Cardano NFTs: Sales Volume Shines but TVL Remains a Concern

Cardano NFTs: Despite the “ghost protocol” narratives, Cardano continues to see new heights. Its NFT market is growing rapidly, whereas TVL remains subdued.

Cardano’s NFT space is rapidly growing despite the overall non-fungible token (NFT) downturn in 2021 and even 2022.

In fact, Cardano’s NFT trading volume surge made it the third-largest NFT protocol. They sit right behind the two giants: Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

Can the gains be sustained here, or will bears capitalize on it?

NFT Market: The Darkest Shade of Gray

The trading volumes for “digital art and collectibles recorded on blockchain” or NFTs saw a massive fall.  It slid (by) 97% from a record high in Jan. this year, recording just $466 million in Sept.

For reference, the NFT trading volume registered $17 billion at the start of 2022, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Source: Dune Analytics

As per a Bloomberg report, the fading NFT mania is part of a wider, $2 trillion wipeout in the crypto sector as rapidly tightening monetary policy starves speculative assets of investment flows.

OpenSea, the largest NFT trading platform by volume, saw its sales drop 75% compared to just two months prior. This is despite the fact that the number of traders hasn’t really fallen much even though the number of trades has collapsed. 

Having said that, there was some relief for NFT enthusiasts. As BeInCrypto reported, Redditt NFTs generated over $2 million in sales volume. The spike represented a 1,000% increase in sales volume.

Cardano NFTs: My Turn to Shine

Cardano is touted to be one of the most-developed ecosystems in the crypto market. Despite FUD, the protocol continues to create headlines during the crypto bear run.

Cardano is the third-largest non-fungible token (NFT) protocol by trading volume, according to a report by blockchain and decentralized apps (dApps) analytics firm DappRadar.

“Cardano is currently one of the top three blockchains by NFT trading volume,” the report added.

In the past 30 days, the network’s NFT volume reached $191 million, placing Cardano as the third-largest NFT protocol behind Ethereum and Solana.

One can clearly see the spike around the Oct. 22-23 period from the NFT marketplace tracker OpenCNFT.

Source: Opencnft.io

The Ape Society, Cardano’s biggest NFT project in terms of collection share by 24-hour volume, reached the 10,000 ADA floor price.

The said rise did indeed inject much-needed relief. Especially after the NFT volume in Cardano marketplaces had been pretty low in the months between June and the start of Oct.

Cardano Green Pastures

Surprisingly or not, the platform faced backlash in the past. One issue that stood out was the accusation of Cardano being a “Ghost protocol.” This was mainly due to its blockchain worth billions, and yet with limited utility.

However, as Cardano ushers in a new age, ecosystem development to network transactions see bright spots.

Cardano’s network transactions reached 82,880, the greatest number since May. With these numbers, the blockchain network registered a month-to-month increase of 75%.

Source: dappradar

In fact, the Cardano (ADA) network has grown to hit 97,959 transactions on Oct. 19, a figure that represents a rise of roughly 75% month-on-month.

Work Hard, Play Hard

Needless to say, the increase in trading volume is linked to the Vasil upgrade, which went live on Sept. 22 despite some delays. The upgrade aimed at increasing the network’s capacity while reducing transaction time.

In addition to this, Cardano’s Layer 2 solution, Hydra, witnessed a new update. The respective team highlighted the same on the social media platform that read as:

New release for Hydra: 0.8.0!🐉https://t.co/2U1P1qTaOT

Took a bit longer than last time but it's packed with features:
– Persistence of Head state
– Improved contestation deadline reporting
– Fixed several bugs in the hydra-node
– Improved UX of the hydra-tui
– Static binaries

— Sebastian Nagel (@ch1bo_) October 27, 2022

Compiling both these datasets, Cardano’s development activity grew tremendously over the past week. Meanwhile, the number of daily active addresses increased steadily, at present it stands at around 67,000.

Source: Santiment

So again, speculations around its “Ghost” nature may not hold true. Charles Hoskinson, the Cardano founder wasted no time to acknowledge such narratives. Here’s one for reference:

https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1584901392665

Find the Missing Piece

There are two aspects here: ADA price and its TVL status check. Both of which depict a rather grim scenario.

Talking about the former, the native crypto ADA witnessed a fresh correction of 3% on CoinMarketCap. At press time, ADA remained stagnant around the $0.40 mark despite aforementioned developments/upgrades.

Here’s the price performance in 2022: A bleeding picture to say the least.

Source: CoinMarketCap

Meanwhile, Cardano total value locked (TVL), a common measure of the chain’s size remained unaffected, it even decreased. Cardano TVL has decreased by approximately 20% in the previous thirty days to $70 million.

Still minimal compared to rivals Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).

Things to Consider for Cardano NFTs

Overall, the Cardano NFT environment has been thriving recently, but the same can’t be said about the NFT market in general.

Cardano’s TVL cast some doubts over the same. This may be partially attributable to investors’ overall negative perception of DeFi. 

Indeed, it is time to pull up the socks.

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