Flow blockchain

The blockchain company Dapper Labs developed Cryptokitties, a NFT cat-collectible game on Ethereum which was one of the first of its kind and a clear use of blockchain technology with a use case not related to digital currency. In 2017, there was a major spike in Ethereum's transactions by Cryptokitties players which caused the network to be clogged. This revealed the need to level Ethereum up to be ready for massive adoption.

But Dapper Team had other plans and after some years researching and partnering with big players in and out of the cryptoindustry announced the launch of a new blockchain designed with mainstream consumers in mind - a network capable of scaling to the needs of games with massive player base and providing the tools for developers to create decentralized apps (dApps) with its own resource-oriented programming language Cadence. With it, upgradeable smart contracts can be created easily.

The blockchain became operational in May 2020 and in June 2020 the first application went live - NBA Top Shot, an officially-license digital collectible marketplace. Since then, Flow has seen the launch of several NFT projects from other sporting events - NFL, UFC, MotoGP... the list is quite incredible.

Let's dig into the latest trends in NFT on the Flow blockchain!

Methodology

NFT market and projects trends

I have queried the flow.core.fact_nft_sales to aggregate NFT sales volume in USD and number of sales by day and by project. From all the sales recorded in this table, a total of 5 different currencies are listed. A closer look, comparing them to the NFT sale transactions in different marketplaces / websites leads to the conclusion that there are only two effective currencies: 'Flow', the native blockchain token and 'USD', with its different materialisations such as 'FUSD' (Flow native's stablecoin), 'USDC' or 'Faze'.

To calculate all sales in the same unit, all 'USD' currencies will be approximated by the same value as given in price and the 'Flow' token prices will be calculated as an hourly average from flow.core.fact_prices and multiplied by the total hourly volume to obtain all hourly volumes per project in USD. From there, a second aggregation by day gets the data represented below.

Project crossover

The analysis of project crossover will be limited to the top 5 projects. Two separate queries for buyers and sellers will be created. Using CTE, the addresses buying or selling each project will be identified and CTEs will be combined in such a way to be able to count how many times each address combination appears. The query was taken from a dashboard published by antonyip.

Results

NFT market and projects trends

Figures 1 and 2 show the daily NFT sales volume and number of sales on Flow since May 9th. May 26th was the highest point of the series for both metrics (2.1M USD and 57k sales). Before that, levels between 0.5M-1M in volume and 25k-45k were usual. NFT sales activity has slowed down as of lately, with volume below 300k USD and sales below 15k.

Crossover between buyers/sellers

Figure 7 shows the crossover distribution betweeen buyers. Almost 80% of addresses have only bought one project (no crossover), 15% have bought 2 different projects, 4.9% bought 3 project and 0.6% have bought in 4 projects.

The highest crossover in the 2 projects range is between TopShot-PackNFT (3611 addresses) and AllDay-PackNFT (2429 addresses). The third biggest 2-project crossover happens between TopShot-AllDay. UFC_NFT has minimal number of address crossovers with the top 3 projects (below 0.5% in each case).

Some crossover between TopShot-AllDay-PackNFT takes place in 1997 addresses while the rest of 3-project crossover involves UFC_NFT but in number below 0.5%.

Cricket Moments has no crossover amongst buyers, with the 4-project crossover involving the other projects.

Figures 3 and 4 show Figures 1 and 2 by project. The domination of TopShot, officially licensed NBA video NFTs, is clear. It is followed by AllDay, its NFL counterpart.

On May 26th, PackNFT was responsible for almost 1.5M USD in over 25k sales, but I couldn't find more info on this project.

Figures 5. and 6. show the distribution of both metrics by project. Both TopShot and AllDay account for over 80%. The mysterious PackNFT goes 3rd in volume and 4th in number of sales, swapping places with UFC NFT (4th and 3rd respectively), another sports collectible.

Figure 8.shows the crossover distribution between sellers. Over 80% of addresses have only sold one project, so no crossover. 14.9% of addresses sold 2 projects and 3.3% sold 3 different projects.

The 2 project crossover appears only between TopShot and AllDay (6315 addresses), TopShot and UFC(1480) and AllDay and UFC (491). The 3 project crossover appear only between TopShot, AllDay and UFC.

Full tables with project crossover distribution

Summary

• Both NFT sales volume in USD and number of sales are trending lightly downwards since the local high on May 26th (2.1M USD and 57k sales).

• The top project in both metrics is TopShot, the NBA collectible, accounting for 80% of the market.

• AllDay, the NFL counterpart to TopShop is the second project in the time series analysed.

• The May 26th peak was possible thanks to PackNFT, which sold 1.4M USD in one day and is the third NFT project in Flow.

• Other Top 9 project in both metrics include:

  • UFC NFT and Cricket Moments - MMA and Cricket collectibles
  • RCRDSHP - a music NFT marketplace and fan experience platform
  • MetaPandaClub - a JPEG NFT project building a decentralized basketball metaverse
  • TFC - football metaverse based on avatars and licences collectibles

• Regarding crossover from the top 5 projects between buyers and sellers addresses, 80% of them purchased only NFT from a single project. 15% of them bought into 2 projects. 3 or more projects are marginal (below 5% altogether).

  • In case of buyers, the most popular crossovers were between sports collections (TopShot and AllDay) and PackNFT. Cricket Moments had no crossovers with other sports.
  • In case of sellers, the most popular crossovers were amongst sports collections (TopShot, AllDay and UFC NFT), both by pairs as 2-project crossovers and all three of them as 3-project crossovers.

• Sports collectibles are a leitmotiv in the Flow Blockchain!

Conclusion

It looks like Flow NFTs are really paving the way for mainstream adoption as collectibles, games, metaverses and Web3 communities within the sports and music industry. Currently, world famous franchises such NBA, NFL and UFC are exploring the possibilities with a lot of success.

Although sales have been declining lately (who can blame them amidst the market sentiment), projects are building strong products that aim at a wide user base - both globally and locally as it is the case with cricket, a sport with a lot of followers in India for example.

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