NFT Transfer Activity on Ethereum Exceeds That of Stablecoins, ERC-20s

NFTs have made up a relatively large portion of the Ethereum ecosystem in terms of token transfers since last summer, according to data released from Coin Metrics today. Moreover, the number of non-fungible token transfers still hovers near all-time highs. 

Despite Downtrends, NFTs Remain Popular

While markets may have suffered losses in recent weeks, NFT activity remains as popular as ever.

According to Coin Metrics’ State of the Network Issue today, non-fungible tokens—usually based on Ethereum’s ERC-721 token standard—have been beating out both stablecoins and major ERC-20 tokens in terms of total token transfers within the Ethereum ecosystem since July of the so-called NFT Summer of 2021. 

NFT transfers currently sit near all-time highs. Coin Metrics’ data shows ERC-721 transfers typically exceeding 300,000 on most days recently. 

NFT adoption has been a dominant theme of the digital assets space since last summer, perhaps bringing more users to the space than other crypto use-cases. OpenSea, one of the world’s most popular NFT marketplaces, reached a $13.3 billion valuation last month following its breakout year in 2021, in which its transaction volume ($14 billion) multiplied 646 times over 2020’s. Coinbase’s NFT marketplace (which has yet to launch) also garnered over 1.5 million signups for its waitlist within two days its announcement. 

In addition to retail users, many major companies have gotten involved as well, especially following Facebook’s rebrand to Meta and the ensuing Metaverse hype. For example, last month YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki  published potential NFT plans for the video streaming giant, and McDonald’s filed ten new trademarks earlier this month related to virtual goods. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.