InvestNot yet confirmed elsewhere1 publisher2 min readPublished
NFT buyer addresses fell 85% in a week when trades slipped only 7%
Weekly NFT sales edged up 0.90% to $39.85m in the seven days to Oct. 10 as buyer addresses fell 85.33%, according to CryptoSlam data. With trades down only 6.92% and the largest collections keeping their buyers, the drop points to a change in how CryptoSlam counts addresses.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Seller addresses on CryptoSlam's dashboard fell by a similar 84.45%, to 30,598, over the same seven days.
- All seven leading chains lost between 78.88% and 92.68% of their buyer addresses, with Base and BNB Chain down the most.
- Courtyard, the top collection, saw its buyer count fall only 7.50% to 19,547 while its transactions rose 7.52% to 133,068.
Why it matters
- contradiction Because a Polygon collection shows more buyers than Polygon itself, CryptoSlam's chain and global address totals cannot be compared with its collection counts, and the 85% fall cannot be taken as a count of people leaving.
- decision Anyone budgeting per user from this dashboard would see spend per buyer jump nearly sevenfold in a week, so the dollar and trade series are the usable inputs until the address count is explained.
- exposure Polygon's second-place ranking depends on one business, since Courtyard's vault-backed collectibles make up 89.1% of the chain's counted sales.
Working CryptoSlam's percentages backwards puts the prior week at about 206,760 buyer addresses [17] and about 835,900 transactions [18]. Trades per buyer went from about 4.0 to 25.7 [19], and spend per buyer from about $191 to $1,314 [21]. The average ticket moved far less, from roughly $47.25 to $51.22 [22].
There are two ways to read that. The first is the narrowing story: casual buyers left, and the 30,332 addresses still counted [2] are each trading about six times as often as last week's average buyer [19], at much the same ticket size. The second is that CryptoSlam changed how it counts or de-duplicates addresses when it rolls collections up into chain and global totals. The crypto.news report does not mention any change of method.
The chain and collection figures favor the second reading. All seven of the leading chains lost between 78.88% and 92.68% of their buyers in the same week [7]. The largest collections kept theirs. Courtyard's buyers fell 7.50% [14], CryptoPunks held at 18, Guild of Guardians Heroes rose 5.54% and Pudgy Penguins rose 54.10% [16]. Courtyard's 19,547 buyers alone equal about 64% of the global count [23]. A collection's buyers should be a subset of its chain's, yet Courtyard's exceed the 10,055 CryptoSlam lists for Polygon, the chain it trades on, by 9,492 [24].
We think the 85% line [2] mostly records a change in how CryptoSlam tallies addresses above the collection level, and that activity measured in dollars and trades was close to flat [1][4]. The counter-case has some support. Argonauts lost 28.53% of its buyers [16], and on Ethereum buyers fell 85.84% to 4,254 while sales rose 4.52% [6]. A thinner, richer buyer base would produce the same pattern.
The dollar series depends on something too. CryptoSlam keeps wash trading out of its ranked sales, and on Polygon the excluded wash volume of $19.03m [9] is more than twice the $8.62m of counted sales [8]. Base shows $4.80m of wash against $2.40m of sales [10]. Across the five chains with wash figures in the report, excluded volume comes to about $25.06m, roughly 63% of the headline sales total [25]. Polygon's counted sales are also 89.1% one collection [13]: Courtyard, which says its tokens represent physical items held in its vault [15].
What to watch
- Next week's CryptoSlam buyer count: if it stays near 30,000 with no stated change of method and collection-level buyer counts start falling toward the chain-level declines, the narrowing reading is right and ours is wrong.
- Any CryptoSlam note on address de-duplication or chain coverage that explains why Courtyard lists more buyers than Polygon.
- Base's wash volume, up 79.91% to $4.80m against $2.40m of counted sales, and whether CryptoSlam's filter keeps excluding it as it grows.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption30
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence50
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Weekly NFT sales totaled $39,853,744 in the seven days to Oct. 10, up 0.90% from the previous week, according to CryptoSlam data.
- [2]
CryptoSlam recorded 30,332 buyer addresses, down 85.33%.
- [3]
CryptoSlam recorded 30,598 seller addresses, down 84.45%.
- [4]
NFT transactions fell 6.92% to 778,055 from the previous seven-day period.
- [5]
Based on the dashboard totals, the average recorded transaction value was about $51.22.
- [6]
Ethereum ranked first with $17,604,074 in seven-day sales, up 4.52%, about 44.2% of the global total; its buyer addresses fell 85.84% to 4,254.
- [7]
Chain-level buyer addresses fell 85.84% on Ethereum, 78.88% on Polygon, 88.02% on Bitcoin, 84.82% on Immutable, 92.68% on Base, 92.67% on BNB Chain and 88.49% on Solana.
- [8]
Polygon ranked second with $8,622,071 in sales, up 5.76%; its buyer addresses declined 78.88% to 10,055.
- [9]
CryptoSlam identified $19.03 million in Polygon wash trading, down 17.86%, 68.81% of the network's combined $27.65 million volume and separate from its ranked sales figure.
- [10]
Base had $2,402,530 in sales, up 27.87%; its separately recorded wash volume rose 79.91% to $4.80 million.
- [11]
Ethereum's separately tracked wash-trading volume reached $1.15 million, up 12.45%.
- [12]
Bitcoin's wash volume declined 2.42% to $80,297; Immutable's recorded wash trading totaled $47.
- [13]
Polygon-based Courtyard topped collections with $7,681,622 in sales, up 6.56%, about 19.3% of global NFT sales and 89.1% of Polygon's sales.
- [14]
Courtyard recorded 133,068 transactions, up 7.52%; its buyer addresses fell 7.50% to 19,547 and seller addresses declined 3.96% to 15,397.
- [15]
Courtyard says its digital collectibles represent physical items held in its vault, with owners able to request delivery.
- [16]
CryptoPunks buyer addresses were unchanged at 18; Pudgy Penguins buyers rose 54.10% to 94; Guild of Guardians Heroes buyers rose 5.54% to 591; Argonauts buyers fell 28.53% to 233.
- [17]
Implied prior-week buyer addresses were about 206,760.
- [18]
Implied prior-week transactions were about 835,900.
- [19]
Transactions per buyer address rose from about 4.0 in the prior week to about 25.7, roughly 6.3 times.
- [20]
Implied prior-week sales were about $39.50m.
- [21]
Sales per buyer address rose from about $191 in the prior week to about $1,314, nearly sevenfold.
- [22]
Average transaction value rose from about $47.25 in the prior week to $51.22, about 8%.
- [23]
Courtyard's 19,547 buyer addresses equal about 64% of the global buyer count.
- [24]
Courtyard's buyer count exceeds Polygon's chain-level buyer count by 9,492, although Courtyard is a Polygon collection.
- [25]
Excluded wash volume on the five chains with reported wash figures totals about $25.06m, roughly 63% of headline sales.
Sources
1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.
- crypto.newsNFT sales rise to $39.85m as Pudgy Penguins jump 125%
1 article · October 10, 2026
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