LooksRare amps NFT volumes, but loses to OpenSea in trader and sales counts; gaming maintains blockchain usage leadership; industry demonstrates stability and growing maturity
KAUNAS, LITHUANIA / ACCESSWIRE / February 3, 2022 / Leading decentralized applications store DappRadar today issued its January 2022 Dapp Industry Report, noting relative stability for the blockchain space despite a bearish crypto market. NFTs emerged, once again, as a record-breaking segment, marking $16 billion in trades this month. Similarly, blockchain games retained their lead in terms of usage, accounting for over half of unique active wallets interacting with dapps.
Newcomer LooksRare was a key driver for the NFT space, making up $10.7 billion of the total NFT trading volume for January - almost double that of other NFT marketplaces together, with OpenSea capturing $4.7 billion or almost 90% of the remaining volume. Trading patterns on LooksRare, however, indicate that sales volumes are inorganically inflated due to the platform incentivizing trades via its LOOKS token reward program. Only 35,000 traders transacted on LooksRare versus over half a million on OpenSea, with the sales count respectively at 33,750 versus 4.7 million.
Regardless, the NFT segment maintains its momentum from 2021, when it saw over $25 billion in sales or 18,400% growth against the previous four years combined. That the USD floor market cap for the top 100 NFT collections - estimated at $14.8 billion - decreased by only 15% from November despite the 50% drop in Ethereum's price indicates stability for this category in the context of a two-month long crypto slump.
"The past couple of months have been rather bleak for anyone holding crypto, but the blockchain industry's performance is a bright light at the end of the tunnel. The numbers we're seeing this month demonstrate stability and growing maturity for the space, which will eventually counteract the negative market sentiment," commented Modesta Masoit, Head of Finance and Research at DappRadar.
As in the last quarter of 2021, blockchain gaming kept its usage leadership, with 52% of the nearly 2.5 million unique active wallets connecting to dapps in January interacting with games. The primary reason for games maintaining their player bases is the high retention achieved by top game dapps - one of the most vital indicators for games. Of the top five most played games - Alien Worlds, Splinterlands, Farmers World, Axie Infinity, and Upland - all, with the exception of Alien Worlds, marked growth in unique active wallet numbers. The blockchain space as a whole saw only a 2% decrease in use against December despite a bearish crypto market, with games playing a support role.
Considering the crypto crash and that 65% of the segment's value is locked in Ethereum, DeFi was unsurprisingly the category to suffer the most in January. It lost 23% of its value as compared to December, currently holding $178 billion in TVL. Still, this drop in TVL is lower than the 50% reduction in the price of the underlying cryptocurrencies, demonstrating stability and maturity for the category, notably thanks to the increasing adoption of a multichain paradigm.
The January 2022 Dapp Industry Report is the latest edition of DappRadar's regular monthly industry report -- the company's flagship report series covering the performance of the blockchain industry. Additional report series include the monthly Blockchain Gaming Report, Dapp User Behavior and Whale Analysis reports, as well as the bi-monthly New Dapps Report.
The full January 2022 Dapp Industry Report is currently available to RADAR token holders and upon request; it will be made available to the wider public on February 4, 2022 here.
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SOURCE: DappRadar