Key learning points
- Three NFT marketplaces compete for trading volume on Aptos, despite the blockchain only launching last week.
- The leading platform, Topaz, claims to have made more than $1.8 million in total trading volume in about five days.
- However, the NFT boom is unlikely to be sustainable as it appears to be based mainly on hype and not on quality projects.
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The hype around Aptos is driving intense activity across the various NFT marketplaces. However, there are signs that the enthusiasm for Aptos NFTs will not remain constant in the long run.
An emerging NFT market
Launched October 17 Aptos is a Proof-of-Stake Layer 1 blockchain devised by former Meta engineers. The protocol aims to leverage its new smart contract language, Move, to achieve a throughput of more than 100,000 transactions per second. While the Aptos mainnet is barely a week old, the NFT scene has already seen intense activity, with multiple marketplaces vying for trading volume across a few dozen collections.
Among the competing platforms, Topaz seems to have taken the lead. At the time of writing, the market had reached total trading volumes ranging from approximately 82,000 APT ($779,000 at current prices) to 1,200 APT ($11,400) across the twenty largest collections (out of several hundred listed), with the top four collections each more shots than 20,500 APT ($194,750). According to the Topaz team, the marketplace is reaches $1.1 million in total trading volume within four and a half days of launch; a day later, the number was standing at about $1.8 million.
While no tools currently exist to independently confirm these stats, the rising trading volume of multiple Topaz NFT listings seems to indicate that the platform is gaining traction. In the last 24 hours, collections such as Pixel Aptos Citizen, Aptos Birds and Moonlight saw their trading volumes increase with 645,981%, 17,112% and 8,320% respectively – and they are far from alone.
Rival NFT marketplaces include Blue movement And Souffl3. Blue Move, which is currently modeling its platform after Ethereum NFT giant OpenSea lists only nine collections. The trading volume is lower, but not insignificant; the top five collections have each fetched between 25,000 APT ($237,500) and 9,500 APT ($90,250) – the rest range between 1,200 APT ($11,400) and 500 APT ($4,750). Souffl3, for his part, has seen his twenty collections make anywhere between 23,000 APT ($218,500) and 1,000 APT ($9,500) in trading volume, averaging about 5015 APT ($47,600) per NFT collection.
What’s in store for Aptos NFTs?
While healthy trading volumes are a good sign for the emerging Aptos NFT scene, the stat doesn’t tell the whole story. So far, only a few unique collections have turned trading volumes into price gains. One of them, Aptomingos, was issued as a free coin, but at the time of writing, the cheapest items in the collection traded for 105 APT (nearly $1,000) on Topaz. Most other Aptos NFT projects have been content with replicating famous collections from other ecosystems. Among its many collections, Topaz lists Aptos Toads, Bored Aptos Yacht Club, Aptos Birds, and the Aptos Monke Mafia – all copies of successful Ethereum and Solana NFTs.
Additionally, it’s worth noting that if we took the trading volume figures provided by Topaz at face value (about $700,000 in the last 24 hours), the marketplace would still only rank fourth or fifth in terms of daily trading volume. OpenSea, by comparison, reaches $7.4 million in trading volume alone on Ethereum in the same time frame, according to DappRadar data. It is also too early to say whether Topaz and other Aptos marketplaces can sustain the pace of their growth or their daily trading volume.
Most likely, the NFT activity on Aptos is currently being driven by the hype caused by the recent protocol launch and token airdrop. Early Aptos testnet users were promised 150 APT Tokens on October 19; the airdrop was worth about $1,237 at the time. The story of Aptos becoming a “Solana Killer” thanks to its higher processing power may also play a role.
In order for Aptos NFTs to compete with Ethereum or Solana NFTs, the project will most likely need to entice creative and innovative NFT founders to launch in its ecosystem. Other blockchains, such as BNB Chain, have shown that user numbers and infrastructure alone are not enough to create a sustainable, thriving NFT space. Indeed, BNB Chain’s leading marketplace, Pancake Swapjust under $12,000 in NFT trading volume in the past 24 hours, despite the protocol having locked in over $2.79 billion in value and a market cap of $4.25 billion.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.