NFT market size, by segment 2018-2021

NFT projects in both art and gaming were both worth several millions of U.S. dollars in 2020, but were much smaller compared to figures in 2021. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs are unique, non-transferable digital assets stored in blockchain. When purchasing one of these using a cryptocurrency like Ethereum, you get a digital, blockchain-backed certificate of authenticity. For this reason, they are often used to prove the ownership of digital files, including GIF, JPEG, or MP3 formats. Once digital files are uploaded as non-fungible tokens on blockchains, they can be offered for sale, since it would be always possible to distinguish the original file from its copies shared online.

Value of sales involving a non-fungible token (NFT) in gaming, art, sports and other segments from 2018 to 2021 (in million U.S. dollars)

Characteristic	2018	2019	2020	2021
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Release date

January 2022

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2018 to 2021

Special properties

Ethereum blockchain only; All figures are estimates and likely subject to change due to the changing Ethereum (ETH) price; Does not include in-game transactions

Supplementary notes

The numbers shown refer to sales volume, meaning NFT sales between a buyer and seller. The source mentions these figures do not include transactions made within the NFTs themselves, like financial transactions within NFT games. Sales volume and in-game transactions combined are referred to as "traded volume".

The numbers provided were rounded.

The source defines the segments as following:

Art: Marketplace, project or individual artist who produces, sells or generates content in the form of an NFT which is considered to be a work of art or relates directly to an art form whether manual or generative;
Collectibles: Project whose primary function is to issue tokens intended to be collected. These tokens can be part of a system that includes gamification or a set of interactions between collectibles themselves or between the collectors and players;
Gaming: Video game using the NFT standard. This can be Trading Card Games (TCG), strategy role-playing games (RPG) or any other fun-based gaming experience incorporating NFT;
Metaverses: Parallel digital universes which offer a set of unique experiences to users. These virtual worlds are accessible via a computer, virtual reality headset, or even a smartphone. They can be compared to the experiences offered by Virtual World Second Life and more recently to the film Ready Player One;
Utilities: Covering a wide variety of projects in which the NFT itself does not necessarily have a gaming or artistic function. Among other use cases utilities can be NFT domain names, tickets and assets that can grant access or specific rights to their owner;

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