NFTs Crater as Farmers Abandon OpenSea

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are continuing their multi-year downtrend, with prices and volumes plummeting after OpenSea’s first XP crate distribution.

Legacy NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins are down more than 50% since the summer, when the market rallied following the start of OpenSea’s chest farming system. However, following the first chest distribution, OpenSea NFT volumes are now down 48% over the last week, and Blur’s are down 60%.

Falling volumes are being reflected in asset prices. Bored Ape Yacht Club is down 26% over the last month to 6.55 ETH, or $24,000, its lowest price since 2021. Meanwhile, Pudgy Penguins are down 33% over the last month to 6.65 ETH, and are down 80% from their all-time high in December, which was catalyzed by the PENGU token launch.

Azuki, another legacy NFT collection whose floor price reached over 35 ETH at its peak, has retraced its entire lifecycle and is now trading at 1.08 ETH, after minting for 1 ETH per NFT in 2022. The collection even fell below 1 ETH recently amid a mass liquidation of Blur loans.

New NFT collections such as Hyperliquid’s Hypurrs haven’t been spared either, and are changing hands at 950 HYPE, or $41,000, after trading at $57,000 just two days ago, and $80,000 on OTC markets before they launched.

Post Farming Drop Off

OpenSea concluded its first chest farming campaign on October 17, where users were farming XP in order to earn chests, which were thought to contain valuable NFTs and points that could make their future $SEA allocations quantifiable.

However, most farmers received pennies on the dollar for their fees paid, a new allocation of OpenSea treasures – which are to be “meaningfully considered” at TGE – and anyone who won an NFT worth more than $10,000 was surprised by a KYC form to claim their prize.

Upon the conclusion of the first chest farming season, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer took to X to share statistics on OpenSea’s new focus on token trading.

“OpenSea crossed $2.6B in trading volume this month, with over 90% from token trading. This is just the beginning of our transformation, from “NFT marketplace” to “trade everything,” said Finzer.

However, OpenSea DEX aggregator volumes have plummeted since the first chest distribution. The platform generated an all-time high of $462 million in volume on Oct. 15 but has processed only between $3 million and $8 million every day since.