NFT trading volume exceeds $1.2 billion, will Polygon become another "NFT sinking market"?
When it comes to NFT, everyone's attention is undoubtedly focused on ETH, followed by Solana. Bitcoin NFT, which just emerged this year, also has a high level of discussion. Even Layer 2 solutions like Arbitrum have been highly anticipated by NFT players due to the popularity of Beacon and Magic ecosystems.
In comparison, the discussion around Polygon's NFT market is much lower, appearing to be relatively unknown. Yesterday, the NFT series yts, under DeGods, announced its migration from Polygon to the ETH mainnet, and will return the $3 million funding support given by Polygon. This seems to indicate the lackluster state of the Polygon NFT market.
In fact, the historical trading volume of the Polygon NFT market ranks fifth among all blockchain networks. If we exclude "Axie Game Chain" like Ronin and "NFT Special Chain" like Flow, Polygon is second only to ETH and Solana.
In the past 30 days, the total trading volume of the Polygon NFT market ranks third, with a small gap compared to Solana's total trading volume. Considering that the total trading volume of Bitcoin NFT includes a lot of BRC-20 Token trading volume, Polygon can be said to be at the level of "steady 3, competing for 2".
Polygon NFT market, will it replicate the glory of the Solana NFT market back then? What are some projects worth paying attention to in the current Polygon NFT market?
Another "NFT sinking market" after Solana?
The first truly "going viral" moment in the Solana NFT market was the rapid rise of Okay Bears in late April 2022. Due to Okay Bears attracting a lot of market attention, projects like Degods and Solana Monkey Business also gained attention, forming a "blue-chip team" in the Solana NFT market.
At that time, the ETH NFT market and even the entire crypto market were in a downturn, but the Solana NFT market was rising against the trend. Most importantly, the "going viral" phenomenon brought attention to Solana NFT, which made people believe that they could make money by finding potential new "blue-chips" or seizing opportunities for short-term liquidity improvement. With low transaction fees and affordable prices for new project launches, Solana NFT became a potential "lottery ticket" with better potential return on investment - after all, it's hard to catch the next CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) on ETH, as these projects are too expensive for newcomers. Even new projects are not cheap, and the ceiling of their future appreciation is visible, just like a gold mine that has been almost fully exploited.
Now let's take a look at the Polygon NFT market.
On the B-side, many Web2 giants have settled in the Polygon NFT market.
Starbucks Rewards' extension "Starbucks Odyssey" is built on Polygon, with a total market value of over 9 million US dollars and a secondary market volume of over 2.5 million US dollars. Over 210,000 "journey stamps" NFTs have been minted.
Starbucks Odyssey
Nike's NFT platform .SWOOSH is built on Polygon, and the first digital shoe collection "Our Force 1" sold more than 97,000 copies, with sales exceeding $1.9 million. In June of this year, Nike Virtual Studios also announced a partnership with video game giant EA Sports to bring Polygon NFTs and digital content from the Nike.SWOOSH platform into EA's gaming ecosystem.
"Our Force 1"
Reddit's Collectible Avatar has already reached the 4th generation on the Polygon network, with a total market value of over $50 million and sales exceeding $40 million. There are nearly 16 million holders, making it the NFT series with the most holders worldwide.
Reddit "Collectible Avatar"
The NFT performance on Polygon is also impressive. Looking at the on-chain data, the top two projects in terms of historical trading volume for Polygon NFT are both game-related NFTs.
The number one ranked project, ZED RUN, is a horse racing game where players can borrow or purchase their own horses for training and compete against other players' horses. According to the official website, the project's brand sponsors include Budweiser, Atari, and Netflix, among others. According to Cryptoslam data, the project's total trading volume has exceeded $200 million.
ZED RUN
The second-ranked project, DraftKings, has achieved a trading volume of $6.7 million in the past 7 days, accounting for approximately 35% of the total historical trading volume. The recent rapid growth in trading volume has led to comparisons of DraftKings as the "NBA Top Shot" of Polygon. DraftKings Marketplace is an NFT marketplace built by DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG) for the "mass market" and offers assets such as player cards, Reignmakers soccer, golf and UFC management game assets, as well as some mixed virtual and physical products.
DraftKings Marketplace
@0x obsessed categorized game projects on Polygon, covering over 150 games built on Polygon. There are quite a lot of games.
It can be said that the Polygon NFT market is a "not what we imagined Web3 taste" NFT market. In terms of "public-facing" and game-related products, Polygon has to go further than ETH and Solana. The common features are a closed market, providing custody wallets for users, and supporting/only supporting fiat currency payments, etc. At this stage, these achievements on the B-side have not been able to effectively convert Web2 users to Web3 to help Polygon establish its own Web3 NFT community and culture like Solana.
And on the C side, the Polygon NFT market hasn't seen the same explosion of NFT projects that Solana had before. Although there are "side projects" like CyberKongz VX, which is a top PFP project on ETH, there are mature metaverse lands like The Sandbox, and there are utility NFT projects like Donald Trump's first NFT series "Trump Digital Trading Cards," which generated high attention with a strong meme flavor. However, there has never been a "rising star" in the PFP category. With the departure of y^00^ts, the throne of PFP projects on Polygon NFT has also been left empty. There is reason to expect this void to be filled in the future, giving rise to a "Polygon NFT season."
Although there is reason to expect the emergence of a "Polygon NFT season," it is undeniable that the current situation is different from the past. Firstly, the overall market conditions in the crypto market are more bearish than when the "Solana NFT summer" occurred. Secondly, NFT players' interest and trust in PFP narratives have almost been exhausted. To see the emergence of a "Polygon NFT season," we may first need to expect an overall market turnaround in the crypto market, with sufficient liquidity to support wealth effects on Polygon NFT.
Polygon NFT Projects Worth Following
PFP
After the departure of y^00^ts, the most noteworthy Polygon PFP project is undoubtedly Pluto Misfits.
Pluto Misfits
Pluto Misfits is a project recommended by Polygon and personally led by Polygon Ventures. Polygon co-founders Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani provided angel investment. The specific amount of the investment has not been disclosed, but the valuation is $15 million.
In addition to the investment, Sandeep Nailwal personally bought 100 Pluto Misfits. On Twitter, many members of the Polygon team have already changed their avatars to Pluto Misfits, such as CEO @0x MarcB, Investment Lead @shreyansh_ 27, Growth Lead (NFT, DeFi, DAO, Tokenization) @sourcex 44, BD Lead (NFT) @glabuz, Senior Assistant @rainyreece_ and @Smokey_titan, and Social Media Staff @itsNikkiLOL, etc.
After the launch of Pluto Misfits, Polygon Ventures tweeted to congratulate.
Pluto Misfits is the first project incubated by Magic Batch, which is supported by Polygon Ventures. Members of Magic Batch include Sandeep Nailwal and Jaynti Kanani, co-founders of Polygon, co-founders of Pluto Misfits @dostmalonee (who has established Asia's largest creator incubator Nofiltr, which has collaborated with over 700 brands including Netflix, Uber, and NBA, reaching an audience of over 150 million) and @rjun_eth, Pluto Misfits product manager @rashdriving_, early Polygon investor @RahulDLM, and Memeland core team member @0x Char, among others. Magic Batch refers to Pluto Misfits as the "Polygon NFT flagship."
There are a total of 4444 Pluto Misfits, which were sold for 99 Matic, and the current floor price is 288 Matic. It is worth mentioning that Pluto Misfits have seen a stable upward trend since their launch.
Pluto Misfits price trend
Pluto Misfits have a good community atmosphere and a high level of trust in the team. Currently, Pluto Misfits can be staked to earn "Mushrooms," although the specific use of "Mushrooms" has not been disclosed.
Games
What I am most excited about is MapleStory N, which will be built on top of the Polygon Supernet. MapleStory N is the blockchain version of the classic 2D online game "MapleStory," and BlockBeats has previously published articles providing detailed information about MapleStory N.
Another game worth mentioning is Mojo Melee. This is an auto battler game that has been featured on Amazon Prime Game and will distribute Gwyn Rockhopper NFTs and 850 ORE (in-game currency, not on-chain assets) to Amazon Prime users. Mystic Moose, the team behind Mojo Melee, completed a $5 million seed round of funding in December 2021, with Animoca Brands leading the investment and participation from Courtside Ventures, Republic Crypto, Alameda, AU 21, Sfermion, Polygon Studios, Collab+Currency, Sky Vision Capital, Spartan Capital, HyperEdge, Momentum 6, and Fourth Revolution Capital.
Mojo Melee
Utility
FireDrops is a brand loyalty reward platform where users can complete loyalty tasks set by their favorite brands, such as social media participation, product purchases, user referrals, and other brand-related tasks. By completing loyalty tasks, users can earn rewards such as cash discounts, free products, priority access, and NFTs. Users will be able to trade these rewards on the platform's built-in marketplace in the future.
This may sound similar to Starbucks' "Starbucks Odyssey," a Web2.5 loyalty reward product, but it covers a much wider range. Currently, you can apply to join the waiting list on the FireDrops official website. According to official sources, there have been over 1 million users who have applied.
FireDrops by Flipkart
NFT Trading Marketplace
Under OpenSea, the second largest NFT trading marketplace on Polygon is currently dew. Dew is similar to Blur, it is both an NFT aggregator and an NFT marketplace, but it is not comparable to Blur in terms of the comprehensiveness of its features, still waiting for improvement. Even so, the current user experience of dew is still very good.
dew's interface
As we can see, dew has firmly occupied the second place in the Polygon NFT trading market.
According to official sources from dew, they have received investments from institutions such as Polygon Labs and Circle, although the specific funding amount is unknown. The first round of dew's token airdrop campaign has ended, and the second round is about to begin, with details yet to be disclosed.
Conclusion
Polygon NFT currently shows outstanding performance in the entry of Web2 giants and the development of the gaming ecosystem. Coupled with the previous announcement of Polygon 2.0 ($POL), some NFT players have a high level of optimism about the development of the Polygon NFT market, and even propose the "Polygon NFT Q4 Moon Landing Theory" based on these factors:
However, we need to clarify two points. First, the "moon landing" here refers to the development of a solid community (player group) and a distinctive player culture for Polygon NFT, similar to ETH and Solana, which is more directly reflected in the development of "blue-chip" PFP-type NFTs familiar to crypto players, attracting a large number of native Web3 NFT players to join the gold rush. Second, what Web3 native NFT players are most in need of at this stage is the "wealth effect," but the large number of Web2 users accumulated by Polygon NFTs still lack a channel to attract them into the Web3 world in the short term. Giants like Starbucks and Nike in the market are like "independent kingdoms" within the Polygon NFT market, and Web2 users are still blocked by their closed markets. It remains to be seen whether they can successfully introduce incremental Web3 users.
New markets are always full of opportunities. Without the emergence of truly native "blue-chip" assets on Polygon, it gives us enough room for imagination. Polygon seems to be similar to Solana at that time, with everything in place, lacking only a "catalyst" like Okay Bears. Will we witness the emergence of the "season of Polygon NFTs"?
