• NFTs have had a breakthrough year, and over the past 12 months, volume has hit $28 billion.
• But a significant decline in the cryptocurrency market has helped fuel a pullback in NFT sales.

The cryptocurrency boom over the past few years has helped propel a newer market to record heights: digital collectibles known as NFTs. 

The craze has pushed total NFT sales volume to $28 billion over the past year as artists, investors, and entrepreneurs descend upon the nascent Web3 space. 

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique, irreplaceable, mostly digital items that users buy and sell online.

NFTs use blockchain technology to keep a digital record of ownership, similar to cryptocurrencies. They were first launched on ethereum, the same blockchain that supports the cryptocurrency ether, and most NFTs can still only be purchased using ether.

A months-long sell-off in cryptocurrencies and the implosion of TerraUSD has taken a bite out of NFT sales more recently. Weekly NFT sales had been more than cut in half from its early January peak of nearly $1 billion, according to data from NonFungible.com.

The past week has seen weekly NFT sales plunge 64% to $505 million from $1.3 billion in the prior week, as familiar NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club were knocked out of their top spot by new entrants like Azuki and Otherside.

These were the five best-selling collections over the past week, according to NonFungible.

5. Art Blocks

7-Day Sales Volume: $16.9 million
Number of 7-Day Sales: 4,646
Highest Sale Price: $619,000

Explainer: “A storefront for genuinely programmable and on-demand generative artwork that is stored directly on the Ethereum blockchain.”

4. Doodles

7-Day Sales Volume: $28.7 million
Number of Sales: 606
Highest Sale Price: $187,000

Explainer: “Doodles come in a joyful range of colors, traits, and sizes with a collection size of 10,000. Doodles are a funky bunch that like to role play or transmogrify themselves into delicious treats. Holding a Doodle allows you to participate in coordinating the Doodles Community Treasury.”

3. Bored Ape Yacht Club

7-Day Sales Volume: $80.8 million
Number of Sales: 1,145
Highest Sale Price: $1 million

Explainer: “BAYC is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs — unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits.”

2. Otherside

7-Day Sales Volume: $124.8 million
Number of Sales: 5,422
Highest Sale Price: $2 million

Explainer: “Otherside is a gamified, interoperable metaverse currently under development by Yuga Labs. Players will own the world, NFTs can become playable characters, and thousands will be able to play together in real time.”

1. Azuki

7-Day Sales Volume: $127.8 million
Number of Sales: 8,919
Highest Sale Price: $246,000

Explainer: “Azuki is a collection of 10,000 avatars that grant membership access to The Garden. The Garden is a corner of the internet where art, community, and culture fuse to create magic. The lines between physical and digital worlds are blurring and the rules are being rewritten.”

This content was originally published here.