The non-fungible token (NFT) space has exploded so much that NFT marketplace OpenSea alone has hit $1 billion in monthly volume in August.

Just over halfway into the month, and already the numbers have surpassed $1 billion on OpenSea, from a $326 million peak in July, according to Dune Analytics. Since the beginning of this month, Daily volume has been between $40 mln to $80 mln after progressing from $1.5 mln in May to $18.4 mln in July.

Other metrics have constantly been increasing as well, with monthly NFTs sold now above 750k, up from 458k in July, 211k in June, and 71k in May.

As such, the monthly fees of OpenSea are already above $70 million this month, recording a 224% increase from last month and 644% from June.

a16z-backed OpenSea is also the biggest contributor to the number of ETH burned, having burned 7,638 ETH worth over $23 million — representing 12.7% of all ETH burned so far since the activation of EIP 1559 with the London upgrade on August 5.

OpenSea has now passed Etsy in volume, with $1b so far in August

NFTs are rapidly catching up to all of eBay

— Alex Atallah (alexatallah.eth) (@xanderatallah) August 17, 2021

Besides OpenSea, daily volume on the leading crypto art marketplace SuperRare is also picking up after hitting ATHs in March.

Overall, the NFT sales mania over the last week has exploded to levels beyond the boom seen in March.

The reason behind this boom is due to a few events, one being an anonymous buyer spending $7 million to acquire the least expensive 104 CryptoPunks in a single block, raising the floor price. And since this purchase, the average CryptoPunk sale price has increased to $200k, from about $60k.

The sales volume of CryptoPunks has been exploding since the beginning of this month, in addition to which there has been an onslaught of these NFTs being used as Twitter profile pictures.

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) sales volume meanwhile took off after an announcement that they will feature in a Christie’s auction next month. And after a Twitter war with the BAYC, the trading volume of Pudgy Penguins’ shot up, topping $13.5M on August 13th.

Art Blocks is another popular one which is a generative art platform that has produced popular collections including Ringers, Chromie Squiggles, and Fidenzas. The market for them has exploded following the start of Three Arrows Capital’s investments.

Back in mid-March, when NFT sales peaked, ETH’s price took off, and after ETH crashed, NFT sales started to take off again. With NFTs typically priced in ETH, if ETH price rises, new entrants can get priced out.

According to Coin Metrics, there may also be some reflexivity between the NFT market and ETH price as people buy ETH to buy NFTs then sell their art for more ETH only to reinvest that ETH into more NFTs.

“High NFT sales bring new attention to ETH and help bring more users into the Ethereum ecosystem.”

Although NFT sales volume has surged this summer, the amount of worldwide Google searches for “NFT” is still well below its peak in March, and if NFTs is to gain more outside attention as they did earlier this year, “there may be an even bigger boom yet to come.”

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