Tiger Exotic set launched on 13th July
Following two successful Garbage Pail Kids digital card sales – and Blockchain Heroes due on 8 August – the WAX blockchain is quickly becoming a go-to location for collectibles.
What’s interesting about this momentum isn’t the initial success of the releases, however. Instead, what’s been more significant is how the entire marketplace ecosystem on WAX is evolving.
When we tracked the launch of the original Garbage Pail Kids release, the flow from purchase to trading was simple.
The only place to buy the card packs was (and remains) the Topps GPK dapp, but users can’t trade their cards and packs within that dapp. Effectively it’s just a storefront.
Instead, users started trading on the Simple Market dapp, which is an open marketplace for trading any NFT on WAX. A couple of days post-launch, this was joined by GPK Market, the official marketplace designed for trading GPK cards and unopened packs.
Both marketplaces received plenty of traffic with GPK Market eventually taking the lead position, most likely due to its nicer UX.
However, the most popular dapp for trading in terms of the transactional value wasn’t an NFT marketplace but Alcor Exchange, which is a decentralized exchange for the trading of WAX-based tokens.
It doesn’t support the trading of individual GPK cards, only unopened packs, but as these have become the most valuable items in the GPK ecosystem, Alcor Exchange quickly became the top market in terms of value.
Since those early days, two more dapps have launched and become part of the GPK NFT trading ecosystem.
Atomic Assets is an NFT standard for the entire EOSIO system. WAX is just one of the blockchains that use this technology. In that regard, it has the potential to enable trading across multiple blockchains although users who want to trade GPK items need to convert their NFTs to this new standard, which adds considerable friction. For that reason, while popular, Atomic Assets hasn’t yet captured much value.
The second new dapp is Collectables.io, which is an accessible GPK-focused marketplace that’s proving to be very popular.
The interactions between these different dapps can be clearly seen when we look at the data arising from the two GPK launches; the original set on 12 May and the Tiger Exotic set on 13 July.
Breaking down the daily activity into three segments, obviously, the Topps GPK dapp is mainly accessed at launch, and then activity drops when the card packs sell out.
GPK Market’s popularity was highest in the early stages in May when there was less competition, but even after the Tiger Exotic NFT launch, it remains a key dapp for trading. But, as more marketplaces launch, the accumulated daily activity of the other marketplaces becomes much larger.
A similar pattern is seen when considering the daily trading values, with GPK Market’s share of total reducing over time, especially post-13 July.
More generally, clearly, the majority of trading occurs in the days after the launches have sold out, with multiple days of more than $60,000 of trading value recorded. This reduces to days of sub-$10,000 tradings in the weeks following.
It’s also worth noting there was much more trading following the launch of the original set than the Tiger Exotic set. Probably this is a combination of there being more packs in the original sale and pricing uncertainty given no-one knew how well-received GPK would be on WAX.
But now it’s clear GPK is currently the most successful project on WAX. No doubt, there will be many more set launches in the coming months. What will be more interesting to track though is the launch of other NFT collectible projects?
The Blockchain Heroes set due out on 8 August is a collection from the Bad Crypto Podcast team that’s already building a strong audience. Other planned releases include Street Fighter collectibles and memorabilia from William Shatner.
The collecting on WAX is only getting started.
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