TL;DR
- NFT sales climbed to $430 million in May, breaking a five-month streak of consecutive market declines.
- The number of buyers jumped 50%, surpassing 936,000, while sellers fell to their lowest level since April 2021.
- NFTs tied to physical assets boosted Polygon in April, confirming the potential of hybrid assets to energize the sector.
The NFT market reversed its downward trend in May, posting its first monthly sales increase of 2025. According to CryptoSlam data, total transactions reached $430 million, up 15% from April’s $373 million. This rebound ends a sequence of five consecutive months of declines since peaking at over $900 million in December of last year.
Sales growth came alongside a sharp rise in the number of buyers. The number of users purchasing NFTs surged 50% in May, climbing from 622,000 to 936,000. This level of activity hadn’t been seen since October 2024 and contrasts with a drop in the number of sellers, which fell to 284,600 — their lowest figure since April 2021. This imbalance between supply and demand could drive increased competition for certain assets and trigger upward price adjustments.
At the same time, May saw the highest number of monthly transactions so far this year, with 5.5 million operations completed. This confirms that interest in NFTs hadn’t disappeared, but had remained on hold over the previous months. The widening gap between buyers and sellers suggests that a portion of the market is anticipating a sustained recovery and is taking advantage of lower prices to reposition itself.
The NFT Market Could Recover, but It Needs New Catalysts
Some analysts believe the NFT market is showing conditions for a rebound, though not enough to recreate the frenzy of 2021 and 2022. Yehudah Petscher, a CryptoSlam strategist, expects this process to gain traction once Bitcoin reaches its cycle peak. Meanwhile, Sara Gherghelas from DappRadar points out that the market needs fresh catalysts to sustain its momentum.
One of the most promising options is the integration of real-world assets with NFTs. This segment showed strong momentum in April when sales of physical asset-linked NFTs on the Courtyard marketplace pushed Polygon’s weekly figures to $22.3 million, overtaking Ethereum. These operations not only revived the market for Polygon-based NFTs but also demonstrated that hybrid assets could open up new business opportunities for blockchain platforms.
