Canadian corp.

The Leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has produced a combined total of $5 billion in revenue last month which was spread across both the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. The January sales smashed the prior record of $3.4 billion set last August 2021.

These record-breaking results are based on publicly available blockchain data, gathered by Dune Analytics. According to Dune Analytics data, OpenSea had the vast majority of its January trading action – more than $4.95 billion – occur on Ethereum. The balance of the record-setting volume for last month was on the Polygon network.

The Dune Analytics numbers found that those revenue splits were single-month records for each respective network, and the data further showed that OpenSea had its best single day in months on January 31, with an eye-popping $233 million worth of NFT trading. That breaks down to nearly $10 million worth of NFT sales per hour.

The volume of OpenSea sales is important because it’s an excellent indicator of the strength and growth of the NFT marketplace, which doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all. While the initial NFT surge was infatuation with the novelty of NFTs, its continuing expansion has been driven by other use cases. Specifically, many users are buying low-tier NFTs and flipping them for higher prices on a daily basis, somewhat similar to the way that contractors flip refurbished real estate.

There’s also high demand among high earners who have moved funds from beaten cryptos to buy up blue-chip NFT assets. The thinking behind targeting high-end projects such as Doodles, CryptoPunks, and Bored Ape Yacht Club – to name a few – is that they are a store of value during these high-inflationary times we’re currently living. Top-tier NFTs are analogous to a Dali or Picasso piece of art in the real world.

However, OpenSea faced some choppy waters in January as well. The leading NFT bazaar refunded approximately 750 Ethereum (ETH) – roughly equivalent to $1.8 million U.S. – to users on its platform who mistakenly sold pricey NFTs at deep discounts. What happened was that traders of valuable NFTs, which were priced on OpenSea for tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ETH – got snatched by some rogue shoppers using sleight of hand buys on inactive listings for the same NFTs. The sneaky shoppers made a steal by purchasing the old listings at beyond bargain prices. Prior to issuing the reimbursements, OpenSea co-founder, Alex Atallah posted this message to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR).

It’s difficult to tell if this trading debacle has been fully resolved, but don’t be surprised if some disgruntled sellers initiate some type of legal action regarding this open matter with OpenSea. But don’t feel too badly for the OpenSea team, they’ll be able to afford any potential legal bills after last month’s sales surge.

As humans have evolved over centuries, the internet we all use today is also constantly evolving. From static text pages (Web1 – early version) to interacting online across borders (Web2 – current version), the internet has come a long way.

Now there are talks about Web3 or Web3.0, which has become a buzzword in almost every online community. But not many have a clear idea of what Web3 is or how it will affect all of us. Will it change the way we use the internet today? Let’s break it down.

What is Web3?

Web3 is an idea, vision, and movement for a decentralized web that is nearly free of centralized third-party intermediaries. This feature essentially makes it pro-privacy for a user’s data and also renders it more user-centric instead of platform or business-centric. The idea was first presented by none other than the inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee in 1999 as a Semantic web that would involve AI.

Before moving forward, here is a simple example for you to understand the decentralized web better. At some point in our lives, we have all heard of our data being leaked or sold or hacked, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Why? Because we do not own it even if it belongs to us. Once our data is online or otherwise shared through centralized digital channels, people or corporations are free to do whatever they wish with this information, which has a direct impact on our daily lives. For instance, utilizing our data and preference to show us ads that the AI considers relevant depending on our data.

But what if we actually own all the data that belongs to us and are free to use however we like? This is exactly what a decentralized web will help us do. Not only this, but we will also be able to trade, transact, communicate, and work better without the involvement of any third party, be it a government, corporate, or influencer.

However, Web3 heavily involves cryptocurrencies and blockchain to keep its vision afloat. Today, we hear a lot about the NFT hype or countries making crypto a legal tender. While there is no timeline on when these might be implemented, we can still see multiple companies and platforms building the pieces of infrastructure that are key to Web3. For instance, Konstellation is a platform that envisions creating a decentralized capital market. It also offers interoperability, meaning you can carry out transactions between different blockchains. Doesn’t it sound interesting?

Finance is the core of everything that we do today across the globe. Currently, there is a third party involved if you have to trade or transact. In the coming years, decentralized finance (DeFi) will be the future, and platforms like Konstellation will then come in handy to build DeFi hubs.

Investing.com - Cardano was trading at $1.8464 by 04:09 (08:09 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Wednesday, down 15.27% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since June 21.

The move downwards pushed Cardano's market cap down to $70.0052B, or 2.75% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Cardano's market cap was $94.8001B.

Cardano had traded in a range of $1.8464 to $2.1550 in the previous twenty-four hours.

Over the past seven days, Cardano has seen a stagnation in value, as it only moved 0.04%. The volume of Cardano traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $2.9375B or 2.28% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $1.8456 to $2.2969 in the past 7 days.

At its current price, Cardano is still down 40.42% from its all-time high of $3.10 set on September 2.

Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading
Bitcoin was last at $58,276.4 on the Investing.com Index, down 6.66% on the day.

Ethereum was trading at $3,972.98 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 5.39%.

Bitcoin's market cap was last at $1,130.7834B or 44.50% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Ethereum's market cap totaled $489.1734B or 19.25% of the total cryptocurrency market value.