NFT
Blockchain analytics platform Nansen has announced the removal of Lido NFTs from its NFT Paradise service. Nansen’s NFT Paradise is a platform that provides detailed analysis on the NFT market and helps users understand trades, trends and dynamics. Nansen’s decision was influenced by user votes following a recent mishap involving Lido, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. Lido’s staked withdrawal requests were misrepresented as NFTs, leading to an unexpected increase in NFT coin volume.
Lido stated last month that users would receive NFTs as part of the deposit withdrawal process. Whenever a user stakes Ether, the decentralized finance protocol issues NFT certificates, which are used to claim their ETH tokens.
The huge spike, which involved a whopping 430,000 ETH (about $780 million), was initially interpreted as a rise in the NFT market. However, further investigation revealed that this was due to a technical problem and not actual market activity. Nansen further clarified that the NFT market has not yet returned to health, dampening expectations for a rapid recovery in the near future.
Nansen has previously stated that in the first quarter of 2023, NFT trading volumes in Ethereum (ETH) and USD increased. Specifically, a total of 2,839,354 ETH were traded in the first quarter, compared to 1,525,471 ETH in the fourth quarter of the previous year. March 2023 marked an annual peak in NFT sales. This surge was largely driven by Blur, an emerging NFT marketplace that quickly overtook established marketplaces to lead the way in sales.
Despite the increase in sales and user numbers in the first quarter, a slowdown in the NFT market was observed in April. Volumes traded in April fell compared to March and this trend looks set to continue in May. The total number of NFT holders also increased slightly in the first quarter of 2023, reaching 13,999,528 compared to 11,233,872 NFT holders in the fourth quarter of 2022.