By
Dimitar Bogdanov
September 27, 2021
4 Min Read
Twenty-twenty-one has been without a doubt the year of the NFT. Non fungible tokens of all shapes and sizes has flooded the market, taking advantage of blockchain technology to preserve uniqueness and ownership. With the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, achieving a record monthly transaction volume of $3.4 billion in August, it is clear that demand for those types of digital assets is at an all time high.
All the buzz around NFTs naturally invites the question: what are the most popular projects, the most sought after NFTs? To answer this question, we examined the top sellers on OpenSea, focusing on collections of NFT collectables rather than singular pieces of digital art. The result is a list of the 10 top sellers on OpenSea, but with a little twist at the end. We’ll be comparing the projects by their respective all-time trading volumes, as they stood as of September 27. So, let’s begin!
With an all-time trading volume of 515,220.24 ETH, CryptoPunks’ top spot is hardly a surprise. Launched by Larva Labs in 2017, Crypto Punks is a hugely influential project that essentially kicked off the NFT movement and arguably inspired the creation of the ERC-721 token standard on Ethereum. The collection comprises 10,000 pixel-art characters inspired by the punk movement and the cyberpunk fiction genre.
The CryptoPunk project has been featured in reputable media outlets such as the New York Times.
Being a platform for generative art, Art Blocks is the perfect example of how blockchain and computer code can be used to create something beautiful and unique. The platform allows people to write scripts that generate unique art pieces during the NFT minting process.
Art Blocks Curated is the most popular Art Blocks project, with an all-time trading volume of 197,851.89 ETH. The collection currently comprises 39,200 items. As the name suggests, all new submissions have to be approved by a curation board.
True to its name, this project is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape digital collectables that has so far generated a trading volume of 170,657.34 ETH on OpenSea. Notably, the NFTs grant their owners access to an online club.
Earlier this month, a set of 107 Bored Ape NFTs were sold for $24.4 million in a Sotheby's online auction.
The interesting thing about Rarible is that it is a NFT marketplace and a platform for minting tokens. Earlier this year, the platform secured $14.2 million in a Series A funding round.
Rarible items can be easily traded on OpenSea and have generated 96,534.57 ETH on that platform.
Completing the top five is a collection born from the Bored Ape project. Mutant Apes are created by exposing existing Bored Ape NFTs to a mutant serum. There’s currently 15,800 items in the collection have generated 80,766.62 ETH on OpenSea.
Another generative art project, Meebits is a collection of 20,000 3D voxel characters created by an algorithm. Its all-time trading volume currently stands at 69,903.48 ETH.
The next collection needs little introduction. If CryptoPunks kicked off the NFT movement, CryptoKitties was the first project that attracted mainstream attention. Released in late 2017, the digital collectible game became an overnight sensation and even clogged up the Ethereum network. This later inspired the creator of the app, Dapper Labs, to build Flow - a dedicated blockchain for digital assets and blockchain games. Flow already hosts a number of NFT dApps, including Dapper’s next big project - the hugely popular marketplace for basketball video, NBA Topshot.
Back to OpenSea and CryptoKitties, the adorable digital kittens have to date generated a trading volume of 69,459.74 ETH on the platform.
The remarkable thing about Loot is that it is already in the top 10 despite being a fairly new project - at 66,331.82 ETH, its 30-day trading volume basically matches its all-time sales. The project is centered around randomized lists of adventurer gear that purposely omit stats and images, leaving the items and their potential uses open to interpretation.
Another well-known name in the NFT circles, Decentraland is a project that allows people to buy parcels of land in a virtual world and build whatever they want on the plots they own. It’s the first virtual world that is developed and owned by its users. The project has generated an all-time volume of 57,651.11 ETH.
With lifetime sales of 50,242.02 ETH, Sorare ranks as the 10th most sought out collection on OpenSea. It is a fantasy football game where users can trade and collect digital cards representing football players, including some of today’s biggest stars such as Rumelu Lukaku, Karim Benzema and Ian Oblak. Sorare users can create line-ups based on the cards they own and earn points based on the real-life performances of their players.
Now, for the aforementioned twist, we’d like to finish off with two projects that are near and dear to our hearts. Our participation in both projects was possible thanks to our collaboration with Universe XYZ.
The first product of that collaboration was Polymorphs. Launched this summer, the Polymorphs collection consists of 10,000 NFTs that can utilize an innovative morphing mechanism. The Polymorph characters have 11 base skins over 200 traits and their DNA can be scrambled to change their appearance on demand. To date, Polymorphs have generated a trading volume of 486 ETH on OpenSea.
We applied the experience gained during Polymorphs’ development to build the follow up to that project - Lobby Lobsters. What’s interesting about the Lobsters is that 100% of the funds raised through primary sales will be donated to lobbying efforts aimed at educating Washington lawmakers on the subject of blockchain and crypto. Meanwhile, proceeds from secondary sales will be donated to initiatives that seek to grow the Ethereum ecosystem.
Lobby Lobster’s all-time volume on OpenSea currently stands at 316 ETH.
