NFT Comparison

    Compare and contrast the NFT market and ecosystem across at least three different chains (you can do more if you wish, but there must be at least three included.) Explain how the various chains differ in terms of metrics such as: Total Sales Total Unique Buyers Total Volume Count Sales/Day Count Distinct Buyers/Day Average Sales Price/Day

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    What Algorand?

    Algorand is a fast and low cost proof of stake blockchain, and the first of its kind to pay dividends to basic coin holders. The blockchain was started by a former MIT Professor, who published the finite supply of 10,000,000,000 Algo (its native token) in 2019. It proves to be a cheaper and faster alternative to Ethereum, only lagging behind in actual capability. Because Ethereum is significantly older, developers have been writing smart contract for them instead. However, Algorand hopes to reverse this trend in the coming years.

    What makes it unique?

    While Ethereum can publish 13 transactions per second, Algorand can have 100x that at 1,300. However, their plans are to be able to maximize the transaction speed to 3,000 per second. Additionally, Algorand is the first major blockchain to pay dividends to its coin holders, regardless of staking status- comparable to some stocks in the U.S. stock exchange. Recently, Algo was selected as the official blockchain partner of FIFA! It is unclear if there will be any functional benefit, but they will at the very least be sponsoring the North American and European teams, gaining exposure from studio sets, stadiums, and advertising.

    What is Ethereum?

    Ethereum is the second largest crypto in terms of market cap only to Bitcoin, and the largest proof of stake network. Ethereum is the largest decentralized blockchain with support for smart contract. They are the host to all "ERC-20" tokens, such as Doge, Polygon, and Decentraland. Ethereum was the first major blockchain to support smart contract, in addition to being one of the first to run a proof of stake network. Although the transition from proof of work took slightly longer than expected, users with greater than 32 ETH are able to stake their coins.

    What makes it unique?

    Ethereum is unique for a couple reasons, but the main one being its size and popularity. Its enormous user base is a real selling point for developers when looking at which platform to build for, when comparing blockchains. Its incredible number of developers that choose to build on the ETH chain compared to the likes of SOL or ALGO are what makes it such a popular. launch point for new projects.

    What is Solana?

    Solana is a blockchain designed to host decentralized and scalable applications. The goal of Solana's architecture is to demonstrate there is a way to organize software algorithms that, when used in combination with a blockchain, eliminates software as a performance bottleneck, enabling transaction output to scale proportionally with network bandwidth. Solana enables up to 710,000 transactions per second on a giga-bit network- compared to a measly 15 transactions per second on Ethereum.

    What makes it unique?

    As for the unique aspect, Solana relies on a proof of history method for confirming transactions. Proof of history works by cryptographically verifying a passage of time between two between two events. Its differentiation from proof of stake is the reason that the network can handle such a large volume of transactions, and therefore significantly lower transaction fees.  

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    The numbers above show the all time sales by blockchain

    • Sales volume was calculated by counting the number of transactions involving NFTs, all time
    • Ethereum has double the total number of sales compared to Solana, which seems like a lot, but have also been around significantly longer
    • Algorand sales are severely lackluster when compared to either ETH or SOL
    • ETH does have the largest volume, has been around the longest, but recently, SOL NFTs have been taking off
    • Part of this is due to Openseas taking SOL NFTs as well as ETH/Polygon ones

    The numbers above show the number of unique purchasers by chain

    • Ethereum has 3x the number of unique users buying/selling NFTs, compared to the next closest, Solana
    • The count on Algorand is nearly irrelevent
    • Algorand NFTs have yet to take off, or have any impact on many Web3-involved users
    • ETH has proportionally more unique users than they do total sales volume than Solana
    • This shows that more of their activity is coming from a wider user base, than it is for Solana

    The visuals above show the sales by day, by chain

    • Ethereum has consistently had the most sales by day when compared to the other chains
    • That is, outside of a couple week stretch in September when SOL nearly had them doubled
    • This push was spurred by the collection y00ts, when the craze went rampant
    • With that said, ETH had been consistently dominant through the mid summer, but since then, SOL NFT sales have shot through the roof and now compete directly with that of Solanas
    • Again, Algorand is mostly irrelevant when compared to the Ethereum and Solana chains, having roughly 1/200th of the volume

    The visuals above show the sales by day, by chain

    • Ethereum has consistently had the most sales by day when compared to the other chains
    • That is, outside of a couple week stretch in September when SOL nearly had them doubled
    • This push was spurred by the collection y00ts, when the craze went rampant
    • With that said, ETH had been consistently dominant through the mid summer, but since then, SOL NFT sales have shot through the roof and now compete directly with that of Solanas
    • Again, Algorand is mostly irrelevant when compared to the Ethereum and Solana chains, having roughly 1/200th of the volume

    The charts above show the average NFT price by day, by chain

    • Ethereum had the highest average NFT price by day by a landslide
    • Ethereum NFTs had an average price around $7.5k, while Solana NFTs had prices closer to the $100 range
    • This shows that the big time and popular NFT projects are being purchased on ETH networks, whereas the smaller but more vigorously traded ones are on the SOL platform
    • All 3 chains have incredibly large spikes throughout their history, showing that the numbers can easily be skewed
    • Algorand had some activity for once, boasting days with average prices above $10k and $14k each
    • That said, Algorand NFT activity is essentially negligible when compared with the likes of Solana or Ethereum

    Conclusions

    • Solana and Ethereum are the top 2 dogs when it comes to NFT prowess
      • Meaning, Algorand is essentially irrelevant when compared to the other two chains
    • Solana and Ethereum have similar activity when it comes to volume/sales, but the difference is the transaction size
    • Solana makes it easy for users to buy/sell NFTs with little to no gas fees, whereas Ethereum can be quite expensive
    • Because of this, it appears that the average SOL transactions have significantly smaller
    • However, the average transaction amount is significantly higher in part on Ethereum because it has all the clout
    • Ethereum got an edge by being the first, the earliest, and the most mainstream. It has the celebrity endorsements (Snoop Dogg, Tom brady, etc.) where as the Solana NFTs are just as popualr.