NFT Yearly Report 2020
NFT Yearly Report 2020
NFT Yearly Report 2020
YEARLY REPORT
2020
FREE EDITION
The purpose of this report is to provide an overarching and detailed view of the Non-Fungible
Token ecosystem during 2020.
The exponential growth within the sector has been particularly impressive, especially given that
the Crypto bear market was in full force during most of the early stages of development.
There is little doubt that the loyal and tight knit groups who initially evolved around various NFT
blockchain projects have since seen the contents of their wallets dramatically increase in value as
the ecosystem evolved and NFT projects began to attract more and more outside and mainstream
interest.
This report is not meant for Non-Fungible experts but to help everyone in or outside the Non-
Fungible Tokens ecosystem to better understand what is going on. What is the potential? Why
should you care about NFT?
2020 has been an unprecedented year for most of the world's population, with many challenges
to face, from a global pandemic and lockdown to political upheavals, riots and not to mention
catastrophic natural disasters… we’ve had it all!
In stark contrast and perhaps partially due to such turbulent global events, interest and
investment in virtual economies and digital assets has boomed, more than ever seen before.
Within the Non-Fungible Token ecosystem individual sectors have seen success, Art, Gaming and
Digital Assets have all gained remarkable traction during 2020 with this once niche and
experimental industry maturing into a force to be reckoned with.
In addition, we are witnessing increased uptake from big brands, celebrities, and industry players
hoping to make their mark in this digital frontier. Non-Fungible Tokens are looking set to become
the breakthrough technology that brings Crypto and Blockchain to the masses. Now, more than
ever, the data and community behaviors in this NFT space are vital to understand as the learning
phase ends and we enter a new era in NFT Blockchain Technology.
Non-Fungible Tokens are easily exchangeable and individually unique digital assets which are
held on certain blockchains, mainly Ethereum but also others such as Matic, Flow, Wax, and
many others. Although the original concept for NFT goes back to 2015, it wasn't until 2017 when
the first projects began appearing on the Ethereum Blockchain in the ERC20 standard, and over
the next two years more NFT standards were accepted and utilized.
One of the key differences between Cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens is that every NFT
is completely and not directly interchangeable with any other asset by identity, value,
and/or utility.
Every Non-Fungible Token is composed of metadata which gives each one their individuality,
these attributes can include size, artist name, scarcity etc.
NFT not only exist in a digital space but crucially they can also represent any type of physical
asset, acting as a kind of ‘digital twin’ to anything existing in the real world and enabling the
ownership and exchange of physical possessions within digital marketplaces.
True ownership is one of the defining key components of any NFT and, as the digital economies
continue to thrive, there is no doubt that NFT will play a pivotal role in bringing the digital and
physical worlds closer to one another than they have ever been before.
There is little doubt that what has already been explored by projects in the NFT ecosystem has
merely scratched the surface of this vibrant industry's full potential. We are still in the early days
of a young and developing space with many new ideas and projects formulating.
Even so, the impact this ecosystem has had and will have in future for already established
industries, is profound.
The space continues to experience a remarkably fast uptake and participation from major brands
& IPs such as Animoca, Ubisoft, Warner Bros, NBA, Formula 1, The BBC, Atari and more.
Also, individual creatives, artists, musicians and filmmakers to mention a few, are empowered by
the independence, provable authenticity and security the NFT ecosystem offers, the possibilities
for makers are endless, opening up an entirely new global environment to show and sell their
work.
There is little doubt the World of NFT is poised to become mainstream and will be revolutionary
and disruptive to both new and established industries.
THANK YOU!
We wanted to send most heartfelt thanks to all our readers and awesome community. The past
few years have been quite the ride and we are grateful to be at the heart of such an inspiring
movement and new digital frontier.
We were hugely surprised with last year’s report success, so we decided to propose something
even better this year, bringing you an even more in depth and detailed view of this vibrant and
fast-moving ecosystem.
In this Yearly Report we offer even more in-depth analysis. We do not simply bring you raw
charts and figures but a deep and analytical view of everything provided.
Our aim with this edition is that it should be understandable by anyone who finds it of interest,
whether they are inside or outside of this fast-paced industry.
Here we have focused not only on the markets alone but also on key qualitative signs of maturity
and growth, such as new IPs and Community behaviors for example. Thanks to the support of
L'Atelier BNP Paribas we can now offer readers the first ever insights into the anthropology and
human behaviors behind the NFT ecosystem.
We have built this new edition for our readers and want to say a heartfelt thank you for all your
ongoing support. To everyone who has assisted us in the building of this report, we are grateful,
we have learned from your feedback. And a very special thank you to everyone who has given us
their time, whether it be for an interview or to assist in refining the reports' structure.
Axie Infinity
One of the OG Games on the Ethereum Blockchain, Axie Infinitie’s cute yet fearsome
beasties have been a huge success since launch. With a brilliant exploration of what
an NFT can be in a game environment, coupled with their simple yet highly addictive
game play, Axie attracts an increasing number of users. It's fair to say Axie Infinity
are pioneers of NFT Gamification and the Play to Earn Model.
Immutable
Immutable is the Game studio behind the most well-known blockchain trading card
game: Gods Unchained. This new kind of TCG has already marked the history of
NFTs with its incredible sales and the technical exploits that its teams have
succeeded in achieving. Today Immutable returns with an innovative Layer-2
solution: Immutable X, which is the only solution that doesn’t compromise on user
security to offer instant, scalable, and affordable NFT minting and exchange.
Sorare
Calling the 4 billion football fans in the world through collecting, owning and trading
limited edition collectibles (in the form of ERC-721s). Sorare is designing a game
experience where you can manage your players, using your knowledge and skill to
succeed.
Over 130 football clubs have joined Sorare such as Liverpool, Real Madrid and
Bayern Munich. Experience football connection like never before, bringing fantasy to
reality with Sorare. Own your game, own the beautiful game.
The Sandbox
An Open Metaverse filled with individual video games which are created by its LAND
owners. From single plot owners looking to build their own game through to large
Atari estates with content created by teams, the world is developing into a vibrant
ecosystem. The Sandbox responsive ‘Builder’ gives users the ability to create a
multitude of assets and experiences making this world filled with endless potential
for pioneers of the metaverse and gamers alike.
OVR
A fusion of digital and physical with a virtual layer of interlocking hexagons which
cover the globe, each has specific coordinates and name, OVR created a space
where reality and the virtual can coexist. OVR technology traces your surrounding
environment so AR content seamlessly blends into your reality, in a perfect marriage
between reality and digital. When it comes to viewing historical content in the
location it occurred, OVRs digital layer is at the cutting edge of generating unique
experiences.
Watch Skins
Certification of Luxury Brands comes to The Blockchain with Watch Skins. Create,
upload and authenticate your own smartwatch face designs as well as purchase
luxury brand names which are certified and distributed as NFT.
Watch Skins marketplace offers a place to trade, bringing fashion and style to digital
collectibles with blockchain technology adding provable value and authenticity and
making it pay to be a collector.
This report would not have been complete without the invaluable support of our
partner L'Atelier BNP Paribas. L'Atelier BNP Paribas is a foresight business focused
on identifying opportunities and challenges emerging at the intersection of social
and technological change. The virtual economy has been a key area of focus in their
research for some time. You can see more of their work at www.atelier.net/projects
Always on the lookout for emerging trends and innovative projects, their guidance
with the design of this report, from structure to analysis has been invaluable.
It is an honor for us to have published this new edition of our NFT Yearly Report in
partnership with them.
Why is L’Atelier and BNP Paribas Group interested in the NFT space?
“ For The BNP Paribas Group, there is significant opportunity and challenge in this area.
Careers will emerge in the Virtual Economy; how can we understand these careers and how
will these people be assessed for risk? If a person wants a Mortgage and their income is X%
from the Virtual Economy, how does a Bank understand this and interact with that person in an
effective way?
Will a Virtual asset infrastructure allow digital assets to be used as collateral for a loan and
how can this be insured? These are the fundamental business questions that are essential for
a Bank to ask in this new era of Virtual Economics.
”
John Egan – L’Atelier BNP Paribas CEO
SUMMARY
INTRODUCTION
Forewords 2
What are Non-Fungible Tokens and why you should care about them 3
Thank you! 4
Summary 7
Glossary 10
Disclaimer 15
1 KEY TAKEAWAYS 16
3 GLOBAL METRICS 24
Influence and visibility 25
2020 performance 26
5 MARKET ACTIVITY 43
Global Market Activity 44
Market distribution within each segment 49
Advanced market metrics 52
Primary vs. Secondary market distribution 57
Global Market Conclusions 62
The team vision is to create opportunities and change the way people live, create, play, govern and
earn in the virtual world! Over the past three years, The Sandbox has built the ground to establish a
100% Ownership Economy for Players & Creators with NFT and LANDS.
The Sandbox has also secured over 60 partnerships to develop content on the platform, including
brands like Smurfs, Care Bears, Shaun the Sheep, dApp game studios like Dapper Labs
(CryptoKitties), investors such as Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider), and iconic game
companies like ATARI (Rollercoaster Tycoon, Pong).
2021 will be the Year of the Metaverse and will bring The Sandbox to life.
Join The Sandbox metaverse and a community of more than 100,000 members.
sandbox.game linktr.ee/sandbox
GLOSSARY
There is little doubt that the Blockchain World can appear a minefield of complexities for
newcomers and even those who are well seasoned can still find times when they become lost in
their understanding. This is even more so with Non-Fungible Tokens where often very specific
technical terms and vocabulary is used.
To assist in making this vibrant ecosystem as accessible to as many people as possible, we
wanted to lay the foundations for a more simplified vocabulary which we will use throughout this
report.
Segments
Sport projects are in the unusual position of being built around assets which
feature personalities from the world of sport, most often in connection with
Sport
the real-world players and teams such as Formula 1, football clubs,
basketball teams and so on.
Covering a wide variety of projects in which the NFT itself does not
necessarily have a gaming or artistic function. Among other use cases
Utilities
utilities can be NFT domain names, tickets and assets that can grant access
or specific rights to their owner.
This last project category includes all smart contracts that are tracked by
NonFungible.com but have no record on the web, or ones where the creators
Miscellaneous
are not known. This segment does not appear in the report as such, but is
included in the overall volumes for the year.
Vocabulary
Term Definition
Metrics
Metric Definition
Primary market / sale Market determined by the first and original sale of an asset.
When the re-sale of an asset generates more money than the initial
Profitable sale
purchase price.
Secondary market / sale Market determined by sales occurring after the initial Primary
Market sale.
Sellers Any wallet who sells an NFT.
A growing section of blockchain gaming, and also more rarely crypto-art, occurs off-chain. They
offer many benefits to both NFT users and owners, starting with their reduced Blockchain fees. To
date among the most used are Matic and Loom. Side chain activity is not yet supported by
NonFungible.com.
With the Ecosystem growing at an exponential rate, other technological standards have developed
on the Ethereum Blockchain, such as the ERC-1155 (Semi Fungible) and the ERC-998
(Composable NFT). The technology developed by the NonFungible.com teams does not currently
support these two standards.
A growing section of blockchain gaming, and also more rarely crypto-art, occurs off-chain. These
are commonly referred to as side-chains and they offer many benefits to both NFT users and
owners, starting with their reduced Blockchain fees. To date among the most used are Flow,
Loom and Matic. Side chain activity is not yet supported by NonFungible.com.
Some lesser utilized NFT standards on non Ethereum Blockchains are not currently supported by
NonFungible.com – these include EOS, NEO, Tron, WAX, Flow and Bitcoin Cash.
NonFungible.com currently only supports transactions that occur on the Ethereum Blockchain in
the main standard of NFT (ERC-721).
Certain projects have been actively excluded from our report for the following reasons:
Do you want to understand the trends? Which segment performs best or projects that generate
the most volume or even which Crypto-game has the biggest community?
Whether you are an experienced trader or just curious to discover new projects, here you will
find all the resources necessary to enjoy your NFT journey!
With real-time sales tracking, you can track the rating of any asset, find the average price of
tokens comparable to those in your portfolio, or easily research before buying your next
Collectible.
Don't be fooled by over-speculation, buy knowingly thanks to the market history of
NonFungible.com
nonfungible.com
THE REPORT IN 5 MINUTES
Everything you need to know about the Non-Fungible Token ecosystem and
markets condensed into two pages.
Interested in the Non-Fungible Tokens ecosystem, would love to know more but don’t have time
to read this whole report? No problem, here is our summary of the key information held in this
report.
SEP AUG
Turner Sports Doctor Who :
announces Blocklete Worlds Apart
Games announced
SEP AUG JUL
OCT
Christies’ auction
using blockchain
NOV DEC
Jason Mamoa
IBM patent for
launches charity
blockchain MMO
NFT auction
OCT DEC
The Sandbox DJ Deadmau5
partners with The launches
Smurfs $100,000 worth of
NFT Collectibles
NOV
Axie Infinity
enters Binance
Launchpad
PRESALES & FUNDRAISING
MAR
The Sandbox
raises $2MM
APR
Alex Masmej
secures $20,000
from his “human
IPO”
MAY AUG
Horizon
Dapper Labs raises
blockchain games
$12MM from VC
raises $5MM
JUL AUG
SEP
Polyient Games
raises $4.8MM in
PGFK sale
NOV
Terra Virtua raises
$2.5MM to create
first mass-market
NFT Ecosystem
NOV
NIFTEX Raises
$500K to Build Out
NFT Trading
Platform
NOV
Axie Infinity Raises
$860K in Governance
Token Sale
DEC NOV
Artist ‘Beeple’ raised Mintbase Raises
$3.5MM through $1M Seed
Nifty Gateway Round
DEC DEC
Before delving into specific indicators for the NFT world, we take a look at the global indicators
which allow us to measure if the NFT Ecosystem has gained visibility and drawing in more
people around the world.
For this, we have chosen to use the indicator provided by Google Trends, and monitor the search
volume for the keywords "NFT" and "Non-Fungible Token".
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Fig. 01 – Relative volume of search of « NFT » and « Non-Fungible Token » on Google – 2018 to 2020
Source: Google Trends
It should be noted above all that the term NFT also refers to an irrigation system for agriculture.
This explains the relatively large volume for “NFT” from the start of 2018.
In terms of the volume of searches on Google, this increased significantly over the second half of
2020 reaching an ATH. This rise can be explained first of all by the hype around the NFT x DeFi
intersection, then preceded by the Crypto Bull Run which resulted in shining more light onto the
Non-Fungible Tokens space.
2020 PERFORMANCE
It certainly appears that 2020 has been a good year for NFT, but from which viewpoint? Financial,
adoption, the number of users?
This next section aims to give an overall view of the performance of the NFT industry, based on
some macro indicators. These trends will be analyzed and expanded on in sections 5 – Market
Activity and 9 – Community Behaviors.
USD traded $159 142 527 $62 862 687* $250 846 205
-60.52% +299%
Metric Definition
• Active Wallets – Number of wallets that have interacted with an NFT Smart Contract, the same
person can have several wallets. These active wallets are not solely buyers and sellers but
anyone who has played a game or interacted with a project using NFT. There are most likely
more wallets than NFT users / owners, but the trend remains significant.
• Buyers – Number of wallets that bought at least one NFT during the year.
• Sellers – Number of wallets that sold at least one NFT during the year.
• USD traded – Total volume traded in NFT. This volume includes all sales, but also in-game
actions that involve a financial transaction, for example the improvement of an asset through
breeding.
*2019 volume displayed here is different from 2019 report because DeFi & Financial projects have been excluded from this report,
due to the nature of this irrelevant volume.
The major increase of active wallets between 2019 and 2020 accompanied by an impressive hike
of almost 50% in the number of buyers suggests the community of owners and users of Non-
Fungible Tokens has grown considerably.
At the same time, the unprecedented volume of USD transactions during 2020 largely echoes the
increased value of the Cryptocurrency market which began to rise during 2019. This gradual exit
from the Crypto Winter has automatically led to an increase in the value of assets in USD. This
increase in USD volume is also supported by new NFT projects and users coming into the
Ecosystem.
In short, 2020 appears to have been the year of revival for the NFT economy, showing the first
very encouraging development indicators after the relative weakness observed in 2019.
Market Capitalization represents the total value of assets present in a market. In the context of
NFT, this value is particularly difficult to estimate because it requires individually assessing all
assets in circulation, some having lost all value and no longer circulating, others having an
inestimable value. The Market Capitalization of the NFT Ecosystem has been calculated by
accounting for the total volume of assets issued per NFT Ticker (each typology of asset issued
by projects) this total volume is then multiplied by the average value of the asset's classification.
Liquidity has also been considered in this Market Capitalization calculation, in order to avoid
accounting for older assets from several years ago whose value has evaporated over time for
example as with Ponzi schemes etc.
$400,000,000
$350,000,000 $338,035,012
$300,000,000
$250,000,000
$200,000,000
$141,556,148
$150,000,000
$100,000,000
$40,961,223
$50,000,000
$0
2018 2019 2020
Fig. 02 – Non-Fungible Tokens Market Capitalization – 2018 to 2020
*Market Capitalization calculation has changed from previous years due to increasing inactive projects and to account for sales liquidity
Calculating the Market Capitalization of an ecosystem as young and fast moving as the NFT
space is a tricky exercise.
This is a conservative estimate that takes into account the whole supply of all NFTs (ERC-721)
ever issued by a project, altered by the relative liquidity of NFT tickers.
Polyient Games
MakersPlace (MKT3) (PGFK)
$10,933,739 $6,772,573
Axie Infinity (AXIE) Sorare (SOR)
CryptoSp…
$40,902,433 $14,253,585
(CSCNFT)
Cryptopunks (Ͼ & $4,446,987
WPunks)
$32,340,803
Avastars
Gods Unchained (AVASTAR)
(CARD) $4,324,544
$13,935,436
AzimuthPoi
nts (AZP)
$4,279,530
Somnium Space
Decentraland (LAND & Estates) The Sandbox (LAND) (PARCEL)
$38,518,976 $18,990,881 $13,379,661
The breakdown above offers an overview of where value is stored in the NFT ecosystem.
The Metaverses clearly have the lion's share held between Decentraland, The Sandbox and
Cryptovoxels.
Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained are two major players in the NFT Gaming world who have
created considerable value since they began.
It is interesting to note that Art currently occupies only a relatively small portion of the total
Market Capitalization.
How many users?
We observe the evolution over time of three types of users, each representative of a trend within
the Ecosystem:
▪ Active Wallets – Global NFT Community. The more wallets, hypothetically, the more users.
▪ Sellers – The more sellers, the more users. Conversely, if there are more sellers than buyers,
it indicates people are dumping their assets.
▪ Buyers – The more buyers, the more users. If there are more buyers than sellers,
hypothetically, there will also be more new people wanting to enter the Ecosystem than those
who want to get rid of their assets
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
Fig. 04 – Monthly sellers, buyers & active wallets evolution over time – 2018 to 2020
There is a huge spike in active wallets at the end of 2020, which coincides with the start of the
latest Crypto bull run. It is also estimated that this peak in activity at the end of the year is due to
the various announcements made by the media relating to large IP and Video Game Studios
around the world entering the space.
The second notable trend on this chart is the growing gap between the number of Buyers and
Sellers each month. This gap, which becomes very visible from the second semester of 2020, is
a very good indicator of the positive development of the Ecosystem. We wait to see if the trend
continues in 2021 and if these new owners of NFT will use their assets.
How much USD traded?
$30,000,000
$25,000,000
$20,000,000
$15,000,000
$10,000,000
$5,000,000
$-
Fig. 05 – USD traded in NFT Sales vs. dApp volumes – 2018 to 2020
As for active wallets, we observe a very strong peak of activity in the second half of 2020. This
peak was of such magnitude that even the historical presales from the heady beginnings of NFT,
Decentraland’s impact in particular during the first half of 2018, almost pass for anecdotal in
comparison.
What we are witnessing is not just hype from a single successful project, but rather the boom of
an entire industry which is reaching a new level of maturity.
The widening gap between USD from dApp and USD from sales is further proof that the use of
tokens is becoming more democratic. NFT are no longer seen only as highly speculative store
of value.
Active Smart Contracts
The number of active Smart Contracts is another indicator by which to assess the overall health
of the Non-Fungible Token Industry.
Smart Contracts are the application layer developed on top of the Ethereum Blockchain, which
enables interactions with games, projects and various applications.
The number of active Smart Contracts* gives an overview of the number of currently active
projects. Note that the same project can have several Smart Contracts active in parallel. For
example, these could be for the management of different types of assets or for several different
kinds of interaction with the assets within a project.
(*An active Smart Contract or project has at least one on-chain interaction per month)
600
500
400
300
200
100
As anticipated, the amount of active NFT Smart Contracts have steadily increased since the
beginning of the NFT Ecosystem, with a concentration of uptake evident from the end of 2019.
We have gone from around 200 active Smart Contacts in mid 2019 to almost 500 a year later.
Indicating the amount of really active projects almost doubled between 2019 and 2020, a sign
of very strong growth and development in the Ecosystem.
SPONSORED CONTENT
OVR is the decentralized platform of the Spatial Web, mixes the physical world with AR and VR
thanks to a dedicated mobile application which utilizes NFT as a tokenized reference system. OVR is
a horizontal platform for geolocalized AR/VR experiences with use cases such as: Gaming (Pokémon
GO™ *style), Live Events, Virtual Shopping, Avatars, Tourism and many more…
The major difference between our and other Metaverses or parallel Universes that you may have
heard of, is that in OVR the ‘plots’ - OVRLands -, the units of land you can buy and sell, correspond
to our own planet Earth. The Earth has been broken down into about 1.6 Trillion identical sized plots
(300 sqm), each of which can be located via 3 words that define each one and replace complex GPS
coordinates. Those plots, called OVRLands, are Spatial Domains, just like in the web who owns a
Web Domain can control the content of the website in OVR who owns an OVRLand can control the
AR/VR experiences that will appear on those geographic coordinates.
So, the experiences you have or create in OVR will not just be occurring in a distant or hypothetical
Universe, rather they will be anchored in your daily life, with the addition of Virtual or Augmented
Reality content. OVR platform is unstoppable, with ownership is granted by ERC-721 Ethereum
standard and contents hosted on IPFS. Finally, the whole system governance is demanded by a DAO
developed under the Aragon framework; this will enable major decisions on infrastructural updates of
the platform to be community driven.
ovr.ai
* ©2021 Niantic, Inc. ©2021 Pokémon.
©1995–2021 Nintendo Co., Ltd Pokémon is a registered trademark of Nintendo Co., Ltd.
4 NFT VS
CRYPTO MARKETS
IMPACT OF ETHEREUM GAS FEES ON
NFT MARKETS
Gas (or GWEI) corresponds to the fees which lubricate the flow of transactions through the
Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM. Whenever a transaction takes place on the Ethereum
Blockchain, the wallet initiating the transaction must pay network fees, called Gas or GWEI, that is
used to pay the miners.
In most cases these transaction fees are very low and have no direct impact on the markets. But
in 2020, with the advent of Decentralized Finance (or DeFi), the Ethereum network was required
to manage very large volumes of transactions, which were particularly complex due to the nature
of the financial instruments at the origin of these transactions.
The direct consequence for users has been a sharp increase in the price of Gas for all
transactions and notably for NFT. In some cases, the transaction fees turned out to be even more
expensive than the asset itself.
This first section aims to study the impact this sudden increase in network fees had on the NFT
Ecosystem and to identify the dependencies that exist between the technical reality of the
Ethereum network and the Non-Fungible Token market that it supports.
90,000
90 000 350 000 000 000
350,000,000,000
80 000
80,000 300 000 000 000
300,000,000,000
VOLUME OF NFT SALES
70 000
70,000
250,000,000,000
250 000 000 000
60 000
GAS PRICE
60,000
50 000 200,000,000,000
200 000 000 000
50,000
40 000
40,000 150,000,000,000
150 000 000 000
30 000
30,000 100,000,000,000
100 000 000 000
20 000
20,000
50,000,000,000
50 000 000 000
10 000
10,000
- --
-
Fig. 07 – Weekly volume of NFT sales vs. Ethereum Gas price – 2020
Source: Etherscan.io
As assumed, the sharp increase in Gas (GWEI) charges on the network has dissuaded many
users from continuing their NFT transactions.
Throughout July and August, we observe this steep increase in the price of GWEI, which
simultaneously reduces the volume of weekly NFT transactions. From mid-September, when the
network costs began to go down to affordable prices for users, the sales volume automatically
increased.
The conclusion of this first analysis is that there is a predictable and obvious correlation between
the cost of network charges and the activity of low to medium users.
The second hypothesis that we want to validate is that during these peaks in gas fees, only large
holders, ie, NFT collectors, Whales and so on, continued to trade in NFT.
If this assumption is correct, the average price of traded NFT should increase significantly over
this period.
$250 350 000 000 000
350,000,000,000
AVERAGE VALUE OF NFT SALES
GAS PRICE
$150
200,000,000,000
200 000 000 000
150,000,000,000
150 000 000 000
$100
100,000,000,000
100 000 000 000
$50
50,000,000,000
50 000 000 000
$- --
Fig. 08 – Average value of NFT sales vs. Ethereum Gas price – 2020
Source: Etherscan.io
The last correlation that we study here focuses on the impact these high Gas fees had on the
number of users or Wallets that acquired NFT over this period.
7 000
7,000 350 000 000 000
350,000,000,000
6 000
6,000 300 000 000 000
300,000,000,000
VOLUME OF NFT BUYERS
5 000
5,000 250 000 000 000
250,000,000,000
GAS PRICE
4 000
4,000 200 000 000 000
200,000,000,000
3 000
3,000 150 000 000 000
150,000,000,000
2 000
2,000 100 000 000 000
100,000,000,000
1,000
1 000 50 000 000 000
50,000,000,000
0 --
The impact is also visible here, although less marked. We observe a gradual decline in the
number of buyers from May when Gas prices started to rise, stabilizing around 2,000 buyers per
week during the peak in late August.
It is very interesting to observe the massive increase in new buyers in September, in tandem
with the gradual drop in Gas prices.
SHARE OF NFT TRANSACTIONS ON
ETHEREUM
The NFT industry seems to become a significant player in the Blockchain Universe and more
specifically, at the very heart of the Ethereum Blockchain.
What is the true indication of this and are NFT really an important part of the activity on the
Ethereum Blockchain? Is the Ethereum Blockchain becoming a Blockchain dedicated to NFT?
This section aims to give the NFT industry some perspective in regards to the total on-chain
activity on the Ethereum Blockchain.
9 000 000
9,000,000 1,000,000
1 000 000
8 000 000
8,000,000 900,000
900 000
TOTAL ETH TRANSACTIONS
800,000
800 000
7 000 000
7,000,000
NFT TRANSACTIONS
700,000
700 000
6 000 000
6,000,000
600,000
600 000
5,000,000
5 000 000
500,000
500 000
4,000,000
4 000 000
400,000
400 000
3,000,000
3 000 000
300,000
300 000
2,000,000
2 000 000 200,000
200 000
1,000,000
1 000 000 100,000
100 000
00 0
Firstly, it should be noted that the chart above is based on two separate scales; these are NFT
Transactions and TOTAL Transactions on Ethereum. No obvious correlation seems apparent
between the total transaction volume on the Ethereum Blockchain, and the transaction volume
related to NFT.
In addition, we also note that the average NFT transaction volume per week is extremely low
compared to the total transaction volume on the Ethereum Blockchain; 120,000 NFT TX for more
than 5,000,000 weekly transactions.
2018 2019 2020
Total volume of
transactions on the 254 349 235 242 286 953 330 200 264
Ethereum Blockchain
Percentage of NFT
transactions across
3.4% 3.9% 2%
total Ethereum
transactions
Source: Etherscan.io
There is a significant drop in the volume of NFT transactions during 2020 compared to previous
years. This relative decline is explained by the rise of side-chains which allow project and
Crypto-game publishers to offer their players a large number of off-chain interactions without
high costs and delays and interact with the main chain only for key transactions such as asset
trading from the user's wallet.
NFT MARKET SIZE VS CRYPTO
MARKET SIZE
From a transaction perspective, it’s evident that the NFT Industry remains relatively small
compared to the total on-chain activity.
Since NFT are seen by many as potential stores of value, what about the market capitalization of
NFT compared to the market capitalization of main Cryptocurrencies? Does the NFT Market gain
weight each year or not?
Market Capitalization
Source: CoinGecko.com
As a reminder, the Market Capitalization of NFT has been calculated according to the formula
described in section 3, i.e. total supply per NFT Ticker X average value over the year, taking in
account the relative liquidity rate of each NFT Ticker. The annual Cryptocurrency Market Cap has
been calculated based on the average daily Crypto Market Capitalization over the year.
It emerges that NFT have experienced serious gains during the Crypto Winter of 2019. We
witness an obvious strengthening during this period which allows the Non-Fungible Token
industry to maintain a position at more than 1% of the entire Ethereum Market Cap and with a
very slight gain against the Bitcoin Market Cap.
We recommended this stabilization of NFT weight against the two main Cryptocurrencies should
be read about. Especially in light of such significant increase in the value of BTC and ETH during
2020, proving the solidity of the NFT Industry, although of course this developing Ecosystem
remains modest compared to these valuable behemoths.
WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF ETH VALUE
ON THE NFT MARKET?
As with almost all Cryptocurrencies, during 2020 ETH has seen extremely sharp fluctuations in
its value, from $107 in March to over $650 by year-end.
Are these fluctuations in the value of Ethereum's core Cryptocurrency impacting the NFT industry
and market and if so, is this impact positive or not?
The independence of the NFT Industry vis-à-vis its historical underlying Cryptocurrencies would
be proof of the ongoing liberation of this young Ecosystem, and consequently also of its
developing maturity and newly found self-sufficiency in its Economy.
7 000
7,000 $700
6 000
6,000 $600
VOLUME OF BUYERS / SELLERS
5,000
5 000 $500
ETH PRICE
4,000
4 000 $400
3,000
3 000 $300
2,000
2 000 $200
1,000
1 000 $100
00 $-
Fig. 11 – Weekly active buyers & sellers vs. ETH value – 2020
Source: CoinGecko.com
The volume of NFT Buyers / Sellers increased significantly during the final quarter of 2020, in
tandem with the recovery in Ether’s value and the simultaneous drop in network costs. It’s
difficult to attribute this surge in activity to one of these two factors any more than the other.
Volume of trades vs. ETH value
90 000
90,000 $700
80 000
80,000
$600
70 000
70,000
$500
60,000
60 000
50,000
50 000 $400
40,000
40 000 $300
30,000
30 000
$200
20,000
20 000
10,000 $100
10 000
00 $-
In contrast, there is no direct correlation between the value of Ether and the volume of trades. On
the contrary, the trading volumes over the last half of the year decreased significantly as the
value of Ether continued to increase.
In conclusion, these Crypto Winter phases appear to be formidable opportunities for collectors
and NFT buyers to expand their portfolio, with the possibility of storing this acquired value for
times when the reference Cryptocurrency will be worth more.
Volume of ETH traded vs. ETH value
9 000
9,000 $700
8 000
8,000 $600
7 000
7,000
$500
6 000
6,000
5 000
5,000 $400
4 000
4,000 $300
3,000
3 000
$200
2,000
2 000
$100
1,000
1 000
0 $-
Fig. 13 – Weekly volume of ETH traded on NFT vs. ETH value – 2020
Source: CoinGecko.com
The amount of Eth that was traded experienced a sharp spike in volume during September which
we believe is more related to the drop in Gas price than to the increase of ETH prices.
This September peak was most likely due to the moment of liberation when Ethereum was freed
from the unpresented congestion which had put markets on standby. This hike corresponds to
the period when the price of gas started to fall, allowing average users to return to the market.
In this specific context, the majority of users who wanted to buy or sell their NFT had to wait for
the price of network charges to drop before they could take action.
5 MARKET
ACTIVITY
GLOBAL MARKET ACTIVITY
Trading activity in NFT markets is important, but it’s crucial to keep in mind that the financial
aspect of the industry is only part of the equation.
Our focus in this section will not so much be on the size of the NFT market itself, although that is
an important indicator but more on the sustainability of these markets and the health indicators
that we can identify.
We want to provide the most diversified metrics possible to help investors, players, collectors
and project managers understand the underlying market trends and the reality of these emergent
markets.
This ‘Market Activity’ section is only focused on market level performance. We’ll go into more
details in Section 6 - Sales & Trends.
What are the most relevant Metrics to monitor NFT Market Performance?
Liquidity
A key indicator to the health of any Market, looking at Liquidity allows you to analyze whether the
assets that make up the Market are stagnant or flowing. Too much liquidity tends to indicate the
arrival of a bubble, while an absence of liquidity is a reflection of a dead market.
Utility
$2 101 244
Collectibles 4%
$6 168 973 Metaverses
11% $14 020 406
25%
Sport
$7 143 501
13%
Art
$12 947 341
Gaming
24%
$12 907 165
23%
Fig. 14 – Market distribution (USD traded via sales) between segments – 2020
The Market still remains largely dominated by the historic segment of the NFT Ecosystem: the
Metaverse. The most striking trends of the year are:
▪ The gradual slowdown in the Collectibles segment
▪ The rise of Crypto Art which now occupies second place, just behind the Metaverses.
▪ Gaming is maintained and continues to occupy a very important place in the Industry.
Utility
Art
60 392
64 485
5%
5%
Sport
103 109
8%
Metaverses
111 773
8%
Gaming
629 553
47%
Collectibles
363 412
27%
From the perspective of traded assets, the face of the Ecosystem is very different. The market
remains very largely dominated by Gaming, with nearly 50% of trades, followed by
Collectibles.
The two segments that dominate the market from a USD traded perspective are more low-key
here, explained by the high value of Land in the various Metaverses and in Crypto Art. Here
we have two glaring examples which illustrate the difference in asset values:
$8 000 000
$6 000 000
$4 000 000
$2 000 000
$-
The overall growth observed throughout this period undoubtedly has been driven by the Art and
Gaming sector, which experienced a gradual increase throughout the year, despite the high Gas
fees, the Crypto Winter and the Global slowdown.
These segments have shown signs of resisting slowdown, in a technical, financial and healthy, if
somewhat complicated context and indicators suggest that investors are starting to perceive
them as safe havens.
Of course, it will be necessary to verify whether this trend continues over 2021 to confirm this
hypothesis.
Market evolution over time (Volume of sales)
200 000
180 000
160 000
140 000
120 000
100 000
80 000
60 000
40 000
20 000
-
The volume of sales per month has gradually declined over the course of 2020, from over
200,000 sales per month to just over 75,000 monthly sales. This decrease is mainly due to the
Gaming segment, which saw its volume decrease considerably over the year.
It is interesting to note how the volume of USD traded has increased significantly, while the
volume of selling has decreased. The bottom line is that fewer assets are traded on the Ethereum
Blockchain, but those assets are of increasing value.
MARKET DISTRIBUTION WITHIN
EACH SEGMENT
Gaming
Sport
Art
Metaverses
Utility
The distribution of these projects is that each segment is largely governed by a flagship project
which represents one to two thirds of all activity in this area.
Some areas such as Collectibles and Gaming are ultra competitive, even though historically
many only have a handful of players competing in the Market share, such as in the case of
Metaverses. Yet others such as Sport, are among the youngest segments of the industry, whose
development looks very promising for the next few years.
It’s interesting to note that despite its still dominant position in terms of Market Share,
Decentraland is increasingly challenged by other Metaverses.
In order to fully understand the Metaverses’ position several factors should be taken into
account:
▪ The more established Metaverses now focus particularly on World building and in-game
experiences rather than on their Secondary Market this has caused a gradual slowdown in the
latter which is apparently becoming less and less speculative.
▪ Other Metaverses, notably Cryptovoxels and The Sandbox, offer a vast array of supporting
assets to the Market including Names, Wearables, and various objects which are put into
circulation in the form of ERC-1155 Tokens. These are not included in this report but It's safe
to assume that the market share of these players is even greater when taking into account this
type of asset.
The comeback of CryptoPunks surprised many during 2020. As a reminder, these 10,000 Punks
were initially donated during an airdrop in August 2017. As a result, they are considered by
many collectors to be some of the very first NFT in history, which gives them increasing financial
value.
ADVANCED MARKET METRICS
0,16
0,14
0,12
0,1
0,08
0,06
0,04
0,02
0
Global Art Collectibles Gaming Metaverse Sport Utility
Average
The Liquidity Rate is an exclusive indicator calculated and developed by the NonFungible.com
team, its purpose being to offer an overview of liquidity of assets in the market.
This indicator is calculated by dividing the volume of unique assets that have been traded on the
Secondary Market, with the total supply available for each type of asset.
This indicator should only be read and analyzed in comparison with the performance of other
segments and, or projects.
In the chart above, it appears that the Metaverses remain as the segment with the highest
liquidity, this echoes the speculative nature of this asset class which still exhibits today as much
as it ever has.
Art and Utilities, on the contrary, have a very low liquidity of assets, which is explained on one
hand by the nature of the long-term investments made by Art Collectors and on the other by the
very nature of the assets in circulation in Utilities, which do not necessarily lend themselves to
subsequent trading or resale (ticketing, access tokens, keys, etc.)
Indeed, if we look back at the early days of NFT, speculation was rife after the first LAND auction
by Decentraland held during the end of 2017.
The potential future use value of LANDs was pushed into the background as at the time these
assets were considered primarily for their speculative value. Even today, plots across all the
Metaverses are of significant speculative value. Is this an aspect that is actively encouraged by
the founders of the Metaverses? Is speculative trading an integral part of the development
strategy of these Virtual Universes?
To clear this up, we asked the question to Ben Nolan, founder of Cryptovoxels.
“ I try to keep a back seat on that, I try to not create land at such a rate that it devalues existing
parcels, but I try to not concentrate on the speculation, I try not to measure, retweet or
promote it… people have bought parcels and sold them for a lot more than they purchased
them for but that's not why I'm interested in Cryptovoxels it’s not what I'm trying to build.
I would like people to be able to sell their parcels for what they bought them for, so if they
bought a parcel and they don't want to be here anymore I'd like if people sell it around the
same price, especially if they got it in a primary sale from us.
[…]
I mean I know there is speculation in CV and there are holders but its not what I'm optimizing
for.
2000
1800
1600
Volume of sales > $1 000
1400
Fig. 25 – Monthly volume and distribution of sales over $1,000 over time per project – 2020
The volume of ‘High Value’ sales increased gradually during 2020, in particular thanks to the
increase in the value of ETH. The increase in these sales demonstrates the growing interest and
confidence of buyers, who are willing to invest larger sums in their assets.
The fact that this increase is evenly distributed between the Projects must be interpreted as a
Global interest for this Asset Class represented by the NFT, in contrast to the ultra-polarized hype
on one or two Projects as was the case in the beginning of the Metaverse Industry.
Art is arguably the segment that is driving the most growth in this type of ‘High Value’ sale, which
naturally echoes the traditional Art Market.
Distribution of > $1 000 sales between primary and secondary markets
1400
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Primary Secondary
Fig. 26 – Total monthly volume of sales over $1,000 evolution over time – 2020
Since the start of the year, almost all sales in excess of $1,000 have been on the Secondary
Markets, i.e. from the resale of assets that had presumably been bought for less originally.
It was not until October before the trend started to reverse and the volume of high-priced sales
from the Primary Market exceeded the volume from the Secondary Markets for the first time.
Our conclusion about this phenomenon is that the ability to resell assets bought early and at a
lower cost, has given new and more affluent buyers a taste for this type of investment.
If we look at this trend according to this idea of speculative asset value, the NFT traders are not
only ready to buy at $100 to resell at $1,000, but they are now ready to buy at $1,000, in hope
of reselling for $10,000.
Distribution of Cryptocurrencies used for NFT transactions over time
Unsurprisingly ETH and its ERC-20 equivalent WETH, remain by far the most widely used
cryptocurrencies for NFT transactions and this dominant position was confirmed during the year.
Alt-coins that have stood out are in particular DAI, SAND, REVV and MATIC. Of course, not to
forget the official Cryptocurrency of the Decentraland metaverse MANA also remains one of the
major currencies in the NFT Ecosystem.
Despite the proliferation of in-game Currencies or Social Tokens, it's interesting to notice that
none yet seem to have been established as a benchmark Currency of the Ecosystem.
We wait to see in 2021 if one of them manages to pass the milestone of cross-project
interoperability.
No less than 46 different Cryptocurrencies were used during 2020 for the purchase of NFT.
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
ETH DAI WETH MANA SAND REVV SAI MATIC CUBE FOAM
Fig. 27 – Relative distribution of Cryptocurrencies used for NFT purchases (USD volume) – 2020
PRIMARY VS SECONDARY MARKET
DISTRIBUTION
The distribution between Primary and Secondary Markets is a strong indicator in assisting being
able to measure stages of development in the Market, or at least, for this particular segment.
The Primary Market means that assets are in their initial stage of issuance, in other words,
Portfolios are filling up with assets.
On the other hand, a dominant Secondary Market would be more a reflection of a market that
may be more mature, where projects have started to slow down the production of assets and
where the Peer-to-Peer Market is taking over.
Art
Secondary
Secondary 18 622
$4 563 861 29%
35%
Primary
Primary
$8 383 481
45 863
65%
71%
Fig. 28 – Distribution of sales within Art Segment Fig. 29 – Distribution of sales within Art Segment
(USD Volume) – 2020 (Sales Volume) – 2020
From a Crypto Art perspective, the secondary market remains very limited. The common
behavior of buyers at the moment is essentially to build a collection.
Works of Art are not one of those types of assets that you buy to dump the minute after you buy.
According to feedback from our teams over the year, most of the big Art buyers are here for the
long run.
Therefore, whether it is a passion purchase for pure love of Art, or a purchase based on the ROI,
its a safe bet that the secondary Crypto-Art market will gradually solidify over the coming years,
with the arrival of new collectors.
Collectibles
Primary
Secondary
$1 131 609
111 421
18%
31%
Secondary Primary
$5 037 364 251 991
82% 69%
Fig. 30 – Distribution of sales within Collectibles Fig. 31 – Distribution of sales within Collectibles
Segment (USD Volume) – 2020 Segment (Sales Volume) – 2020
The distribution of Collectibles between primary and secondary markets demonstrates a certain
maturity of the segment. The issuance of tokens on the primary market remains significant
(about 70% of the total segment trades), for only 18% of the traded value.
In conclusion, the assets that are traded to date on the secondary market are "relatively" few, but
present significant value.
Sport
Secondary Secondary
$1 995 667 32 165
28% 31%
Primary Primary
$5 147 835 70 944
72% 69%
Fig. 32 – Distribution of sales within Sport Fig. 33 – Distribution of sales within Sport
Segment (USD Volume) – 2020 Segment (Sales Volume) – 2020
The Sport segment has all the hallmarks of a growing young segment in which buyers are
showing increasing interest. The average value of assets traded between the Primary and
Secondary Markets are broadly similar, given the proximity of percentages between the two
markets.
We can read this trend, given the youth of the segment, as a phase of natural expansion, tokens
continue to be issued en masse on the Primary Market, the Secondary Market is gradually
developing. We can imagine that over time the trend will gradually reverse itself fairly quickly
given the large volume of tokens put into circulation every day by these projects.
Gaming
Primary Primary
$4 041 845 159 057
31% 25%
Secondary Secondary
$8 865 320 470 496
69% 75%
Fig. 34 – Distribution of sales within Gaming Fig. 35 – Distribution of sales within Gaming
Segment (USD Volume) – 2020 Segment (Sales Volume) – 2020
The distribution of Gaming Markets reflects a mature segment which is already well developed,
but which still has significant growth potential. This segment has rapidly driven the growth of the
NFT Ecosystem and now has a very significant liquidity of its assets. More than 75% of the
trades are made on the Secondary Market, for almost 70% of total value traded.
This is all the more impressive given the large volumes traded, almost 650,000 trades over the
year. The Gaming segment, from the point of view of the activity of its market, seems to be
already well developed and shows very promising potential for the coming years.
Metaverses
Primary
$4 195 534
30%
Secondary
38 872
35%
Primary
72 901
Secondary 65%
$9 824 872
70%
Fig. 36 – Distribution of sales within Metaverses Fig. 37 – Distribution of sales within Metaverses
Segment (USD Volume) – 2020 Segment (Sales Volume) – 2020
The Metaverses show a very different breakdown between Primary and Secondary Market USD /
Sales Volume. 65% of sales are made on the Primary Market, for only 30% of the value. This is
not explained by the shortness of the segment, but by several complementary factors:
▪ The year was marked by the numerous Pre-sales of The Sandbox. (significant volume on the
Primary Market.)
▪ The Sandbox LAND are very inexpensive on the Primary Market, compared to other
Metaverse Pre-sales in previous years
Most of the other Metaverses (Decentraland, Somnium Space) have finished their Pre-sale and
the plots are now ONLY for sale on the Secondary Market.
These different elements show that The Sandbox is reshaping the segment's landscape with
these massive pre-sales, its very different pricing strategy and the place that this outsider has
taken in the Gaming / Metaverse landscape.
We wait to see over the long term how the ecosystem will evolve following these first inflections.
Utility
Secondary
Secondary 4 685
$462 519 8%
22%
Primary Primary
$1 638 725 55 707
78% 92%
Fig. 38 – Distribution of sales within Utility Fig. 39 – Distribution of sales within Utility
Segment (USD Volume) – 2020 Segment (Sales Volume) – 2020
The Utilities segment presents a great diversity of projects and use cases; however it should be
noted that the segment is mainly driven by activity of the Ethereum Name Service, see previous
section.
The context of this project and its Market can explain the breakdown between Primary and
Secondary Market:
▪ most rare domain names / dictionary words are already sold (in other words, potentially the
most expensive) and these can be found in the Secondary Market today
▪ assets that are still selling in the primary market are names that are more anecdotal or
correspond to dictionaries other than the English dictionary - therefore less valuable for
assets still for sale on the Ethereum Name Service Primary Market.
On the other hand, the assets of the Utility segment are not necessarily intended to generate a
significant Secondary Market. If we think in particular of tickets, identity cards or 'useful' assets,
these types of NFT are not necessarily designed to be largely resold on a Secondary Market. It is
the, sometimes unique, use they offer that is at the origin of their value.
Let's conclude this section on the distributions between Primary & Secondary Markets with a
focus on how to 'read' these metrics; having a large Primary or Secondary Market is not
necessarily a sign of 'good health' or growth for a segment. The distribution must be
understood, taking into account the Projects that make them up, the level of maturity of each
segment and above all, the usage associated with each of these types of assets in circulation in
the Market segment.
GLOBAL MARKET CONCLUSIONS
The NFT Ecosystem has experienced a historic boom during 2020, both in terms of volume
traded and liquidity of assets. It is no longer just a speculative industry; it is now a value
generation industry.
The overall boom in the Ecosystem was mainly observed in the last quarter. Note that this
industry boom started before the year-end Crypto bull run. The rise in the value of Crypto has of
course had an impact, but it's not the only deciding factor.
DeFi x NFT's early initiatives brought unprecedented visibility to the industry, but it appears this
is still in its early stages, in any case, DeFi is a use case to watch closely.
Unsurprisingly, the gaming segment is still looking favorable and is responsible for a significant
part of the growth of the Ecosystem. The second half of 2020 saw the arrival of a new mover
with the Crypto-Art segment (which has been around since almost the beginning of the
industry).
This segment is fundamentally different from the others:
• Little volume
• Particularly high value of assets
• Secondary market still very weak
These results should be viewed with moderation as a growing proportion of trades are now
taking place on Layer2 Sidechain Solutions, or via the ERC-1155 (Semi-Fungible) standard and
so the industry as a whole is arguably bigger than described here. These technical aspects of the
industry are among our team's priorities to include as soon as possible.
To understand the exact nature of market trends, it’s necessary to go into much finer detail and
look at which assets were traded. These will be analyzed in section 6 - Sales & Trends.
Finally, note that market trends are never more than a reflection of the financial aspect of the NFT
Ecosystem: the tip of the iceberg. Section 9 – Community Behaviours will shine the necessary
light on the people behind these Markets!
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The Global Market trends analyzed in Section 5 can only be understood in light of the underlying
NFT Markets, eg; the assets themselves.
The Markets are driven by the most valued or sometimes the most liquid asset types, but also by
exceptional sales which reflect the interest that the wealthiest buyers have in certain asset
classes.
This huge volume of trades, backed by a predominant Secondary Market are obvious signs of
good health, specifically in the context of a Trading Card Game, where one of the key uses is to
exchange cards with other players to build the best Deck possible.
The majority of the other projects conversely exhibit a Primary Market that is superior to the
Secondary Market, suggesting that the peer-to-peer market is still small and that these projects
are still in the asset issuance phase.
However, in Sorare's case the project went from Loom to the Ethereum main chain during the
year which resulted in a surge of minting of all the cards already on Loom. This technical change
artificially increased the share of the Primary Market, suggesting that despite the young age on
the Ethereum Blockchain, Sorare already has a sizable Secondary Market and therefore a fairly
active community of playersCONTENT
and traders. AVAILABLE IN THE
PROFESSIONAL EDITION
Axie Infinity has a good balance between its Primary and Secondary Market, as the project
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
continues to sell large volumes of assets each month.
CONTENT AVAILABLE
Axie Infinity / CryptoKitties IN THE
PROFESSIONAL
The gap between these two main EDITION
collectible / breeding games is very clear for 2020. This year
marks a real turning point for Axie Infinity which undeniably takes the place of CK in terms of
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
adoption: The average price for starting to play has exploded and resale on the Secondary
Market has become very profitable for users who began playing earlier in the year.
The colossal price increase observed for Art Marketplaces like SuperRare does not indicate the
value of individual works that were sold in Q1 2020, has increased by 300%. But that works
which are resold in Secondary Art Markets are generally from highly sought-after Artists, whose
prices have soared. However, it should be noted that the average price of most of the Artists
present on these Art Marketplaces increased over the year, driven by the boom in the Crypto-Art
Space.
Wearables
In the metaverse, it's Decentraland who stands out thanks to their combination of unique and
rare wearables that everyone is crazy about possessing! Is it the ability to earn wearables by
completing quests, the wish for individuality or the desire for status that has exploded both the
Primary and Secondary Market prices for this new type of NFT? Whatever the case, the upwards
trend here is not to be taken lightly!
0xUniverse
The Game Studio let this game run on its own at the start of the year for lack of funding and
support from investors. Against all expectations and thanks to a migration to Matic, the game was
able to find its audience and a market during Q4 2020. The historic name of 0xUniverse is
therefore on the right track to continue forwards in 2021.
The Sandbox
The LANDs in this metaverse do not have rarity or exclusivity characteristics in their meta-data
and here the location of the LAND has only a minor impact on the value of the asset. We can
therefore safely say that the average price of a parcel of The Sandbox increased 150% over the
CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
year in the Secondary Market. This trend is interesting because it is uncorrelated with the relative
increase in the price of LANDs PROFESSIONAL
on the Primary Market:EDITION
in Q4, we observe LANDs sold on the
Primary Market at around $60 for a Secondary Market which trades these same LANDs for
almost $150. nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
On average the value of these highly traded assets increased significantly over the year. Does this
mean if you had bought each of these NFT earlier this year, you would have got rich?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple!
Bear in mind, this is the average price per NFT Ticker, for each of these tickers, there is a great
diversity of assets, from the most common to the most exclusive. Therefore, to understand what
carries the value of these tickers, it requires going into detail for each type of asset sold
(exclusivity, rarity, etc.)
As a conclusion, it is essential to analyze the history of a market in detail before drawing any
conclusions. We invite you to consult the market history available on NonFungible.com before
making a purchase:
nonfungible.com/market/history
MOST EXPENSIVE SALES PER
SEGMENT PER YEAR
2018 – Highest sale per segment
ART
METAVERSES
UTILITY
CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
Project: Ripio Credit Network USD price: $2,310
PROFESSIONAL EDITION
Crypto price: 84,415 (RCN)
Sale type: Primary
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
GAMING
COLLECTIBLES
SPORT
ART
METAVERSES
UTILITY
COLLECTIBLES
SPORT
Project Artwork name / Artists Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
Title: EthBoy
AsyncArt 11.21 Primary 260 (ETH) $140,434
Artist: Trevor, Alotta Money
Title: ˈsä-v(ə-)rən-tē
AsyncArt 11.14 Primary 250 (ETH) $117,238
Artist: Micah Johnson
Title: Genesis
MakersPlace Artist: Trevor Jones, Jose 10.17 Primary 302.5 (ETH) $111,411
Delbo
Title: Base
AsyncArt 07.25 Primary 97 (ETH) $27,995
Artist: Pak
*NiftyGateway sales are not included in this listing as sales occur off-chain
Top #10 highest sales in 2020 [Collectibles]
Project Asset name / details Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
Punk #3307
Crypto Punks 12.30 Secondary 190 (ETH) $137,366
Tags: Male
Punk #2924
Crypto Punks 11.13 Secondary 150 (ETH) $71,512
Tags: Ape, Hoodie
Punk #4513
Crypto Punks Tags: Zombie, Beanie, 10.03 Secondary 189.6 (ETH) $67,307
Luxurious Beard, Earring
Punk #3831
Tags: Zombie, Vampire
Crypto Punks 12.25 Secondary 99.99 (ETH) $62,821
Hair, Medical Mask, Big
Shades
Punk CONTENT
#2681 AVAILABLE IN THE
Crypto Punks Tags: Zombie, Cap,
PROFESSIONAL 12.26 Secondary
EDITION 83 (ETH) $53,626
Clown Eyes Blue
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Punk #5314
Crypto Punks Tags: Ape, Do-rag, 09.17 Secondary 140 (ETH) $50,843
Horned Rim Glasses
Punk #3107
Crypto Punks Tags: Beanie, Big Beard, 12.25 Secondary 60 (ETH) $36,658
Earring, Male
Punk #1
Crypto Punks Tags: Smile, Mohawk, 11.30 Secondary 60 (ETH) $36,126
Male
CK #20
CryptoKitties 10.04 Secondary 96 (ETH) $33,315
Gen 0
Punk #7407
Crypto Punks Tags: Beanie, Classic 12.24 Secondary 49 (ETH) $28,229
Shades, Male
Top #10 highest sales in 2020 [Gaming]
Project Asset name / details Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 11.06 Secondary 300 (ETH) $131,673
Name: Angel
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity Name: Perfect & The First 11.21 Secondary 180 (ETH) $96,906
Triple
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 11.23 Secondary 160 (ETH) $95,574
Name: Greg
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 10.22 Secondary 200 (ETH) $83,624
Name: Handsome Bob
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 12.08 Secondary 140 (ETH) $82,482
Name: Sergey
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 09.28 Secondary 150 (ETH) $53,242
Name: Angel
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 09.25 Secondary 150 (ETH) $48,754
Name: Axie #265
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 09.25 Primary 150 (ETH) $48,754
Name: Alien
Title: Origin
Axie Infinity 08.23 Secondary 90 (ETH) $35,044
Name:
Top #10 highest sales in 2020 [Sport]
Project Asset name / details Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
2,650,000
F1 Delta Time Bahrain Edition 2020 12.04 Primary $75,932
(REVV)
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Neymar 2020-21 •
Sorare 10.18 Primary 74.42 (ETH) $27,974
Unique
Project Asset name / details Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
39 Hook Street
Cryptovoxels 12.21 Secondary 110 (ETH) $67,012
Suburb: Frankfurt
40 Hook Street
Cryptovoxels 12.21 Secondary 90 (ETH) $54,828
Suburb: Frankfurt
Estate #8 1,400,000
Decentraland 05.24 Secondary $53,854
LAND: 50 (MANA)
Estate #8 750,000
Decentraland 02.11 Secondary $46,782
LAND: 50 (MANA)
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Estate #3750
Decentraland 12.17 Secondary 56.38 (ETH) $36,776
LAND: 36
Type: WORLD
Somnium Space 11.06 Primary 80 (WETH) $35,345
Size: XL
Asset name /
Project Sale date Sale type Crypto price USD Price
details
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Obviously, the highest priced sales in certain segments are largely dominated by one project, and
in a few cases, we observe 2 to 3 projects which share these highest sales. While the ecosystem
is growing fast, and up to this point has many drivers for growth, it's interesting to note how
each segment remains very polarized around one or two projects that attract high net worth
investors..
We offer you an analysis for each segment, allowing us to shed light on the explanations or
trends behind these sales.
Collectibles
The renewed interest shown in CryptoPunks at the start of 2020 is partly due to their switch to
“Wrapped CryptoPunks”, allowing them to switch to the ERC-721 standard!
With the Art Market booming during this year, the historical value and rarity of CPs was
accentuated by their unconventional format and the fact that the project were the originators who
inspired the Universe of Non-Fungible Tokens after them.
Several buying waves took place during the Summer, moving the minimum price of a
CryptoPunk from 1 to 6ETH in the space of two months.
Gaming
Despite the development and expansion of many games over the course of 2020, it is undeniably
the Axies that have dominated sales records! Twelve “Origin” type Axies are the rarest in the
game and have unique combat skills.
What might explain such a large difference between the purchase price and the resale is partly
due to the massive peak in interest Axie Infinity experienced from the end of the Summer
onwards and also because these Origin Axies have managed to remain a virgin! So have a 0
breed count making them even more desirable.
The fact no other Axie carries all these combined trains has reinforced their uniqueness and
therefore, the desire to own them at a high price.
Sport
Sorare and F1 Delta Time reign supreme in the sports segment, specifically F1 Delta Time with
the sale which is still considered the most expensive in the history of NFT for a single asset, with
more than $220,000 for a Formula 1 circuit.
On Sorare’s side, it’s unsurprisingly the most famous soccer players who were behind historic
sales. With the evolution of sports-related Collectibles in the traditional market, it's a safe bet that
CONTENT
one of these cards will go above $100,000AVAILABLE IN THE
on the secondary market next year.
PROFESSIONAL EDITION
Metaverse nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
In the Metaverse segment, there are two different types of asset occupying the top: unique
LANDs (Cryptovoxels) and LAND conglomerates in the form of ESTATES (Decentraland). The
price of Estates is a mechanical factor in the number of LANDs that make it up, while the value of
Cryptovoxels plots is defined by the Suburb in which it is located, but also the total volume it
offers. Regarding Cryptovoxels, although the average price of plots has increased considerably
over the year, it should be noted that these are exceptional sales which, for the moment, appear
to be outsiders compared to the rest of the market.
Utility
The Utilities segment has been largely dominated by the domain name market. In this market,
very similar to that of web domain names, the rarest names, the most evocative, are the most
valued. These names were of course reserved very quickly by buyers, so that the highest sales
are almost exclusively on the secondary market, when re-selling these exclusive domain names.
7 MAKING
PROFIT WITH NFT
HOW TO MAKE MONEY?
Introduction
In this section we will focus on the business models that have arisen from the NFT industry.
Today a wide variety of players participate in the development of the ecosystem and manage to
derive regular and sufficient income from it to have made it a full-time activity.
Here we analyze this particular dimension of the NFT industry by focusing on three types of
players and by answering a few questions for each to understand the issues and the models that
work. How to make money with NFT as a:
#1 – Trader
Is it a sustainable activity today to trade NFT? What income can we generate?
#2 – Project
How do projects finance themselves other than through traditional funding? What projects
perform the best? What is their source of income?
#3 – Artist
Can artists make a living from selling their works on the Blockchain? How much can a popular
Crypto Artist make?
MAKING PROFIT AS AN NFT TRADER
Trading is inherent in most asset classes and the NFT ecosystem is no different with trading
being one of their earliest use cases.
At first this activity was seen as a hangover from the cryptocurrency space but NFT trading
greatly contributed to the notoriety of the industry. Figures such as Pranksy and Matty aka DCL
Blogger grow in notoriety. These well-known traders were some of the first to prove that it was
possible to make a living through trading NFT, others quickly followed on, but what about today?
CONTENT
How much do people spend AVAILABLE
in NFT? IN THE
PROFESSIONAL EDITION
Spent between $100 - $999
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro Spent between
20 922
$1,000 - $9,999
27,30%
6 991
9,12%
Spent between
$10,000 - $99,999
1 088
1,42%
Spent between
$100,000 - $999,999
94
0,12%
The majority of Wallets have fairly limited expenditure volumes and can be interpreted as a first
contact with NFT. There are still nearly 10,000 wallets that have spent at least $1,000. It should
also be noted that the segment of the largest wallets is growing with almost 100 wallets that have
exceeded more than $100,000.
Calculating the exact profit an individual trader makes is a rather complicated exercise for various
reasons including the type of assets, technological context related to NFT and the strategy
diversity.
Here are some examples below that make the task of evaluating profit for traders more complex:
CONTENT trade
• Private deals – a direct peer-to-peer AVAILABLE IN THE
between wallets, not via a smart contract, with the
sending of funds and assetsPROFESSIONAL EDITION
simultaneously. This type of deal cannot be taken into account
automatically
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
• Long-term HODLing – a trader who has bought a certain type of asset but decides to wait
several years before reselling will be seen as a losing trader.
• Trading based on crypto value (not on USD value) – For the sake of readability, we base our
analysis on profits made in USD, based on the value of each Cryptocurrency at the time of the
transaction. (Thanks to CoinGecko data.) However, regardless of its USD price, some traders
refer to the price of the asset in Cryptocurrency. Therefore, an asset bought for 1ETH, when
Eth is high and sold for 2 ETH when Ether is low will be considered a loss from a USD point
of view, but not a Crypto one. Note this exercise is even more complicated when the buying
and selling are done in two different Cryptocurrencies.
The analyzes below are based on all on-chain transactions carried out in 2020 by all wallets that
have bought or sold an NFT at least once during the year.
25 000
19 716
20 000
15 000
12 046
10 000
5 000
"Loss" is not always a loss, if for example we look at addresses with "Losses over $100,000" we
discover the largest wallets of collectors such as Moderats, WhaleShark, MetaKovan,
TokenAngels and so on, who have not "lost" any money as such. This is more of a long-term
investment, driven by major economic players.
On the other hand, a large portion of the wallets that have recorded "Profits over $100,000" are
most often artists or wallets whose activity suggests it is not an actual person.
The NonFungible.com teams performed a manual verification of each of the accounts in order to
identify those corresponding to real traders. The top #15 of the most profitable traders and the
biggest spenders' wallets are listed on the next pages.
Most profitable traders in 2020
The list of the most profitable traders in 2020 shows performances ranging from $100,000 to
almost $500,000 over the year.
Over time we have noticed that the interests of NFT traders have adapted. Firstly, we have the
CryptoPunks owners, who have taken advantage of the craze for these historic collectibles and
generated up to 100% of their profits thanks to these assets. Traders such as GoWest23 & BTC
and jmg.
Axie Infinity has become an asset class of choice for traders such as Chaztickles and CocoBear
while others have stuck to their favorite segment: the Metaverses.
BitcoiniPie is one of Decentraland's historical traders who has sold a large portion of their assets
in the Metaverse. PeterD had specialized solely in Decentraland, but now has diversified his
activity between The Sandbox, Somnium Space and Decentraland.
Note that this method of calculation does not highlight traders who continue to reinvest their
profits. Take, for example, the case of DCL Blogger, a well known NFT trader, whose profit is only
$8,700 despite having sold more than $100,000 worth of NFT in the year.
CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE Total profit
Chaztickles PROFESSIONAL EDITION $96,875
ST34DY $101,753
Donflaquito nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro $106,921
Bitcoinipie $115,133
PeterD $120,601
0x4FabDA $128,119
4000 Axies Make An Offer $128,315
Dirtyfox $129,307
Slats ETH $147,322
GoWest23 $177,789
GoWestBTC $184,413
0xa3cb3… $187,118
jmg $205,442
Pranksy $209,354
CocoBear $465,898
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Fig. 44 – Profit distribution per project of the top #15 most profitable NFT traders – 2020
Biggest spenders
Alongside the traders who most often sign up for the short to medium term, we have also seen
the development of another type of economic player, one who focuses on the long-term. Taking
a balanced view of 2020, these wallets can be seen as having recorded big losses, but they are
really more long-term investments.
Most of these players are known within the ecosystem and communicate with their community
on the strategy behind their acquisitions, as with WhaleShark, the Vault and the $Whale
community, MetaKovan with the Metapurse Fund and TokenAngels & Moderats are also known
as passionate collectors.
To summarize, we can see that certain economic players have very strong confidence in the
future of NFT, with some portfolios now worth well in excess of one million dollars in cumulative
value. We have noted a clear diversification of investments in these wallets, finding they contain
projects such as: Blockchain Cuties, SuperRare, Bit AIrt, Blocklete Games, Sorare, Axie Infinity
and MakersPlace.
Total spent
MaxStealth $1,107,833
Moderats CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE $878,718
WhaleShark PROFESSIONAL EDITION $731,861
------ $619,128
snowcrash0x nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro $485,372
0xc733… $456,896
MetaKovan $377,008
SmallBrownDoge $365,320
DANNY $338,002
etyoung $286,222
0x4dc7… $257,509
0x42f7… $250,995
Gaus $246,341
TokenAngels $232,426
0x21a1… $225,879
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Fig. 45 – Spending distribution per project of the top #15 biggest spenders in NFT – 2020
Top #15 most profitable sales in 2020
Previous
Sale Previous Last Crypto Last USD
Asset type Crypto USD profit
date USD Price Price Price
Price
Axie Infinity (Axie)
11.06 60 ETH $10,291 300 ETH $131,673 $121,382
Name: Angel
Cryptopunks
12.25 0.28 ETH $ 190 99.99 ETH $ 62,822 $ 62,632
Punk #3831
Decentraland (LAND)
09.27 36,000 MANA $ 1,600 78.93 ETH $ 27,722 $ 26,122
X: 72 | Y: 45
12.17
CONTENT AVAILABLE
Decentraland (ESTATE) IN THE 56.38 ETH
51.76 ETH $17,565 $ 36,776 $ 19,211
Composed of: 36 LAND
PROFESSIONAL EDITION
Gods Unchained (CARD)
09.15 0.35 ETH $ 92
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro 50 ETH $ 18,422 $ 18,330
Jason, Medea's Muse
Cryptopunks
11.19 10 ETH $ 2,095 36 ETH $ 17,166 $ 15,071
Punk #7996
MegaCryptoPolis (REGION)
12.05 15 ETH $ 2,565 29.5 ETH $ 17,285 $ 14,720
Region #116 | Totaltiles: 1682
Cryptopunks
09.06 7.5 ETH $ 1,003 44 ETH $ 15,529 $ 14,526
Punk #5684
Cryptopunks
12.30 1.5 ETH $ 194 18.99 ETH $ 13,845 $ 13,651
Punk #777
Axie Infinity (Axie)
12.06 Name: ✨✨ 마법의 군주 7.5 ETH $ 2,438 25 ETH $ 14,887 $ 12,449
Low Price Fire Sale!!
Axie Infinity (Axie)
11.01 12.5 ETH $ 4,063 42.07 ETH $ 16,231 $ 12,168
Name: Axie #3167
Unstoppable Domains
10.08 1 WETH $ 205 35 ETH $ 12,276 $ 12,072
Domain: own.crypto
We note that assets which attained the largest profits during the resale, come from only a handful
of projects, mainly Axie Infinity, CryptoPunks and Decentraland. These profits can be interpreted
as a surge in interest by investors for certain projects that have presented a sufficient value
proposition. These sales and the profits generated by traders including Early Adopters, fuel the
dynamics of pre-sales and participate in their success: "Buy the right asset, and you will see
your sale in this list next year!“
Time will tell if the acquisition of assets at these prices is for their use or more speculation in the
hope of a subsequent resale.
These sales are indicative of a reality within the NFT space: buying the right asset at the right
time can be extremely profitable: in a single sale of video game assets, one person has managed
to make a profit of over $120,000.
Indeed, it is obvious that being an NFT trader in 2020 was a profitable business. Some traders
have managed to generate almost half a million dollars in a single year.
Note, however, that there are to date only a handful of traders who have made this trading a full-
time activity and most trade alongside some other activity. Just like in traditional trading, it's all
about risk management and portfolio diversification.
The key to success in NFT trading lies in the quality and thoroughness of the Due Diligence
carried out before any asset purchase. The time it takes to gain insight, analyze markets and
understand trends to measure risk before each trade should not be underestimated.
MAKING PROFIT AS A PROJECT
New projects using NFT standards are announced every day, whether they are video games,
projects related to crypto-art or major licenses.
Certain presales carried out in recent years show the NFT industry as a new El Dorado which
allows projects to be launched thanks to innovative financing methods that are less restrictive
than traditional fundraising.
What is it really? What is behind this image of the New El Dorado? Is it indeed that easy to make
a profit in the NFT industry?
If we take the example of Axie Infinity, one of the most successful projects over the year, since its
launch in April 2018, the Axie Infinity project has managed to generate just over 7,200 ETH in
less than 3 years, or more than $7MM during the Ether end of 2020 (Source: axieworld.com -
including Loom & Ethereum activity).
This type of performance, as well as the historic Decentraland auctions which generated
respectively $12MM in December 2017 and $5.7MM in December 2018, paved the way for
many other projects which see the possibility of financing their development through the sale of
NFT. CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
PROFESSIONAL
In the following section we analyze EDITION
projects that performed the best over the year, as well as the
distribution of their income source.
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
As a reminder, this report currently only deals with transactions using the ERC-721
standard taking place on the Ethereum Blockchain. The share of activity of projects
using other standards (notably ERC-1155) or Layer-2 Technologies (notably
Sidechains such as Loom) are not taken into account in the present analysis. This will
notably have an impact on the following projects:
▪ Axie Infinity - LAND traded on Loom (about 4,420 ETH according to
axieworld.com)
▪ Sorare - project activity was fully on Loom until April 2020
▪ The Sandbox - non-LAND assets are all ERC-1155
▪ Cryptovoxels - wearables are in ERC-1155 format
▪ Nifty Gateway - trades take place off-chain
Top #15 Projects with the most fees
$- $200 000 $400 000 $600 000 $800 000 $1 000 000 $1 200 000
CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
PROFESSIONAL
Fig. 46 – Top #15 EDITION
projects that generated the most fees – 2020
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
SuperRare stands out from the pack in terms of % profits made on their Fees. Art Marketplaces'
economic models are based on the margins they make on the sale of their registered artists'
work, unlike projects like Axie Infinity or Somnium Space which generates income from the sale
of their assets on the Primary Market.
A platform like SuperRare receives 20% of the amount from a sale in fees on the Primary Market.
10% of fees are then levied on each sale in the Secondary Market which are redistributed
between the artist and the marketplace (around 2%).
In contrast, the fees collected by other projects correspond more to operating costs than to a real
economic model. The core business of most NFT projects today is based on the sale of assets
during presales or through the regular issuance of assets throughout the life of the project.
Note, the fees in question do not necessarily go back to the project. If the sale takes place on a
third-party Marketplace (e.g. Opensea) then fees will, at least partially, revert to the Marketplace
on which the transaction took place.
Top #10 most profitable projects (Asset sales)
Before studying the performance of projects in asset sales, remember that this report does not
take into account sales using standards such as ERC-1155 or ERC-2309. Likewise, sales taking
place on Sidechains such as Flow, Matic or Loom (or even Off-chain) are also not taken into
account in the graph below. The volumes of certain projects, in particular Axie Infinity, The
Sandbox or Sorare are most likely to be higher due to their activity on sidechains and ERC-1155.
As mentioned previously, the revenue generated by Art Marketplaces mostly goes to the artists
and not to the Marketplace. We can see here that projects such as Sorare, Axie Infinity, The
Sandbox, Somnium Space, have sold more than $1,000,000 in assets in just one year, in the
context of a global pandemic.
Finally, it should be noted that the "Primary" sales of CryptoPunks are in reality only the
conversion of the original Punks into a new technological standard (Wrapped Punk), making
them appear as though they were the first circulation of the asset on the market.
$- $1 000 000 $2 000 000 $3 000 000 $4 000 000 $5 000 000 $6 000 000
Fig. 47 – Top #15 of the most profitable projects (based on primary market sales) – 2020
*Note that the income generated by these primary sales does not necessarily go to the project. In the case of
Axie Infinity and Cryptokitties for example, the user who gave birth to the new creature receives the funds.
For us to delve deeper into the vision of what future economic models might look like and in
particular with the development of Metaverses, we wanted to share the Founder of Cryptovoxels
point of view on what future major trends might enable users to generate business within the
NFT industry.
What are your thoughts about earning a living within the metaverse?
“ I don't know because it's hard but if I was going to guess, my guess would be that ticketed
paid events will be the next thing.
So, if it's a conference, a talk, a lecture or something like that, you'll be able to sell tickets and
only people with that NFT ticket will be able to attend that event. I do see people getting paid
for doing the development in Cryptovoxels, so they're paid to build out parcels for people.
Those are the two things I see at the moment but, I didn't see NFT and Art Galleries coming
so I suspect that the next thing to come along I won't have seen coming either!
It is interesting to note however, that despite the large volume, these “best selling artists” are not
necessarily among the artists whose works are the most sought after by collectors, as we see in
the following table.
We should note the presence of the artist duo Hackatao, who greatly impacted the ecosystem, as
well as the Comic Artist Jose Delbo who made a remarkable entry to the Crypto Art scene in
2020.
Pak is arguably the best performing artist of the year, with over half a million dollars generated in
the Primary Market, an average price of almost $7,000 per work out of a total of 76 works sold
for the year.
In total, these 10 artists alone generated $1.6MM over the year solely from the primary sale of
these works.
A bright future for crypto-artists?
In 2020, a handful of artists helped bring crypto-art to the forefront. Pak, Hackatao, Josie, Peeble,
XCOPY, Pascal Boyart and many others have demonstrated that crypto-art is a discipline in its
own right, and that it is possible to sell its works to true art collectors worldwide.
The 2020 performances, driven by Art marketplaces, demonstrated that it was possible to make a
living from your art, and more specifically from your crypto-art.
Blockchain and NFT have proven once again that they are not just a playground for techies and
geeks, but also a great way for all artists around the world to express their creativity and to create
and sell their art.
The famous Sotheby's auction house bought its first NFT "The Cheap" by Pak during the first
days of 2021. CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
PROFESSIONAL
Christie’s also organized the first sale of a work ofEDITION
art bound to an NFT in October 2020. To
everyone's surprise, this work of art estimated between $12,000 and $18,000 sold for $131,250.
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
Did Christie slightly underestimate the value of NFT? In any case, these signals, coming from
established players in the art world, outside the NFT ecosystem, suggest that we are going to see
more and more involvement of auction houses and players in the art market and traditional art in
the years to come.
To conclude this section on the profitability of NFT, and the impact this new asset class can have,
especially on Artists, we would like to conclude by quoting Jose Delbo, famous comic artist, best
known for his work on Wonder Woman for DC Comics and The Transformers for Marvel Comics.
We asked him what his definition of Crypto Art and a Crypto Artist is.
“
I will let the cool kids define what crypto art
In the rest of the interview, Jose went
and a crypto artist is. But to me crypto art
on to say that Blockchain and Crypto
Art had offered him the possibility of has given me a chance to share my art with
continuing to make a living from his an incredible community in an amazing
work at a point in his life where he new way. I never thought I would be
was no longer travelling around the creating digital art, but the blockchain has
”
world selling his Art Works. given me an opportunity to do that.
Not a week goes by without these questions being asked, the real question we are going to
answer is not whether they will, but more how to assess if NFT are in the process of becoming
mainstream.
There is no doubt that in some form or another and in some standard or another, one day in the
future NFT unique and irreplaceable assets that are issued and circulating on a Blockchain will be
Globally adopted.
This section aims to identify, quantify and understand internal and external signals that suggest
NFT are no longer just reserved for an elite bunch of techies and geeks.
First let us look at an important nuance: if we only observe the statistics of users who have
interacted with the assets, we will only take into account those who have "taken the plunge" and
already have an Ethereum wallet. Before that, it is important to have an idea of all those who have
heard of NFT without necessarily having bought them.
NonFungible.com launched the following poll on its Twitter account in December 2020 on Twitter
in December: “When did you discover the #NFT ecosystem?".
250 000
205 046
200 000
150 000
50 000
23 010
14 341
4 390 8 302
-
Active only in Active only in Active only in Active in 2018 Active in 2018 Active in 2019 Active in 2018,
2018 2019 2020 and 2019 and 2020 and 2020 2019 and
2020
The chart above is based on the activity of Wallets between 2018 and 2020 (dApp activity, not
only the Buyers & Sellers).
The first conclusion that can be drawn here is that the vast majority of addresses active in 2020
were newcomers and not NFT veterans. Clearly the community that arrived during 2018
gradually has been replaced by a new wave of users. Only about 10% of the 2018 community
has remained active in the ecosystem until today.
Interestingly, the 4,390 wallets that were active in 2018, showed no activity in 2019 but returned
in 2020, perhaps the reselling of assets bought early or renewed interest in a booming industry?
Finally, it should be noted that only 14,000 wallets from 2018 remained active in 2019, while
more than 23,000 wallets continued to be active between 2019 and 2020. This proves that users
who arrived in 2018 were attracted by the shiny and speculative side of this asset class but that
more people in 2019 wanted to invest in the ecosystem for the long term.
686
Wallets active more
3 814
than 9 months 2 459
1 658
Wallets active between
4 151
6 and 9 months 4 027
7 264
Wallets active between
9 810
3 and 6 months 15 663
102 264
Wallets active less
96 131 218 599
than 3 months
Fig. 52 – Distribution of active wallets based on their activity over each year – 2018 to 2020
We can see here that despite the very large number of wallets that arrived in the ecosystem
during 2020, they remain relatively inactive, with a very large proportion of wallets that were
active for less than 3 months out of the year.
We note that more wallets were active between 6 and 12 months in 2019 than in 2020. We
believe that this trend is mainly due to the development of Layer-2 (Sidechains) which allow a
more fluid daily activity, without the constraint of Ethereum network fees or potential latencies.
As this activity on sidechains is not covered within the framework of this report, we assume that
wallets have increased their off-chain activity, to the ongoing reduction in on-chain activity.
If we focus more on 2020, it appears that the fourth semester was an extremely rich time for the
development of the community. Almost 140,000 active wallets in Q4, which is practically twice
the number of Q3, and 3 times the active community of Q2.
We believe that these are extremely encouraging development indicators which can be explained
by various factors: the buzz around DeFi x NFT, the end-of-year Crypto Bull run which has
restored confidence to buyers and investors, and the various impactful announcements during
the year of major brands and licenses which have proven their interest in NFT and their potential,
see following pages.
140 000
120 000
100 000
80 000
60 000
40 000
20 000
-
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Overall, the NFT community has grown considerably during 2020, with the arrival of extremely
large numbers of newcomers, resulting in very few veteran NFT holders.
However, user loyalty to projects and to the ecosystem, is partly masked by off-chain activity and
sidechains. However, we can say by the end of 2020 that the industry has reached a level of
maturity sufficient to no longer just serve a niche community of tech lovers but to convert users
outside the ecosystem on a large scale.
IPS AND BRANDS ENTERING THE
NFT JUNGLE
There have been so many new projects emerging that it has been a challenge to keep up with
every announcement from each project testing their ideas.
To help you understand the landscape of the brands and licenses that have shown interest or
have already started to issue NFT, we have organized them by categories. Some are already very
advanced; others are just curious about the potential of this new asset class.
Video-game Studios
Sport
PSG, FC Bayen München, Real Madrid & more than 100 football / soccer
clubs (Via Sorare)
Fashion & luxury
Nike (CryptoKicks)
Topps (GPK)
HTC (Exodus 1)
Behind this list of big companies, licenses, gaming studios and businesses from various
industries who are becoming interested in blockchain and the potential offered by NFT, there
are also underlying technical stakes, business challenges to be faced and important questions
to discuss regarding the future of these business stakeholders.
In order to understand what leads some of these companies to be interested in NFT, we chose
to interview one of the most active companies to date in the on-boarding of large IPs in the
ecosystem of Non-Fungible Tokens,: Animoca Brands.
We had the opportunity to discuss with its CEO, Robby Yung, in order to better understand the
motivations of a group like Animoca Brands, and the place that NFT now occupy in the group's
strategy.
”
What are the mistakes to avoid when you want to bring an IP on the
blockchain?
“ The most important thing you can do is to respect the brand. You need to be faithful to the
brand and understand the fan base and make sure that you deliver an experience that
meets everyone's expectations. If you can do that, then you can also make money, but
staying faithful to the brand is job #1.
”
In your mind, what part will NFT play in the gaming industry within the
next 10 years?
“ I think once players realise that they can own the content in a game for the same price
rather than renting it, they will choose ownership, and this simple principle will lead all
games to become blockchain games. It's like when we asked the question, 15 years ago,
"now that the Internet is more widely used, will more games go online?"
”
Do you think NFT represent the logical evolution of traditional gaming or a
total disruption?
“ I think it's both. As games evolved from single player offline experiences to multiplayer
online experiences with virtual economies, it's only natural that we reach a stage more like
the metaverse, where we replicate physical economies inside game economies, and NFT's
allow us to do this. That said, like previous major technological shifts such as offline to
online, premium to free to play, and console to mobile/everywhere, I think NFT's will
disrupt gaming just as much, if not more.
”
In your opinion at what stage of its development is blockchain gaming
today? How mature is it?
“ We've barely scratched the surface. I think companies getting into the field in 2021 will
look back and think of themselves as early adopters.
Are all licenses / IPs suitable for the NFT industry or is it reserved only for
”
a certain category?
“ There is no reason why all game content should not exist in NFT form, or why all in-game
currencies shouldn't be tokenised. However, at this early stage of development of the
industry, the focus for players has been on collectible content, and so the natural IP
partners have been those who have the most loyal fanbases, like sports or sci-fi. As
blockchain games become more and more mainstream, the focus of players should move
from collecting more to coincidental ownership (meaning, "I play this game that's cool, and
oh, I just happen to own the content as well").
This asset class of NFT presents incredible opportunities for both users, brands and licenses. It
is in the intersection between interest in the brand, decentralization, true ownership, and all these
new use cases where the largest licenses will develop, and they will manage to integrate Non-
Fungible Tokens into their chain of value and business model.
“We've barely scratched the surface” potential of NFT and what traditional brands and businesses
can do with them. The next few years will definitely be extremely rich in innovation in this space!
SO… ARE NFT MAINSTREAM?
Ask someone on the street or ask at your grocery store what they think of NFT, you will
immediately discover that NFT are still niche assets!
Today the important thing is not to observe the industry from a static point of view, as in where
the NFT are held but rather to understand the forces present that are driving the development of
the entire industry, including looking at the strength of the sector and at how and at what speed it
develops.
Remember that the Non-Fungible Token industry is an extremely young sector that only emerged
in the final quarter of 2017: NFT were only blowing out the candles on their third birthday in
2020.
However, this young industry is closely followed by global companies around the world, which
have already initiated their first research and experimentation into the space, ranging from
exploring technological infrastructures through to use cases around Art, Finance, Entertainment
and more.
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9 BEHAVIOURS
COMMUNITY
USER MOTIVATIONS AND COMMUNITY
BEHAVIOURS IN THE NFT MARKET
At present the majority of reports covering the world of NFT tend to only look at the ecosystem
from a financial and economic perspective. However, markets and asset values are just the tip of
the iceberg as these types of indicators are quantitative and only reflect a perceived value.
Ultimately, it is the collective human mind and its focus, real use value, the commitment within
the community as a whole and the network of tens of thousands of people around the globe who
dedicatedly build day after day, that are the real drivers here. Most commonly known as ‘The NFT
Community’ these are the true leaders and indicators of this space.
With a global ecosystem as rich and diverse as this, if we wish to properly understand the trends,
it is almost more important to observe the behavior and the typology of its participants than to
simply look at market figures. The use value and the utility of tokens are not very well transcribed
through the speculative potential of assets, but rather by the frequency of their use and number
of users. Also of impact is the attachment that people have to their digital assets as well as other
such factors which come into play, making this more about psychology and the human
anthropology than anything else.
One of the first challenges in taking an overview of these human behaviors is paradoxically also
one of the key characteristics of the ecosystem itself: users are by definition anonymous, and the
same person can own several "Wallets“. The very nature of the NFT ecosystem itself makes it
almost impossible to map users from a social or geographic perspective.
In this section we aim to put into perspective our data analysis of NFT Community users through
insights we have gained from speaking to the community leads and founders of successful NFT
projects. The following pages summarize our teams research, carried out in order to better
understand the following questions:
- Who are the NFT users and what are their motivations?
- Why are they buying NFT?
- What does it mean to be part of an NFT community from a user and a community lead
perspective?
- Is there actually an NFT Community and if so, what does it look like?
This section of our report has only been made possible due to the valuable insights shared with
us by these NFT industry professionals. We would like to thank them for their time and the
wealth of information they agreed to share with us.
An active member of the Gaming Community for years, Rudem00se became an early
adopter of the CryptoKitties Community, discovering the ecosystem in early 2018
during the buzz surrounding the digital kittens on the Ethereum Blockchain who
famously managed to congest one of the main public Blockchains. At the last count
she owned nearly 10,000 NFT, including around 8,000 CryptoKitties and has grown
into leadership roles within the CryptoKitties, NBA Top Shot and $WHALE
Communities.
Jeffrey Zirlin aka Jihoz (Sky Mavis / Axie Infinity Growth Lead)
Jeffrey Zirlin, better known as Jihoz, is a famous figure in the NFT ecosystem.
Passionate about video games and biology, he started his NFT Journey as an Axie
Infinity player, then gradually got involved until he became Growth Lead of one of the
most popular projects in the Blockchain Gaming industry. Jihoz shared with us his
feedback as a player, but also as a Community Lead of Axie Infinity from its inception
until today.
Robbie was featured in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2019, is a 2020 Thiel Fellow, and the
co-founder of Immutable, makers of Gods Unchained and Immutable X.
Robbie kindly agreed to share valuable insights based on their experience in
developing Blockchain Video Games and facilitating large communities of players on
the Blockchain.
WHY DO PEOPLE PURCHASE NFT?
The results we obtained suggest that the majority of NFT owners who participated in the survey
might not view their assets from merely a financial perspective, but also tend to feel personal
attachment to the content in their portfolio.
Building upon the results from our survey, we also wanted to gain a more nuanced
understanding of the motivations of NFT Collectors. In a series of interviews, NFT collectors and
project owners shared with us their personal experiences and insights about participating in and
building NFT communities.
Could you illustrate why owning NFT matters to you?
Rudem00se told us of her experiences with CryptoKitties (virtual kittens) and the personal value
that some of these Kitties have to her, regardless of their financial value.
CryptoKitties founding feature is that it’s possible to breed two different Kitties, with
characteristics (Cattributes) to create a third, which will inherit certain characteristics from the
parents and, in some cases, new and unseen characteristics.
”
Cryptokitty
The experience Rudem00se had with CryptoKitties did not represent a simple asset on a
blockchain, but a true representation of itself, a unique and custom-built avatar through hard
work, totally echoes the emotional attachment seen in the previous Poll. The stake here is not
financial, it is more a question of identity.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE PART OF
A NFT COMMUNITY?
We wanted to look into the social dimension around NFT by asking Rudem00se what it means to
her to be part of a community of NFT users.
What emerged is that the richness of these digital experiences no longer lies solely in the user's
relationship with their assets, but in their interactions with other users. From this point of view
NFT have acted as catalysts for digitalized social interactions.
Despite the complex dynamics of 2020 which impacted people globally both economically and
socially, Through the communities of $Whale and CryptoKitties, Rudem00se had the opportunity
to build relationships with a large number of people from around the world.
“People enjoying the same thing, learning new things, being able to learn and grow together - it's
really huge, especially over the last year when most people have been quarantined and they
haven't been able to participate in the types of social interaction that they normally would. They’re
hanging out online more and more, using these experiences as the filler for their social
interaction that they would have otherwise had. That is an aspect of the NFT space that shouldn't
be underestimated because it's hugely motivational, forming those bonds.
”
Rudem00se – NFT Collector
Buying an NFT, whether it's a collectible, a work of art or a video game asset is also an
opportunity to create real relationships with other users who share in the same passions. Here
we begin to understand part of the value that resides in the NFT ecosystem and that remains
perfectly intangible and very difficult to quantify: the commitment and strength of communities.
The multiplication of communities with a common interest is absolutely one of the factors to
follow closely and this element will certainly participate in the mass adoption of NFT.
What better than a community of close-knit enthusiasts who have even more to offer than an
appetite for technology, but also to share common passions?
When thinking about NFT as being catalysts for social relations, we looked further into this
dynamic from the perspective of its community management and more specifically, through the
experience of the Axie Infinity community.
Here Jihoz places emphasis on the role that certain community members play in ensuring its
proper functioning and how these roles are all the more important, if not vital, once the
community grows.
What has changed since the beginning of the NFT ecosystem for you in
terms of community management?
“ Because you cannot interact with each member individually, you need to make sure that your
official communication, blog posts, things like that speak to all elements of the community and
use a language that resonates with them. As Axie has grown the ecosystem has become an
organism, like an ant colony, we need to have a very good nervous system for communication
between all actors. NFT communities are strongest when the hive mind is unified.
”
Jihoz – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
This image of the Ant Colony is very evocative and echoes the role that Rudem00se has taken
within the $Whale and CryptoKitties community, now having a role of Community Lead of
CryptoKitties and Moderator of the $Whale community with nearly 5,000 users on Discord.
It seems that being part of an NFT community in 2020 no longer simply means sharing tips and
tricks, but acting as a link between members, guaranteeing a life in a digital society.
When we asked the founder of Gods Unchained about how the NFT ecosystem and community
has evolved since its inception, the focus was on two key ideas:
- The importance of maintaining interpersonal relationships with community members.
- The issues (and risks) associated with hype around certain presales, which do not necessarily
have a positive long-term impact on the development of the ecosystem.
“
The community started off very small, and very close. I am close friends with many of the
traders and players in Gods Unchained and the ecosystem, which allows us to develop our
product to make sure it fits them.
Ultimately, the community has been remarkably friendly and non-competitive, which makes
sense: we’re a tiny group of crazy people saying asset ownership is broken right now, and it
should be different. It’s not about Gods Unchained vs. another game - it’s about us taking on
the entire game development industry, together. […]
The community has been quite circular - aggressive incremental sales structures kicked things
off with Etheremon, and then went out of fashion. Now we’re seeing the same thing become
popular again with sales like HashMasks. I’m not sure if that’s the long-term future of NFT (I
think that’s in powering massive games and applications with hundreds of millions of users),
but it’s certainly a bit of fun right now.
”
Robbie Ferguson – Immutable co-founder and President
ONE GLOBAL COMMUNITY OR
SEVERAL NFT TRIBES?
Whether it's $Whale community, Axie Infinity or CryptoKitties, it seems obvious that there are at
least several communities of interest within the NFT industry.
We did a cross-sectional study of overlaping between communities in some of the main NFT
projects to identify whether they are intermingling or congregate around certain areas of mutual
interest.
CryptoSpaceCommander
EthereumNameService
Unstoppable Domains
BraveFrontierHeroes
My Crypto Heroes
MegaCryptoPolis
BlockchainCuties
GodsUnchained
The Sandbox
Cryptovoxels
Decentraland
KnownOrigin
CryptoKitties
MakersPlace
CrypoPunks
Axie Infinity
0xUniverse
SuperRare
AsyncArt
CryptoKitties . 3% 2% 3% 3% 18% 12% 4% 16% 7% 13% 6% 11% 11% 23% 17% 14% 21% 25%
Axie Infinity . 5% 2% 5% 2% 12% 11% 10% 4% 3% 8% 4% 8% 12% 15% 11% 21% 12% 13%
0xUniverse . 2% 1% 1% 0% 9% 4% 2% 1% 1% 6% 1% 1% 3% 2% 3% 16% 4% 2%
Unstoppable Domains . 2% 1% 0% 0% 4% 2% 1% 2% 3% 2% 2% 4% 5% 5% 7% 2% 5% 6%
MegaCryptoPolis . 3% 1% 2% 2% 1% 6% 3% 2% 1% 7% 2% 2% 5% 5% 6% 16% 7% 6%
BraveFrontierHeroes . 1% 2% 1% 22% 1% 6% 6% 1% 1% 4% 1% 1% 4% 2% 2% 9% 2% 1%
…with THESE projects
Decentraland . 18% 3% 2% 2% 3% 14% 10% 4% 35% 7% 8% 15% 15% 17% 22% 14% 32% 34%
EthereumNameService . 13% 4% 2% 2% 8% 14% 12% 3% 58% 6% 12% 26% 18% 29% 36% 14% 46% 52%
BlockchainCuties . 2% 1% 1% 1% 0% 6% 3% 2% 1% 1% 1% 1% 2% 2% 3% 6% 2% 2%
Based on these figures, it does not yet appear that there is a “big NFT family” in which everyone
shares common interests for the industry as a whole. On the contrary, we see most communities
being very focused on their own segment.
During 2020 we saw the emergence of a new kind of community, like the $Whale community
initiated by WhaleShark, which saw the issuance of the $Whale Token and also the monthly
evaluation of their NFT Vault by NonFungible.com and above all, the creation of a community of
nearly 5,000 people from all walks of life, active almost daily on Discord.
Rudem00se, who joined the community from its inception before becoming a Moderator, shares
with us their experience of what a community of broad interests in the NFT ecosystem is like,
and what it means to be part of such a social group.
“ Joining the Whale community was huge. This community is not focused on collecting any one
specific project, obviously we're holding $Whale, but it's more focused on bringing all the
different communities together, so people from these communities could share interests and
learn more about the crypto space as a whole. This is huge.
”
Rudem00se – NFT Collector
The vision that Rudem00se shares with us here puts more emphasis on the exchange between
communities than on a financial dimension: this community sees itself as a hub centralizing the
different NFT communities through a common passion around the potential of these new crypto-
assets. If the trend described here grows, we should see further overlapping between NFT
communities in the coming years. The future may confirm this trend..
HOW LOYAL ARE NFT USERS?
For the time being NFT communities remain relatively compartmentalized, forming a multitude of
‘villages’ or social structures which have formed around specific centers of interest such as
gaming, card games, art and so on.
It appears that users' attachment to their center of interest or segment is very strong and if so,
we can also assume they interact with their projects on a regular basis. For us to look in more
detail into the loyalty users have with their projects we developed a specialized indicator called
"Retention Rate".
This exclusive NonFungible.com indicator gives a score of 0 to 5 to any NFT project, depending
on the recurrence of interactions of their users. Simply put, if users only visit a project once
every 6 months, the Retention Rate will be low, on the contrary, if all users log in daily to play the
game, the Retention Rate will be 5.
0,035
0,030
0,025
0,020
0,015
0,010
0,005
-
Global Art Collectibles Gaming Metaverse Sport Utility
Average
The growth of a project is based primarily on two key factors which are linked to its community:
building user loyalty (see Retention Rate) and growing it by recruiting new users. The question
that arises for Project Leaders & Growth Leads is how to continue this growth?
What strategy works for today to continue growing a community? Is the focus on other users of
the NFT space or rather to look outside and towards the crypto-sphere? Or more broadly,
towards traditional players?
“ The scope of the people that we can attract has broaden. At the beginning it was mostly early
NFT adopters, Ethereum adopters, now we’re starting to see first of all like mainstream crypto
people that have started to learn about NFT, people who might have been using big exchanges
like Coinbase or Binance, there are millions of people like that. […]
There are also people from the developing world, because of the pandemic they might not
have a job. The prospect of earning a few dollars an hour could be something that really
changes their lives and get them some much needed income.
That’s primarily where we see the growth of users coming from.
”
Jihoz – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
The focus of Community Leads is now on the population of users who have not yet integrated
the NFT ecosystem. While it takes more work to convert non-NFT people into crypto-gaming, the
potential for growth is infinitely greater outside of the small world of NFT.
But how do you convert your traditional gamers to blockchain gaming?
BRING TRADITIONAL GAMERS TO
NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS
We are specifically interested in the Blockchain Gaming segment as a catalyst for the adoption of
NFT because it has been proven in the past that NFT offer True Ownership to a whole host of
players not yet active in the ecosystem who dislike (or have already suffered) the tight hold
Gaming Studios have on their in-game assets.
To better understand the place that Gaming has in the industry, we asked Jihoz to share with us
his vision of what Blockchain Gaming is.
“ I think that gaming has the potential more than any of the other kind of segments of the NFT
ecosystem to really engage, everyday, normal people. There is a concrete benefit.
What we have seen with Axie is that we've started to really engage people that are owning
crypto for the first time, using their first decentralized application, acquiring Ethereum
specifically to play Axie, rather than playing Axie because they happened to have some
Ethereum.
”
Jihoz – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
The two key takeaways from this quote is the notion of daily engagement with the community and
its concrete benefit.
The people who come to play a Blockchain Game tomorrow will probably never have heard of
NFT technology, or maybe even Blockchain, but they will have been won over by something
much more universal:
The possibility of generating income (Play To Earn), associated with a fun, social
experience worthy of any video game outside the Blockchain.
This is why Gaming is one of the significant growth catalysts for the future development of the
industry and remains a major use case for NFT.
What do Gamers think of the added value NFT offer them compared to a traditional Gaming
system? What has convinced them to abandon some of the big historical licenses to get into a
new genre of games?
We asked this question to a Gamer who has many years of experience with a large number of
traditional gaming licenses, from FPS (First Personal Shooter) to MMORPG (Massively
Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).
What do you think makes the difference between NFT and video game
assets?
“ For Non-Fungible tokens, they're awesome, because if I acquire an asset it is mine, it's in my
account. There is no subscription that is required. It's something that cannot be taken from
me. Those are valuables because it's not dependent upon a third party for my assets to exist.
I recently sold a skin in CS:GO for $500, but it just lives in Steam, I cannot cash that out and
use it in other games, the money is kind of stuck in there.
”
Rudem00se – NFT Collector
The parallels with the Counter-Strike license emphasizes two concepts that appear to be key for
the player:
- True Ownership which is not time limited and does not depend on a paid relationship with the
game publisher (subscription, etc.)
- The owner's freedom to resell and enjoy the value of assets outside of the game.
The elements that seem to be important for a Blockchain Gamer are the characteristics that
register the assets full ownership to them, allowing the value contained in the assets to be
converted into "real world" value.
In order to explore this question further and identify the added value that should be highlighted
in order to convert a traditional Gamer into a Blockchain Gamer, we wanted to hear the opinion of
Axie Infinity Growth Lead on the subject.
Do NFT Project Managers share a united vision on the arguments for the use of Blockchain
Gaming?
“ You need to have something that’s fun, that’s beautiful and you need to have a compelling
pitch or tagline. Play To Earn is something we have seen to be compelling. If someone that
you know has been able to earn some money by playing a game and he tells you how to do it,
then you may try it out.
So, I think Play To Earn is going to be the narrative that gets people to try out blockchain
games. Skepticism around Play To Earn is similar to Skepticism around crypto […] it sounds
crazy that you can make money by playing a game, as it sounds crazy that there could be
money that only lives on the internet and doesn’t rely on banks or governments.
”
Jihoz – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
It looks like the most effective argument in the space is Play To Earn: being able to make a living
from playing a game. Jihoz's quote puts into perspective how hard it can be for people outside of
the space to believe.
Getting paid for playing a video game with money that is not regulated by a central body, State or
Bank, where buying, selling and earning items that have real financial value, is a key argument for
the use of Blockchain Gaming, but can have a “too good to be true” feel for newcomers who
require reassurance that it is not just some gigantic scam.
What are the challenges compared to traditional gaming communities?
Are they in any way different?
“ Yes, massively. Running a blockchain gaming community is much more akin to running a
public company.
You have to constantly communicate and listen to feedback from your community - much
more so than in a traditional game where you just flog off the sale and work on what you think
is best. It’s this constant tension of listening and building and helping to coordinate to build
the most amazing game possible.
”
Robbie Ferguson – Immutable co-founder and President
The vision shared here by Robbie Ferguson highlights the very strong codependence between
the game and its community. Community members are not merely customers, they are identified
stakeholders in the construction of the game, which should not be underestimated.
This is no longer a top-down relationship, Studio > Players, but a parallel relationship with direct
interaction between Players and the Studio.
HOW TO BUILD A LONG TERM,
HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE
COMMUNITY?
We wanted to end this section by sharing some tips and tricks from Project Managers on
community facilitation.
The world of NFT is evolving extremely fast and is already showing signs of maturity which were
not present merely three years ago. The whole industry has become structured, the community is
growing quickly, uses for NFT are diversifying, in short, the NFT space of 2021 has moved on in
leaps and bounds from its beginnings at the end of 2017.
What does this imply for Community Leads and are development and community building
strategies the same? Also how do the projects now meet the expectations of new users?
Do you think the strategy you have used during the early days of Axie
Infinity would still be efficient today?
“ I don’t think that it would be as effective today, there are more players, you have to make more
of a splash at the beginning to attract attention and put-up numbers that would make you
relevant against some of the other projects and catch the eye.
So, I won’t think it would be as relevant, but I also think that’s a strength of some of the early
projects, just like Bitcoin in 2009, 2010, the people there had a very long-term view and were
interested in the vision and a new kind of future, whereas now, projects have to check all the
boxes. […] and provide a lot of value right upfront. Some of the magic gets lost.
”
Jihoz – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
The Gods Unchained Team have kindly shared with us a few things about their Secret Sauce
which has allowed them to build one of the largest Blockchain Gaming communities in the world.
What are the tips & tricks you can share about building a community in the
blockchain gaming industry?
“ Focus on building long term value, and constantly communicate and build trust with your
audience. Of course - Gods Unchained has had bugs along the way - but the community
knows we’re in it for the long term (to be the biggest TCG in the world), not for a quick buck,
and how much we’re putting into it in terms of resources.
Of course, incentive alignment never hurts and we’re hoping to have some updates here soon!
”
Robbie Ferguson – Immutable co-founder and President
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10 2021
PREDICTIONS
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM NEXT
YEAR?
Following a globally very turbulent year, economically and even technologically, the landscape
within the NFT Ecosystem has changed significantly.
All of the research, analysis, meetings and interviews carried out by the team over this year have
allowed us to identify underlying trends that should potentially impact the World of NFT during
2021.
Whether it is technological or economic factors that impact the behavior of Communities, each of
the 10 predictions that follow are likely to profoundly and lastingly change the Non-Fungible
Token industry.
No doubt many speculative initiatives testing NFT boundaries will fail, but they will have
brought with them new perspectives and ideas in regards to what an NFT can be, worth
and do. 2020 has been a relatively quiet year in terms of new experimental use cases, but
signals from the last quarter suggest that 2021 will be rich in promising innovations.
Pay to win is dead. Long live play to earn!
The traditional economic gaming model of Pay to Win does not appear to be the most
suitable system for Blockchain Gaming. In the world of Blockchain, the Play to Earn model
is favored, offering players in-game rewards and assets with high monetary value based on
their participation in the game.
This Play to Earn model will continue to develop, offering innovative and attractive
economic dynamics for both players and game developers.
Layer-2 is inevitable
Almost all the projects will use Layer-2 solutions (Side-chains mostly) to smooth the
Global user experience and will use on-chain transactions only for long term recording
purposes for asset minting, trades and so on.
“
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
I think many more established artists will enter the space after seeing the successes artists
have had here. I think that will lead to many of their fans coming along too and a huge
expansion of the space. I just hope this old man can hang on for the ride. Personally, I
hope that I can continue to create art for what I think is one of the most wonderful and
receptive communities I have ever seen.
Prospective
CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE
To bring the final touch to this report, we would like to pore over a perspective John Egan,
PROFESSIONAL
CEO of L'Atelier BNP Paribas, shared with us during EDITION
our interview.
Far from a 2021 prediction, this is an enlightened view of some attention-grabbing future
nonfungible.com/nft-report-2020-pro
prospects. Of course, not forgetting that we, the NFT Ecosystem Players, Developers,
Investors, Analysts, and Creators are all part of the building of our Non-Fungible Token future.
“ Mixed and Augmented Reality will become more and more integrated, with new realms of
virtual reality which are layered over the real-world infrastructure that surrounds us.
These new virtual realms are going to be populated by virtual assets, in 10 to 15 years time
when you look around your physical environment, depending on your profiles data
subscription and on how you connect to your network and people, you will see a certain
virtual environment. You might see dragons in the sky and those dragons are going to be
virtual assets owned by somebody, maybe it's part of a life-gaming event. The future is a
”
space in-between physical and virtual reality.
The 2020 edition of the Yearly Report, fresh out the oven!
The dynamics during 2020 suggest that 2021 is poised to be an eventful year, the massive
acceleration during the second half of 2020, driven by the Crypto Bull Run, is just the harbinger
of a new Bull Market in the NFT industry. This will not simply be driven by one or two use cases
or just one flagship project, but through a multitude of mature use cases and structured projects,
built on the foundations laid by previous NFT initiatives from the preceding years.
The Ecosystem is overflowing with internal and external signals that indicate that its development
is about to accelerate dramatically.
Several major realizations about the NFT Ecosystem have enabled it to move on to the next level:
- NFT are no more than a vehicle, capable of deploying a vast array of new use cases and
possibilities.
- We are only at the very dawn of starting to explore how NFT can be utilized by many
industries.
The value generated by the industry does not lie in the short-term financial value of assets, but
more in complex socio-economic constructs. These community sentiments expand into areas
such as the owner's emotional attachment to certain assets, community engagement and the
attitudes toward a potential use case which relates to its perceived relevance in the space, both at
the time and in the future.
To all the Project managers, Developers, Media Reps, VCs, Whales, and Gamers. Don't forget that
you are also the pioneers of what is currently growing and about to become one of main blocks
of the future.
Step by step, project by project, use case by use case, together, we are building the future and
not only a digital one.
Global pandemic x Metaverses. The perfect fit for NFT mass adoption?
If we are to believe the concepts developed in a film like Ready Player One, the world will turn
into a digital and virtual world following a global catastrophe (war, economic crisis..) This
dystopian view, although somewhat pessimistic, is not entirely unrealistic.
The likelihood we will see a continued time of growth and adoption for the Non-Fungible tokens
industry seems strong under these circumstances.
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced populations into a more sedentary lifestyle due to generalized
lockdowns across the world. These populations, of all ages and of all origins, have had to find
alternatives for social interaction whose confinement had deprived them.
For the time being, these alternatives often go through channels such as videoconferencing or
chat.
But in a hypothetical (very probable) future in which the home office becomes widespread and
further confinements remain a threat, populations lacking social interaction will necessarily turn to
these spaces offering richer, more intense and diversified social interactions.
Jihoz, Growth Lead at Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity), develops this idea in the form of what he calls
opt-in nations:
“
Many Axie players identify as a citizen of the Axie universe, in some cases perhaps more-so
than being an American or Pinoy (Phillipino). It's become an important identity that can
replace attachment to the Nation state. I believe in opt-in Nation where people choose what
ecosystems they contribute to and identity with.
For so long, we humans have been forced to associate with people based off physical
proximity, which is not optimal.
”
Jeffrey Zirlin (Jihoz) – Axie Infinity Growth Lead
THANK YOU
WE’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU IF YOU HAVE ANY
QUESTION OR FEEDBACK ABOUT THE REPORT
NonFungible.com is the world's leading platform in NFT data and market
analysis.
Each year, the NonFungible.com market research team publishes an annual
report covering different industry dimensions of this emerging class of digital
assets: Non-fungible tokens.
This 2020 edition, published with the precious help of L'Atelier BNP Paribas,
provides the most comprehensive overview to date of the NFT industry. It
analyzes macro market trends as well as those at the asset level, but also all the
qualitative indicators linked to the individuals, passions, and creative powers
which shape this ecosystem day after day.
This report is your invitation to discover the asset class that has the potential to
massively impact society over the next decade.