Research Summary
The report focuses on the NFT marketplace sector, highlighting the role of NFT marketplaces as platforms for buying, selling, and creating non-fungible tokens. It discusses the evolution of these marketplaces, their specialization in different types of NFTs, and the emergence of new verticals like NFT lending and derivatives trading. The report also presents an analysis of the revenues and trading volumes of top NFT marketplaces over the past 90 days, and discusses the impact of royalties on creator earnings.
Actionable Insights
- Specialization of NFT marketplaces: Newer NFT marketplaces are specializing in different types of NFTs, such as music NFTs or in-game assets. This trend is expected to continue as more unique assets are tokenized and brought on-chain.
- Financialization of NFTs: New verticals like NFT lending and derivatives trading are emerging, which allow for the liquidity of NFTs to be unlocked. This could lead to increased speculation on NFTs.
- Stability of revenues: Revenues across NFT marketplaces have been mostly stable over the past 90 days, despite a general downtrend in NFT prices. This suggests that the number of NFTs being traded has increased.
- Importance of customer segmentation: Different NFT marketplaces are targeting different customer segments. Understanding these specializations can help investors make directional bets on different NFT sub-categories.
- Impact of royalties on creator earnings: Royalties to creators have been trending down since early 2023. This is due to marketplaces reducing fees by no longer applying the royalties set by NFT creators. However, this has driven innovation on creator monetization.
