NFT trading activity showed signs of life in Q3 2025, breaking a long stretch of decline that defined the post-hype years.
After two years of contraction and shifting narratives, on-chain markets found a new footing, not in blue-chip collectibles or speculative art, but in cheaper rails, loyalty programs, and sport-linked assets that traded more on utility than status.
NFT trading volume rose in Q3 2025 and sales counts reached a high.
The center of gravity shifted to cheaper rails and utilitarian use cases as Ethereum’s scaling upgrade pushed activity to L2s, Solana leaned on throughput and compression, and Bitcoin inscriptions matured into a collectibles culture that waxes and wanes with fee markets.
Fees and distribution, not profile pictures, now set the boundary for growth.
Post-Dencun economics reset the map. Ethereum’s EIP-4844 cut data costs for rollups, pushing L2 transaction fees toward cents and enabling gasless or sponsored flows for mainstream-facing mints.
L2 fees fell by more than 90 percent in the wake of the upgrade, a shift already visible in mint behavior and the rise of Base as a distribution rail.
On Solana, compression brought mass issuance into range for loyalty and access use cases, with provisioning costs for 10 million compressed NFTs around 7.7 SOL and median transaction fees near $0.003 even under load.
Bitcoin inscriptions carved out a separate lane tied to mempool cycles and miner revenue, with more than 80 million inscriptions by February 2025 and a top-three position by lifetime NFT sales.
The demand side shows a rebound with a caveat.
DappRadar data shows that Q3 NFT trading volume almost doubled quarter over quarter to $1.58 billion as sales reached 18.1 million, an all-time quarterly high for transaction count.
Sports NFTs stood out, with sales up 337 percent quarter over quarter to $71.1 million, a pocket where schedulable utility, access and loyalty benefits drive spend independent of floor prices. The summer deli
Go to Source to See Full Article
Author: Liam ‘Akiba’ Wright
