Try Quests to earn cryptoNFT Sales On Optimism
How has NFT sales fared on Optimism in the past 3 months?
Introduction
NFTs have come to stay within the crypto ecosystem and has become a leading factor for onboarding users into the web3 space. It is undeniable that NFTs played a key role in the success of chains like Ethereum mainnet, Solana, and Flow. If Optimism is going to appeal to the masses, I believe NFTs will play an important part. Therefore, I wish to understand the dynamics of NFT trades on Optimism and the factors pushing the narrative. My method of analysis will focus on three (3) key metrics; traders, nfts, and volume. I will deep dive into the behavior of traders, types of nfts and price correlation, and what we can understand from volume trends.
Over 149 thousand unique NFTs have been traded over the past 3 months on Optimism with an average of about 1.5 thousand daily. Generally, NFT trade transactions have been in a zig-zag pattern since the beginning of July but the latter part of September shows a rise in trading activity.
The Optimism Collective adopted NFTs early on to push their campaign of adoption by airdropping NFTs to early adopters and Quix users. Recently, the collective launched Quests which seeks to reward users with badges (NFTs) for completing tasks (including buying NFTs) on Optimism. The goal of Quests is to get users to explore the Optimism ecosystem, and that has worked well so far since it launched in September. Thus, seeing the rise in numbers for NFT sales is no coincidence and also explains the reason why 58% of traders have made only 1 trade.
One typical question that arises with regards to NFT pricing is whether velocity (the number times an NFT changes hands) is correlated to price.
We will find out at that 88% of NFTs on Optimism have only been traded once, and the top 10 most expensive NFTs ascribe to the same narrative.
This indicates no correlation between velocity and price. Price is an inherent value dictated by hype which cannot be easily measured by statistical tools.
The story is the same for daily active traders and daily new traders which increased in magnitude beginning mid-September. By observation, new traders are accountable for about 60% of NFT sales on Optimism. Thus, more than half of NFT sales activity are from new wallets. Where are these new wallets from, and what are their intentions?
The average NFT on Optimism is sold for the equivalent of $29.5 but so far the largest sale has been worth over $14,000 for 0xb8df6cc3050cc02f967db1ee48330ba23276a492, an Optipunk with token id 4156. This mimics the hype and trade vibes of Ethereum mainnet which has punks as the most expensive pieces.
If you look at the average price of NFTs over the last 3 months, we can observe once again that September has the largest daily averages, further validating the impact of the Optimism Quests initiative.
The daily trading volume for the past 3 months is about 126 ETH and the cumulative total has amounted to 11.5 thousand ETH. Looking at the cumulative volume over times, we can see that a large chunk of that volume was made in September, supporting the thesis that Optimism Quests have had a positive impact.
Trading volume over the past 3 months also ascribe to the same narrative that September has been turn-around month for NFT sales on Optimism, and it won’t be surprising to see the same trend continue for the next few months.
Conclusion/Recommendation
After looking at NFT sales data on Optimism for the past 3 months, we have learned that:
- New traders are responsible for about 60% of NFT trading activity. This means that Optimism is good at bring in new users to explorer the chain through initiatives like Quests, however, repetitive use or trading is lacking.
- Prices of NFTs suggests that Optimism can be a low-gas alternative to mainnet NFT trading as prices and trade activity mimics that of Ethereum mainnet. It was also found that prices of NFTs had nothing to do with the number of times the pieces changed hands.
- In the last 3 months, NFT trading activity surged somewhere mid-September, coinciding with the launch of Optimism Quests. Quantitatively, the initiative has had a positive impact on NFT trading activity and as such, I will recommend to the Optimism Collective to provide continuity to keep users engaged within the Optimism ecosystem.