The NFT community had a debate last month. Grant or not grant royalties? Commercial licensing rights or creative rights?
But when it comes to the numbers, the Bear market continues. Monthly NFT market volume decreases.
Meanwhile, in the gaming sector, an anti-bot company has claimed web3 games are rife with bots. If accurate, the number of bots could be a blow to the blockchain game, which has received a spike in investment interest this year.
$100 million in NFTs were stolen last year
NFTs worth over $100 million was stolen between July 2021 and July 2022, including a total of 167 Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs worth over $43.6 million. After Bored Apes, the most targeted collections were Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Azuki.
Considering money laundering using NFTs, over $8 million in illicit funds have been laundered through NFT-based platforms since 2017, accounting for 0.02% of trading activity.
OpenSea trading debate ‘down 99%’
An Aug. 29 article in Fortune magazine described OpenSea transactions as “down 99%,” noting that the previous Sunday, the market recorded just $9.34 million in NFT transactions, down from a record $2.7 billion on May 1.
However, OpenSea’s CFO, Brian Roberts, pushed back against the claims on Twitter, accusing Fortune of looking at the data on a single day in May, which was six times higher than the March-June average. The spike could be driven by the Otherdeed sale on April 30.
The peak the article uses may be due to the Otherdeed sale on April 30. But that said, trading volumes for NFT markets are still down, albeit less than the seismic drop from May to June. OpenSea’s monthly volume grew from $528.64 million in July to $485.32 million in August.
Across the top ten markets, OpenSea’s trading volume fell from $675.43 million to $592.34 million.
The rise of the copyright-free market?
Decentralized NFT marketplace Sudoswap caused controversy in mid-August with the automated marketplace Maker (AMM) allowing people to buy and sell automatically without having to wait for interested buyers or sellers. However, what people are interested in is that it ignores the copyright that belongs to the creator.
But according to Dune Sudoswap, since Sudoswap launched AMM in July, it has seen an increase in volume.
Several unlicensed markets have also emerged in previous months, including Solanart and Yawww. X2Y2 also recently announced buyers will be able to choose how much royalties they want to offer for projects.
The result is an ongoing debate about the adoption and enforcement of copyright in the NFT space.
GameFi token market capital has declined
According to The Block Research, the Market Capitalization of the top 50 GameFi tokens fell by more than 60% from January to August 2022. That’s similar to the drop in market capitalization of the top 50 DeFi tokens.
As of August 2022, the market has recorded a total of 1,575 GameFi projects – 40% of these are BNB Chain based. Just over a quarter are Ethereum-based and 15% are polygon-based. But they are even better than game-specific blockchains. The likes of Immutable X, Gala Games, WAX, Enjin, and Wemix gained only 1% to 6% market share.
But players can only play about a third of all GameFi projects at the moment. According to The Block Research, this is in line with expectations of a 3- to 5-year long game development cycle as most GameFi projects only receive funding between 2021 and 2022.
Alien Worlds is the most played game
Alien Worlds is currently the most popular blockchain-based game according to active addresses. Axie Infinity, Solitaire Blitz, Splinterlands and Upland rounded out the top 5.
But are they bots?
Bot protection software company Jigger released an interesting indicator last week. It claims that 40% of the “players” in web3 games are bots. The study looked at more than 60 web3 games and found evidence of about 200,000 bots.
Half of gamers are interested in the metaverse
Google’s 2022 PC&console Insights report reveals that 47% of PC and console players are interested in interacting with the metaverse in the future. Respondents were also more interested in VR and AR than NFT-based games.
