The last two years have been rough for the NFT market, and 2024 doesn’t look much better. With falling sales and investors losing appetite for digital artwork, market projections became less optimistic, showing only a modest 2,6% annual growth by 2028, twenty times less than this year.
According to data presented by AltIndex.com, the total number of active wallets in the NFT space dropped to 197 000 in Q1, the lowest level since early 2021.
According to NonFungible data, in Q4 2021, when the popularity of non-fungible tokens skyrocketed, NFT marketplaces counted over 1,9-million active wallets, or five times more than the quarter before.
However, after reaching this peak, the total number of wallets trading with NFTs started falling and has been doing so ever since. By the end of 2022, the number of wallets involved in NFT trading practically halved to roughly 1-million.
Last year brought the biggest decline, with active NFT traders plunging by 78% to only 213 000 in Q4.
Statistics show the negative trend continued in 2024, with the number of active wallets falling by a further 7% to only 197 000 in Q1. This means the total active user count in the NFT space has been continually falling for 10 straight quarters.
This means the NFT market has lost 1,75-million users – or 90% of the figure seen at the market peak in 2021. And the negative trend continued in April and May, with about 28 000 active wallets counted on 29 May, around 13 000 of them being unique buyers – 47% less than on the same date last year.
The number of unique sellers plunged by almost 40% in this period, falling from 25 900 to 15 800