Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions have been losing steam despite the interest in Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the upcoming halving event.
Monthly Ordinals sales fell 61% to $335 million in January, down from $868 million in December, the month with the highest sales in Ordinals history, according to NFT data aggregator CryptoSlam. Ordinals are the first iteration of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) minted on the Bitcoin network.
The oversaturation of the NFT market and collections from other blockchains are among the main reasons behind the decline in Ordinals sales, according to Anndy Lian, an intergovernmental blockchain expert and author of the book NFT: From Zero to Hero.
“With an influx of new projects and artists entering the space, buyers now face a plethora of options. The spoil-for-choices situation got more obvious when other blockchains like Solana were picking up more steam,” Lian told Cointelegraph.
While monthly Ethereum NFT sales also declined by 2.2% to $355 million, NFT sales on Avalanche rose 89% to $46.7 million in January, up from $24.7 million in December.
Dokyo NFT collection on OpenSea. Source: OpenSea
Dokyo NFTs accounted for the lion’s share of the sales volume, as the collection generated $31.4 million for the Avalanche network in January, which represents 67% of the blockchain’s monthly sales. In comparison, Dokyo only generated $7.64 million worth of sales in December. Dokyo is a collection of 5,555 NFTs launched by pseudonymous creator 0xBrando.
Dokyo NFT sales started surging in November. Dokyo’s 24-hour sales volume surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club sales on Nov. 24, as it briefly became the most traded NFT collection across all blockchains. Dokyo also climbed to the top of the sales leaderboard on Jan. 15, according to CryptoSlam data.
Beyond competing NFT collections, Lian believes that Ordinals sales were also affected by their controversial status in the Bitcoin community and their technical complexities:
“The launch of Ordinals has been controversial in the Bitcoin…..
