NFT: Polygon beats Ethereum on OpenSea

It’s all true: Polygon, through the leading global marketplace OpenSea, sold more individual NFTs than Ethereum for the second consecutive month, according to public blockchain data curated through a Dune dashboard. However, it appears that these are mostly low-cost assets.

OpenSea and record NFT sales on Polygon: all the details

In January, OpenSea handled more than 1.5 million NFT sales on Polygon, a sidechain of Ethereum, while, Ethereum’s mainnet recorded just over 1.1 million sales via the same marketplace.

This is consistent with the trend in December, when 1.3 million NFTs were sold on Polygon via OpenSea compared to just under 1 million NFTs on Ethereum.

Ethereum has long been considered the leading blockchain for NFTs and hosts the majority of high-value projects, despite its sometimes high gas fees.

However, as Polygon continues to strike big brand deals with big names such as Meta, Starbucks, and Reddit, and as more gaming projects launch on the scaling network, an increasing number of resources are being traded on the sidechain.

Even though Ethereum’s merge, finalized in September, has reduced the energy consumption of the core network by 99.998%, it has not solved the problem of network gas fees, which can sometimes exceed the base price of the asset itself. In fact, a gas fee is a cost that the Ethereum network charges users to complete a transaction.

In contrast, Polygon and tier-1 rivals of Ethereum such as Solana and Avalanche offer exponentially lower fees for user transactions and, in turn, have become increasingly known for hosting more affordable NFT collections.

At any rate, according to OpenSea, the best Polygon NFT collection in January was the controversial Donald Trump digital trading card, which saw nearly 5,500 sales across all Polygon marketplaces, with a trading volume of 1,743 ETH (nearly $2.8 million).

However, when it comes to the Polygon collections with the highest number of sales across all markets besides OpenSea, one cannot fail to mention Planet IX, which has recorded about 5 million sales in the past 30 days, while Sunflower Land has recorded 1 million sales, Mocaverse 42,000 sales, and Lympo Athletes has accumulated about 37,000 sales in the past month.

Polygon and Ethereum: comparison of NFT sales numbers on OpenSea

It is worth noting that most of Polygon’s NFT sales involve low-cost assets for use in metaverse worlds or Web3 games.

In some cases, as with Sunflower Land and Planet IX, NFT assets are sold for a few hundredths of ETH, significantly reducing the average selling price for Polygon-based NFTs at that time.

While Polygon has surpassed Ethereum in the total number of sales, Ethereum has still seen substantially more value traded overall. Indeed, on OpenSea, Ethereum recorded a total trading volume of about $446 million in January, while Polygon NFT sales amounted to only $15.4 million.

So, with about 1.5 million NFT sales on Polygon, the average selling price is about $10. Notably, this is not the first time that the total number of monthly sales of Polygon NFT has surpassed Ethereum.

Dune shows a similar peak in late 2021 and early 2022, only to see the number of Polygon sales decline dramatically until the recent rebound.

More expensive and desirable NFTs, such as the Bored Ape Yacht Club, still live on Ethereum, which is generating significantly more trading volume than Polygon.

However, the sidechain network sees traction as a destination for inexpensive gaming NFTs and collectibles, which could help wider adoption of NFTs by reaching a much larger audience.

Donald Trump’s NFT collection: sales skyrocket again?

As anticipated, the best Polygon NFT collection in January was Donald Trump’s digital collectible card, albeit one that has a controversial history behind it. In fact, Donald Trump’s NFT collection condensed much of the wild volatility of the NFT space in its first five weeks of existence.

Specifically, it sold out immediately and then saw rising prices and sales before quickly collapsing. Now, it appears that sales are suddenly skyrocketing again.

Total daily sales volume for the official Trump Digital Trading Cards collection has increased by nearly 800% in the past few weeks, from about $34,000 on Tuesday to over $306,000.

The number of NFTs traded has increased on a daily basis, but so has the average selling price. CryptoSlam recorded 115 total transactions at an average selling price of $296 ETH per NFT. Then, the tally rose to 704 NFTs traded at an average of $435 each.

Even though there is no concrete reason for the sudden increase in activity, some experts on Crypto Twitter believe that the increase in demand is related to a report that the former US president is planning a return to major social media networks.