Over the past year, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have continued to play an important role in the growing Web3 industry. NFTs initiated a shift from hype-based drops to utility-focused projects with long-term value.
A new report from DappRadar on blockchain and decentralized application (DApp) adoption in 2022 revealed that the NFT sales count last year reached 101 million. This is an increase of 67.57% over the previous year.
According to the report, the Ethereum ecosystem ranks first in the NFT ecosystem, with 21% of the market share and more than 21.2 million transactions processed. They are followed by Wax (14.5 million), Polygon (13.3 million) and Solana (12.9 million).
Both the Solana and Immutable X ecosystems saw massive growth over the previous year in terms of transaction activity, up 440% and 315%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the data shows no change in the BNB ecosystem, with approximately 1 million transactions for both 2021 and 2022.
The dominant category of DApps on various chains has also changed in the past year. In 2021, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications dominated all but 2 of the 13 chains used in the report.
This year, however, a major shift toward high-stakes apps, games, and NFTs leveled the playing field.
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Additionally, the report highlighted Ethereum and Cardano as the blockchains with the most active developers working on-chain, with 223 and 151 active protocols, respectively.
While modular blockchains such as Polkadot and Cosmos saw their network developer activity grow by 16% and 131.7%.
The importance of NFTs in the Web3 space has also translated into mainstream culture in the last year. From continued adoption by legacy institutions like the NBA to Amazon doing a documentary series on NFTs and who collects them.
Late last year, China announced its first national NFT marketplace to serve as a secondary market for the exchange of digital assets.
