NFT market booming: buyers up 100%, Ethereum dominates, and Polygon skyrockets

Recent data shows the nft market in flux, with participation surging even as trading patterns concentrate around a few dominant chains and collections.

NFT buyers surge 100% as participants and sellers jump

The number of NFT buyers jumped 100% week over week, reaching 236,771 participants globally. This represents a full doubling of the buyer count compared to the prior seven-day period, signaling renewed retail interest. However, this surge in demand came alongside shifting on-chain behavior and did not translate into a proportional increase in overall sales volume.

On the supply side, NFT sellers climbed 141.83% to 295,021. That said, total NFT transactions actually fell 31.63% to 903,279. This combination of more buyers and more sellers, but fewer total trades, points to larger average transaction sizes relative to the previous week and suggests more selective purchasing.

Ethereum holds top spot by sales as Bitcoin volume slips

Ethereum remained the leading blockchain by raw NFT sales volume, recording $8.69 million in weekly sales. This marked a 21.25% increase from the previous week. Moreover, when including wash trading, Ethereum’s total figure rose slightly to $8.75 million, indicating that most of its activity was organic.

The chain also drew in 5,370 buyers during the week, a 30.28% increase. This combination of rising volumes and growing buyer counts underlines strengthening demand for Ethereum-based collections and supports the view that ethereum nft sales volume remains a key barometer for higher-value digital collectibles.

Bitcoin ranked second by NFT sales volume, with $8.53 million in weekly sales. However, this represented a 34.10% decline from the previous period, highlighting a cooling in total value traded. At the same time, Bitcoin still managed to attract more market participants, as buyers increased 43.44% to 9,210, even though total sales volume dropped.

Including wash trading, Bitcoin’s aggregate NFT sales volume stood at $8.56 million. However, the most dramatic shift came from Polygon, which posted $7.24 million in weekly NFT sales volume, a staggering 799.21% increase. This spike was largely driven by the Courtyard collection, which concentrated activity into a small number of assets.

Polygon, Base and Solana post strong participation metrics

When wash trading is factored in, Polygon’s total weekly NFT sales volume soared to $21.68 million, representing a 2,591.88% increase. Moreover, this outsized jump underscores how a single high-performing collection can skew aggregate metrics and make chain-level volume less representative of broad ecosystem activity.

Base also delivered notable growth in user participation. The network recorded 38,333 buyers, which is 12.79% more than last year, and $5.22 million in NFT sales, up 31.24% over the same period. Including wash trades, Base’s total weekly volume reached $10.03 million, illustrating that base chain buyer growth is pairing with a meaningful expansion in transaction values.

By contrast, BNB Chain experienced a pullback in headline numbers. NFT sales on BNB Chain fell 43.77% to $2.65 million. However, the number of buyers rose 40.48% to 18,177, suggesting a wider distribution of smaller-ticket trades despite the drop in aggregate volume.

Immutable booked $2.61 million in weekly NFT sales, a 3.51% increase. In parallel, its buyer base climbed 53.95% to 4,643. Moreover, Solana led all tracked chains by buyer count with 98,636 buyers, the highest figure of the week, and generated $1.92 million in NFT sales, a 26.13% increase compared with the prior period.

Courtyard and BRC-20 collections dominate weekly rankings

Across all collections, Courtyard on Polygon ranked first by weekly NFT sales. It posted $6.47 million in volume from 78,925 transactions and 10,960 buyers. The number of buyers for Courtyard rose 653.26% from the previous period, while the number of sellers increased 218.48%, highlighting a powerful polygon courtyard sales surge that reshaped Polygon’s metrics.

In second place, the $X@AI BRC-20 NFTs on Bitcoin generated $3.87 million in sales from only 16 transactions and 8 buyers. Despite this impressive total, the collection’s volume was down 46.99% from the week before, yet it still ranked as the second-largest collection by weekly sales volume.

Flying Tulip PUT on Ethereum took third position with $3.77 million in sales across 253 transactions, up 58.93% from the last period. The collection recorded 190 sellers and just 6 buyers, indicating highly concentrated demand. A notable Base address ranked fourth, with $3.20 million in sales from 32,581 transactions, a 46.07% increase, and activity spread across 29 buyers and 486 sellers.

Guild of Guardians Heroes on Immutable-Zk secured fifth place with $1.29 million in NFT sales from 1,048 transactions. Moreover, the $?? BRC-20 NFTs on Bitcoin came in sixth, processing 1,602 transactions and 750 buyers for a total of $893,268. Gods Unchained Cards on Immutable-Zk followed in seventh with $834,564 in sales from 26,319 transactions and 665 buyers.

Bitcoin Ordinals lead high-value individual NFT sales

While aggregate volumes shifted by chain, high-value individual NFT deals were dominated by Bitcoin Ordinals. The week’s highest-priced single NFT sale was an $X@AI BRC-20 NFT on Bitcoin, which changed hands for $3,866,496.36, or exactly 54.2999 BTC, just about one day ago. This one transaction accounted for nearly the entire weekly volume of the $X@AI BRC-20 collection.

The second, third, fourth, and fifth largest individual sales also involved $QCLAW BRC-20 NFTs, each priced at 2 BTC and also sold roughly one day ago. Three of these trades cleared at $142,412.35, while another sold for $142,029.35 and the last for $141,840.59. Together, these results confirmed continued strength in bitcoin ordinals top sales at the very high end of the market.

Market structure, wash trading and buyer behavior trends

It is not unusual for the number of NFT buyers to climb by 100.75% while overall NFT sales increase by only 9.78%. This pattern indicates that more participants entered the market, but on average, they purchased fewer NFTs than they did in the previous week. Moreover, these dynamics help explain why headline volume can understate shifts in engagement.

The 799.21% rise in Polygon’s NFT sales volume was mostly driven by Courtyard’s explosive performance. This concentration means the chain-level figure is less useful for assessing broad ecosystem health and more effective at illustrating the trading week of a single, dominant collection. In this context, the 21.25% increase in Ethereum’s NFT sales, achieved with relatively limited marketplace wash trading impact, offers a stronger signal of underlying buyer interest.

Taken together, the data shows an nft buyers weekly increase that coincides with larger average deal sizes, concentrated activity in a few flagship collections, and a rebalancing of volume across chains. As these trends continue to evolve, the nft market will likely remain highly sensitive to new launches, on-chain incentives and the performance of top-tier collections.

In summary, surging participation, selective purchasing, and outsized wins for specific ecosystems such as Ethereum, Polygon, Bitcoin and Base are reshaping weekly NFT dynamics, even as overall trading remains dependent on a handful of high-impact collections.