NFTs still in ‘great demand’ as unique traders rise 18% in Oct: DappRadar

October may have seen a decline in nonfungible token (NFT) trading volume and sales, but analytics firm DappRadar says an 18% growth in monthly unique NFT traders shows the market is still in “great demand.”

According to a Nov. 3 report from DappRadar, the number of monthly unique NFT traders in October reached 1.11 million, increasing 18% from September, of approximately 950,000. 

This is despite trading volumes falling 30% to $662 million in October, the lowest registered in 2022, while the sales count decreased by 30% to 6.13 million, the firm said, adding:

“The rise in the unique traders’ count indicates that new people are entering the NFT market, and it is still in great demand.”

The month was a busy one for the NFT community.

At least two more NFT marketplaces shift to an optional royalty model, including Solana-based Magic Eden and Ethereum-based LooksRare.

The report also highlighted that Yuga Labs has continued to dominate the NFT market, with seven of the top ten sales for the month coming from CryptoPunk and Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Of these sales, CryptoPunk#924 was the most valuable, selling for a whopping 475 Ether (ETH) on Oct. 27, which is valued at $731,435 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s NFT trading volume continued to decline for the second straight quarter, falling 21% over the last month to $324 million, which represents the lowest volume registered by DappRadar since June 2021.

In brighter news, Polygon’s NFT trading volume has spiked 770% over the last month, driven by the success of the Reddit NFT collections as the main driver behind the surge, according to DappRadar.

Since their launch in July, more than 2.9 million Reddit avatars have been minted, which have found their way into more than 2.8 million wallets, with Dune analytics data suggesting October finished with the collection having a sales volume of $10.1 million.

The trading volume seems likely to continue increasing for the layer-2 solution over the next month, with Meta announcing on Nov. 2 that Polygon would be its initial partner for its upcoming NFT tools.

Related: NFTs bridge music communities across genres and blockchain ecosystems

The report also mentioned that Dogecoin (DOGE) had been the best-performing token of the month, closing the month 50% higher than when it began and citing Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover and the announcement of Dogechain’s future roadmap as the drivers.

It also highlighted an increase in the average number of unique active wallets, up 6.84% from the previous month. DappRadar pointed to staking provider Lido being incorporated within Arbitrum and Optimism as well as a partnership between the Near Foundation and Google Cloud as the drivers for this increase.