Can 2022 be the year of Cardano NFTs?

NFTs have been the buzzword of the crypto town over the last couple of weeks, thanks to the launch of collections like Moonbirds and BAYC’s Otherdeed. The traction garnered by these projects within such short periods of time has been remarkable, but their current floor price—when combined with the mounting gas fee—doesn’t make them an affordable option to all.

Well, during the initial days, most collections used to opt to launch only Ethereum, but now, with other options available, artists are willingly experimenting with other blockchains. Apart from the likes of Polygon, Avalanche, and Fantom, Cardano has emerged as a novel competitor. As a result, people from the community believe that Cardano NFTs are going to own this year.

The Cardano marketplace: A hit or a miss?

Cardano’s Alonzo hardfork that took place last year, enabled the smart contract functionality on the platform. Essentially, post the upgrade, Cardano became a platform on which developers could start building decentralized applications. Additionally, the blockchain became NFT compatible too at the same time.

The mean fee per transaction carried out on Cardano peaked at $0.68 during the launch period last year but has gradually subsided since then. At press time, the same was seen oscillating in the $0.3-$0.4 bracket.

Source: Messari

Despite the low fee, Cardano was ranked 9th on Messari’s most active chains list. In fact, per data from cardanoscan.io, the number of transactions has more or less remained flat over the past fortnight.

For comparison, the transaction on Ethereum had noted a substantial incline in the same two-week period, despite the dip observed over the past day.

To make things worse, the number of collections in Cardano’s NFT marketplace remains to be limited and at press time, many of them had 0 offers on the table.

In fact, even on the ‘Blockchains by NFT Sales Volume’ list, Cardano was not a part of the top 20. This, along with the other factors outlined above, pretty much point out that Cardano needs more time to establish itself in the NFT space. The initial 4-months have evidently been lackluster, and perhaps things won’t change just like that, out of the blue, for Cardano in the remaining 8-months.