The NFT craze hasn't slowed down since the last half of the year where OpenSea, the dominant NFT platform, traded an average of USD $2.9billion a month in volume from August to December 2021. At the current pace, we can expect OpenSea to trade over $6billion in January alone, reaching over the higher end of my 3-5x year increase prediction for 2022 vs 2021.
NFT Marketplace Competitor
OpenSea may be facing some competition this year as Coinbase, one of the largest centralized exchange, teased their own NFT marketplace last year with a waiting list of over 1.1million users.
Coinbase's wait list alone at 1.1million exceeds OpenSea's total users who traded at least once, sitting at 980,000 as of Jan 10, 2022.
Given the large interest the users of the exchange has, if Coinbase's NFT platform can provide a seamless user experience, a large chunk of market share would be taken away from OpenSea. Integrating into Coinbase's exchange/DeFi wallet would remove that complexity of having to manually move funds to a personal wallet to transact in the NFT marketplace.
Solana NFTs
NFTs are not limited to the Ethereum blockchain, which is where we may also see the NFT space evolve in 2022. The development and interests for Solana NFTs are growing. Magic Eden, a Solana NFT marketplace reached a 30day volume of $469million USD. Although pale in comparison to the volume seen with Ethereum in OpenSea, volume is in an upward trajectory.
One of Solana's advantages that could lure users away from Ethereum NFT platforms is smaller transaction fees and transaction speeds. High gas fees occur in Ethereum when there is a large influx of transactions on the blockchain, such as the launch of a NFT project. Users rush to mint a new NFT spiking gas prices, and in some instances as high as $1000. Furthermore, if the limited supply of NFTs run out, users are stuck paying gas fees for a failed transaction. Solana blockchain boasts faster transaction speeds and minimal gas fees. This removes the barrier of entry many face with Ethereum's high gas fees, as many feel only the wealthier may participate and afford such fees. Solana based NFT games also makes a lot more sense given the fraction of fees required for every transaction as compared to Ethereum based NFT games.
Interest in NFTs are picking up, the space is rapidly evolving and who knows where it will take us this year. You may even start to see a free WealthWithCrypto NFT drop in the future for our readers. Keep up to date on everything crypto here at WealthWithCrypto.
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