Polygon’s NFT Market Demonstrates Signs of Significant Increased Adoption, but Not Growth in Sale Volume, Nansen Data Shows

Polygon’s NFT market is currently experiencing significant increased adoption, thanks to its collaborations with name-brand companies such as Reddit.

Despite crypto winter, first-time and returning buyers per day in Polygon’s non-fungible token (NFT) market reached new all-time highs during the last month of the year, per data from blockchain analytics platform Nansen. The surge comes even as NFT ecosystems on other chains such Ethereum and Solana have a decreasing number of users per week.

Solana’s NFT users per week dropped from over 160,000 users in late September to less than 60,000 users today, while Ethereum’ users per week dropped roughly 250,000 users to some 183,000 users in the same time period.

Covering only mints and NFT projects on OpenSea, Nansen’s data for the past year indicates the number of first-time buyers varied between 1,000 and 10,000, while the number of returning buyers were between 10,000 to 15,000 per day.

On Dec. 11, the number of first-time buyers climbed to 43,761 from 1,858 on Oct 5. The number of returning buyers rose to 81,317 from 8,739 on Oct. 5.

Polygon x Reddit

Polygon’s NFT market in the past 24 hours had 10 collections with over 180,000 holders and four collections with above 500,000. For juxtaposition, Ethereum’s NFT market in the past 24 hours had four collections with over 100,000 holders and one collection above 500,000. Solana’s NFT market didn't have a single collection above 30,000 holders in the past 24 hours, Nansen data suggests.

Out of the top 10 collections in the past 24 hours for Polygon’s NFT market, four of them are connected to Reddit, which were airdropped in late August as part of Reddit’s initial push to integrate blockchain technology.

Referring to Polygon’s collaboration with mainstream brands such as Nike, Starbucks and Reddit, Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt, told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover,” “We’ve built this great funnel for partners to come through and make the onboarding to Polygon really seamless.”

Users per week and transactions per week

Additionally, the number of users per week in Polygon’s NFT ecosystem grew more than 500% since early August, resembling buyers per day. Between Dec. 5 and Dec. 12, the blockchain had over 240,000 users, an all-time high for the number of users per week.

Polygon’s transactions per week for the past four weeks totaled roughly 24.36 million transactions, with the majority coming from mints, showing increased activity compared with previous weeks in 2022.

Even though the most recent week ending on Dec. 12 had a lower number of transactions compared to the previous three weeks, transactions in this past week, which stand at some three million, exceed almost all other weeks in 2022, according to Nansen data.

Volume

Year to date, Polygon NFTs have had a total of 338 million MATIC, worth $305 million, in trading volume across 2.27 million unique wallets.

Even though buyers, users and transactions per week are posting new highs, trading volume per week in recent months is near the lows, “suggesting most activity are free mints/low value purchasing,” tweeted Martin Lee, senior data journalist at Nansen. The increase in adoption has not yet translated into an increase in trading volume, data from Nansen shows.

“My view is that the current adoption path largely led by @Fwiz [Ryan Watt, CEO of Polygon Studios] and team at @0xPolygon helps to remove the current stigma and idea that NFTs’ main value is speculation,” tweeted Lee in an original Twitter thread about the growth adoption in Polygon’s NFT ecosystem.