A significant shift in the landscape of non-fungible token (NFT) gas usage has been observed in the data released by on-chain analytics platform Glassnode. The gas usage by NFT marketplaces is on a downward trend this year.
Gas is the unit that measures the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on the Ethereum network. Each transaction on the network requires a fee as each Ethereum transaction requires computational resources to execute in the first place. This fee is levied regardless of whether the transaction succeeds or fails.
NFTs, which were leading the charts in terms of Ethereum gas usage in 2021, are nowhere to be seen in the top spot two years later. This could signify a shift in their use where now more users may be opting to hold on to their assets instead of trading them on marketplaces.
In a weekly period back in May, crypto analytics platform Nansen reported that NFT marketplaces only accounted for over 3% of the entire gas consumption. During this time, there was a surge in Ether gas prices too, which further raised questions about the value of NFTs. Multiple theories came up saying that NFTs were only a “product of excess liquidity” due to money printing during the pandemic.
The same scene was quite different in 2021. In August that year, NFT gaming project Axie Infinity placed second in terms of gas usage. This was because of its Ronin bridge that transferred assets from Ethereum to the Ronin blockchain. Popular and by far the largest NFT marketplace OpenSea was also in the fourth spot in this list.
These platforms have now fallen off the top 50 list of Etherscan’s top gas users. The gas consumption by other NFT platforms have also declined dramatically.
Only Blur seemed to be still hanging around in the list at Etherscan’s top 28th spot for gas consumers. At the time of press, it had only used 0.44% of gas in the last three hours.
As of writing, the consumption of Blur, OpenSea, SuperRare, LooksRare and Rarible only accounted for roughly 1.85% of the gas consumption for the entire Ethereum network. Uniswap and Tether were the two platforms that reigned in the top spots of Etherscan’s top gas users list as of writing.
