- NFT sales had a breakthrough year in 2021, with total sales volume surging to $14 billion.
- The NFT market is dominated by a handful of standout leaders due to their popularity and rarity.
- These are the five best-selling digital collectibles that helped drive $926 million in NFT sales over the past week.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
The cryptocurrency boom over the past few years has helped propel a newer market to record heights: digital collectibles known as NFTs.
In fact, 2021 was a breakthrough year for NFTs, with total sales volume topping $14 billion 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.
Despite the ongoing sell-off in cryptocurrencies, NFT sales have held up relatively well. In the past week alone, sales hit $926 million, according to data from NonFungible.com.
With NFT sales soaring, these are the five best-selling NFT collections over the past week, according to NonFungible.
5. Cool Cats
7-Day Sales Volume: $14.8 million
Number Sales: 427
Highest Sale Price: $128,838
Explainer: "Cool Cats are a collection of programmatically, randomly generated NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The 1st generation consists of 10,000 randomly assembled cats from over 300k total options. Cool Cats that have a variety of outfits, faces and colors – all cats are cool, but completed outfit cats are the coolest."
4. Doodles
7-Day Sales Volume: $19.0 million
Number of Sales: 580
Highest Sale Price: $692,807
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. CyberKongz
7-Day Sales Volume: $19.3 million
Number of Sales: 1,308
Highest Sale Price: $261,410
Explainer: "CyberKongz are unique and randomly generated 2D/3D NFT Social Avatars for your online experiences. Some appear normal. Some look weird. Some are just damn cool! Maybe some even look familiar!"
2. CryptoPunks
7-Day Sales Volume: $48.5 million
Number of Sales: 189
Highest Sale Price: $3.1 million
Explainer: "10,000 unique collectible characters with proof of ownership stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The project that inspired the modern CryptoArt movement."
1. Bored Ape Yacht Club
7-Day Sales Volume: $182.4 million
Number of Sales: 2,083
Highest Sale Price: $1.3 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."