Sales in the worldwide NFT market experience a 22% decline, while Trump NFTs persistently surge.

In the third week of January, the global NFT market experienced a decline in trading volumes, continuing the downward trend. According to CryptoSlam.io, a leading on-chain data aggregator, the trading sales volume in the NFT sector fell to $223 million in the past week, representing a significant drop of 22.5% compared to the previous week.

However, despite the decrease in trading volume, there has been an increase in the number of active participants in the NFT market. Recent data reveals that over 734,000 collectors engaged in NFT purchases across various platforms in the last week, indicating a growing interest in non-fungible tokens despite the overall decline in trading volume. This surge represents a 34% increase in active participants.

It is worth noting that wash trading, a form of market manipulation, has been particularly high in Solana and Avalanche collections. Wash trading involves an investor simultaneously selling and buying the same NFT to create misleading activity in the marketplace. The high levels of wash trading on Solana and Avalanche suggest that a significant portion of their NFT transactions may be artificial, potentially inflating market activity and distorting genuine economic indicators.

In terms of sales performance, Bitcoin Ordinals collections saw the biggest decline in January, with sales dropping by nearly 35%. Ethereum and Solana-based NFTs also experienced significant declines. However, Polygon-based non-fungible tokens saw a massive 70% increase in sales this month. The most popular collection on Polygon, Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2, saw a notable 25% increase in floor price, possibly due to the hype surrounding the current election season in the U.S. and Trump’s campaign.

On the other hand, popular Ethereum-based collections like CryptoPunks and BAYC saw a notable decline in the past few weeks, with their floor prices down by nearly 8% in the last two weeks.

While the NFT market had recovered significantly from its prolonged downtrend in Q4 2023, it is now going through another bearish phase. This could be an indication of user interest shifting towards less popular networks, such as Polygon and Avalanche-based collections, both of which have seen remarkable growth this month. It seems that the NFT business is shifting and diversifying, rather than strictly shrinking.