Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of the Art District in the City of NEAR has demonstrated that the weather is definitely cold, and if it is not wintering yet, it has been autumn for the past three months. It is worth mentioning that, while the generated volume from the NFT segment on NEAR has been much lower compared to the blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, or even Flow, it is understandable since the NFT ecosystem on NEAR has not been as developed as those chains. The fact that the daily charts for the sales activity have been heading downwards, the generated sales volume is lower than the mints volume, and on average each NFT only traded once, are all indications of a market that is struggling. The whole crypto industry is in a bear market and NFTs as a whole are being declined in their current form. In the current form, one might not expect to observe considerable growth in the NFT ecosystem on NEAR. If users want to buy a JPG, they have more tendency to do that on Ethereum or Solana, and even if they want it to be affordable, the Ethereum layer 2s are more developed and adopted by a larger community. Flow is a good case study for other chains, where it has found its niche around sports-related NFTs. Considering the ongoing developments on the NEAR blockchain, if they move their focus toward NFTs, and with possible paradigm shifts in the NFT segment of the cryptocurrency space, there are possibilities that they could see the warmth of summer, or at least spring, sooner than others.

Mints

Methodology

The required data for the analysis of NFTs on NEAR protocol were selected from the fact_transactions table of the core schema of the near database, especially by using the JSON content of the tx column. By analyzing the NFT Activity on Paras based on their NFT series functions, and subsequently checking the logs of transactions on the Near Blockchain Explorer, different events were selected as indications of NFT mints, sales, and transfers. These events were filtered using the tx column.

Introduction

NEAR Protocol is a sharded, proof-of-stake (PoS), layer 1 blockchain that is simple to use, secure and scalable. It is designed to provide the best possible experience for developers and users to ultimately, facilitate the mainstream adoption of decentralized applications. Paras is one of the most active non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces for digital art cards in the NEAR ecosystem. Similar to the art galleries and trading card publishers that exhibit and publish selected works, Paras takes a curatorial approach to the output of its artists to ensure consistency in quality and the elevation of the creators.

In this analysis, the state of NFT sales of the Paras marketplace on the NEAR blockchain has been evaluated in the past three months.

Sales

Transfers

Insights

• The overall mints volume has been only around 40k NEAR (roughly less than $200k) with an average minting price of around 0.5 NEAR;
• The minting activity, also known as the release of new collections, has been in a steady range for the past three months with regular spikes in the charts every once in a while;
• While before the start of October, there was only one massive movement in the volume between the 22nd and 25th of September, There have been multiple surges in the minting volumes since the start of October;
• Although the number of new collections has had a slight increase on a daily basis, the overall number of minters has stayed relatively the same;
• The analysis of new collections has also indicated that there was only one collection with an exceptionally high mint volume. Other collections only had a minting volume of less than $10k;
• The NFT sales have had a much worse performance compared to the minting and only generated a volume of around 10k NEAR;
• The number of unique NFT buyers has been slightly more than the number of minters which is a sign of a healthy environment. However, it should be much higher compared to the number of minters to show a fully vivid ecosystem;
• The average sales price has also been less than half of the minting price, again indicating a decline in the NFT sales activity on NEAR;
• Besides these, the number of NFT sales has been equal to the number of traded NFTs, meaning that all of the NFTs are only sold once and the NFT ecosystem could not be interpreted as active. An active marketplace is where an NFT trades more than once between different buyers;
• On a daily basis, except the beginning of September and October when there were surges in sales activity, the overall trend has been to the downside. The sales activity has almost decreased to levels lower than half of what it was at the beginning of the measured period;
• While in every chain there are a few addresses that purchase and hold NFTs, in an unorthodox manner, NEAR has also had a limited number of users similar to those. However, there are much fewer addresses that hold an incredible number of NFTs or spend unjustified capital to acquire their desired NFTs. This also indicates that the number of bulls, or those who are positive regarding the future of the NFT ecosystem on NEAR, has not been that high;
• The NFT transfer activity has also not been on a scale that attracts attention, and it has been negligible in most cases.