NFT sales took another step back this week, but the numbers tell a more complicated story than a simple retreat.
Global NFT sales fell 15.28% to $37.54 million over the latest seven-day period, according to CryptoSlam data captured on Sept. 19. At the same time, buyer addresses jumped 174.04% to 114,977, while seller addresses rose 151.72% to 108,037.
Those figures refer to blockchain addresses, not verified individual people. Still, the contrast is striking: more wallets participated while less money changed hands.
Transaction counts moved lower as well, dropping 9.08% to 808,432. In other words, the market saw a larger pool of active addresses spread across fewer transactions, although the data cannot determine whether those wallets belonged to new entrants or existing users.
The move also came as the broader crypto market rebounded. Bitcoin was trading around $81,311 and Ethereum near $2,647 when the data was checked, while total crypto market capitalization stood at approximately $2.79 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
The two trends happened at the same time, but the available figures do not establish a direct link between the crypto market rebound and the decline in NFT sales.
NFT sales are falling, but wallets are piling in
Ethereum remained the biggest blockchain for organic NFT sales, generating $15.32 million during the week. That was a 2.66% decline, even as the number of buyer addresses climbed 63.82% to 13,546.
Ethereum also logged $443,802 in wash-trading volume, down 52.41%. Including that activity, total volume reached $15.76 million, a 5.44% decline.
Polygon ranked second in organic sales with $7.09 million, down 4.88%. Its buyer count rose 91.47% to 26,588.
But Polygon’s headline numbers come with a major caveat: CryptoSlam recorded $18.07 million in wash trading on the network, pushing its combined total to $25.15 million. Organic sales and wash trading measure different things and should not be treated as interchangeable indicators of ordinary NFT purchases.
Bitcoin landed in third place with $4.33 million in sales, a steep 53.99% weekly decline. Yet buyer addresses surged 141.29% to 5,441, another example of participation expanding even as the dollar value of sales shrank.
BNB Chain followed with $2.58 million, down 36.26%. Its buyer count jumped 384.73% to 10,732, the largest percentage increase among the six leading blockchains.
Base was the exception. Organic NFT volume rose 4.06% to $2.16 million, while buyer addresses surged 253.04% to 2,323. CryptoSlam also recorded $4.8 million in wash trading on Base, up 79.91%.
Solana ranked sixth with $1.89 million in sales, down 11.08%, while its buyer addresses climbed 164.90% to 25,301.
Together, the six leading networks generated roughly $33.36 million in organic sales, representing nearly 89% of global NFT sales for the week.
The NFT sales leaderboard has an unexpected star
At the collection level, Courtyard on Polygon remained at the top with $6.3 million in sales, down just 0.93%.
The tokenized collectibles marketplace recorded 123,504 transactions, up 21.52%, with 18,459 buyer addresses and 14,921 sellers.
Ethereum-based Argonauts came next with $2.74 million, but sales fell 36.91%. Transactions dropped 48.15% to 1,204, while buyer and seller addresses declined to 422 and 490.
Then came one of the week’s strangest jumps.
Alchemix V3 Transmuter sales soared 622.03% to $1.83 million. Nearly all of that total came from just eight transactions involving four buyer addresses and three seller addresses.
That concentration matters. The tokens appear to be tied to positions inside a decentralized finance protocol rather than conventional digital artwork or profile-picture collections. CryptoSlam classified the transfers as NFT sales, but its dashboard does not independently establish the economic purpose behind each transaction.
Guild of Guardians Heroes on Immutable-Zk generated $986,168, up 3.5%, while Panini America reached $893,356 after sales increased 19.27%.
Panini’s performance also connected the week’s NFT activity directly to sports collectibles, with 13,469 transactions despite a 24.18% drop in buyer addresses to 762.
Bitcoin-based $ATMC BRC-20 NFTs followed with $716,730 in sales, down 20.32%. CryptoPunks recorded $706,667 after falling 37.39%, with only nine transactions involving eight buyers and nine sellers.
The most expensive trades offered another clue about where the week’s value was concentrated.
Alchemix V3 Transmuter #219 sold for $770,985.44, followed by #214 at $715,216. Both Ethereum-based tokens changed hands in WETH and were sold by and transferred to the same respective blockchain addresses.
A Bitcoin-based $X@AI BRC-20 NFT took third place at $402,534.35, equivalent to 5.19 BTC.
Two more Alchemix tokens rounded out the top five: #216 sold for $196,748.70, while #208 changed hands for $126,695.23.
Together, those four Alchemix transactions generated about $1.81 million, accounting for nearly all of the collection’s weekly sales.
The result is a market where the top-line figure is shrinking, but the underlying activity is becoming harder to summarize with a single number. More addresses, fewer transactions, sharply different blockchain performances and a handful of unusually large trades all point in different directions.