Whales drive NFT comeback on BNB Chain in Q3: Messari

Non-fungible tokens trading volumes on the BNB Chain saw a resurgence in the third quarter, increasing 283% to a daily average of $600,400, according to blockchain analytics firm Messari.

The average daily sales also increased, up 47% quarter-on-quarter to 8,900, according to Messari’s Research Manager “AJC.”

“However, average daily buyers were down 53% QoQ to 2,300, signaling that NFT activity in Q3 was driven by ‘whales’ rather than small users,” the Nov. 7 report stated.

Daily average NFT volume on BNB Chain since Oct. 2023. Source: Messari

BNB Chain’s $55.2 million NFT trading volume (calculated by multiplying the average daily volume by the number of days in Q3) still pales in comparison to the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks, which tallied $120.7 million and $74.6 million in trading volume over the last 30 days alone, CryptoSlam data shows.

Solana, Mythos Chain, Polygon and Immutable have also seen more trading volume than the BNB Chain over the same timeframe.

Other metrics describing BNB Chain’s performance were mixed. 

BNB Chain’s revenue tumbled 27.9% quarter-on-quarter to $34.9 million, which was largely attributed to a 27% fall in gas fees paid on decentralized finance transactions.

BNB Chain’s average daily active address also dropped 19% to 900,000 as average daily transactions fell 8.1%.

However, the total value locked on the BNB Chain increased 2.2% to $4.8 billion in Q3, with Algorithmic money market protocol Venus Finance being the biggest contributor to that rise, increasing 13% to $1.79 billion.

More (BNB $599.09) tokens were burned than minted in Q3 — resulting in a deflation rate of 4.5% and contributing to a 2.5% price rise as the broader market slightly regressed, CoinGecko data shows.

Key performance indicators of the BNB Smart Chain in Q3 2024. Source: Messari

Two of the most common use cases for BNB Chain were transacting with the Tether (USDT $1.00) stablecoin and interacting with the decentralized exchange PancakeSwap, Messari’s analysis showed.

The BNB Chain was launched by crypto exchange Binance in 2020, initially under the name Binance Smart Chain.

It boasts the fourth largest TVL among layer-1 blockchains, trailing only Ethereum, Solana and Tron, DefiLlama data shows.

Meanwhile, BNB Chain unveiled a new real-world asset tokenization service that provides individuals and businesses with a no-code solution to tokenize real-world assets in “minutes” earlier this week.

Binance team members behind the solution claim it significantly reduces the cost, time and labor needed to tokenize assets, lowering the barrier to entry for everyone.