series Stoner Cats, actress and producer Mila Kunis has released over 10,000 NFTs with further 4,000 pieces in the pipeline. The collection sold out in just 35 minutes, and has been increasing in value on the secondary market. One Stoner Cats NFT has changed hands for as much as 50 ETH (~115.000 USD).
For the duration of the sale, the Ethereum network was highly congested with gas prices rising above 700 GWei for a rapid transaction. The blockchain-breaking success of Stoner Cats resembles that of CryptoKitties, one of the first-ever NFT projects, which caused a network congestion lasting for several days in December 2017.
CryptoPunks NFT sells for 2.250 ETH
Since their inception in 2017, CryptoPunks have been a staple of the NFT market. On July 30, two of the pixelated portraits sold for 2,250 ETH (~5.7 million USD) and 1,600 ETH (~4.1 million USD). It is speculated that the latter, titled CryptoPunk #2140 was bought by entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk.
This purchase was him… pic.twitter.com/SIOuUejLlQ
— BenB (@bh__99__) July 30, 2021
The recent sales mark the third and fourth most valuable CryptoPunks. The two most valuable NFTs in the collection had their last sale on March 11 for a whopping amount of 4,200 ETH, which were worth around 7.4 million USD on the day of sale. What is remarkable about CryptoPunk #5217, which sold for 2,250 ETH, is that it was originally purchased by a collector that goes by the handle snowfro in December 2017, for just 2.5 ETH, which then were worth only 1,750 USD.
CryptoPunks is currently the project with the largest transaction volume on OpenSea. With a volume of over 50,000 ETH over the last seven days, they top the second largest NFT project almost four-fold.
Axie Infinity becomes largest NFT Marketplace
While OpenSea remains the go-to NFT marketplace for general purposes, DappRadar reports that it has only been the second-largest one by volume over the last 30 days. OpenSea is topped by Axie Infinity, which recorded a volume of 706.9 million USD, while OpenSea only had a volume of 414.4 million USD.
In terms of active traders, OpenSea is outmatched by more than three-fold. This is even more impressive since Axie is tied to a single project and only sells in-game NFTs for the Axie Infinity online game.
