TECH NEWS – The popularity of NFTs surged in late 2021 and early 2022, but sales and interest in the technology now appear to be declining significantly.

Over the past year, NFTs have been a constant point of contention between players and the financial sector as a whole. With game publishers such as Ubisoft and Square Enix expressing interest in introducing NFTs into their games until Steam banned the sale of blockchain-based games in its store, it is clear that the games industry has reached a crossroads with blockchain technology. However, the latest news is that NFT sales are showing a steep decline, and public interest in the technology is beginning to wane.

For those who don’t know, non-fungible tokens – often referred to as NFTs – are blockchain-based tokens that bind certain unique content to their blockchain signatures, such as images, music and various digital media. Blockchain enthusiasts across the internet claim that these tokens represent the path to ownership in the digital age, where almost anything can be saved by clicking more or less right.

NFTs have made many crypto speculators quite wealthy in recent years, as Ethereum-based tokens are often traded at high prices during the crypto boom of 2020 and 2021.

According to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal, the once-lucrative token market is showing “flattening” trends, with sales of non-fungible tokens falling from an average of 225,000 a day in September to just 19,000 last week. At the time of writing, sales have soared to an average of 24,000 but are still far from the six-figure peaks of just a few months ago. The number of active wallets in the token market fell from 119,000 in November to 14,000 last week. Outside of the investment sphere, public interest in tokens is also in a tailspin, with Google Trends ranking the term “NFT” at around 20 in April, down from a peak of 100 in January.

Those who still hold NFTs in their crypto wallets have certainly felt the market hit.

Early last year, the first token from Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet was auctioned off, then sold for $2.9 million to Bride Oracle CEO Sina Estavi. The token received no bids higher than $14,000 when Estavi put it up for auction in April this year. In addition, a non-replaceable token from rapper Snoop Dogg recently sold for $32,000 and currently has no bids higher than $210. Crypto developer Elon Musk also took to Twitter to mock NFTs, saying, “I don’t know… it looks pretty fungible.”

The non-replaceable tokens have faced significant backlash in the gaming world, with many believing that monetizing the game proposed by Ubisoft and various blockchain game developers has no place in the media. With the recent news that Square Enix has sold its western division to focus on ‘blockchain’ and ‘AI’ technologies, it remains to be seen how the various game developers and publishers will handle the NFT’s launch. For now, in any case, it seems that the financial viability of the technology may be on its deathbed.

Source: The Wall Street Journal