Ethereum’s NFT Comeback: Trader Count Soars Back to 40,000 as OpenSea’s OS2 Leaves Beta

After almost two years of dwindling interest, the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum is flashing unmistakable signs of life. According to on-chain analytics compiled by crypto-exchange Bitget, the number of unique addresses that bought or sold an Ethereum NFT on June 11 jumped to “nearly 40,000,” a level last seen in the first week of June 2022, at the tail end of the last NFT boom.

The rebound comes in the wake of OpenSea’s long-awaited overhaul. On 29 May the marketplace formally ended the beta phase of “OS2,” a rebuilt version of the platform that now supports token trading across 19 blockchains and introduces Voyages — a quest-based rewards programme that grants users experience points (XP) for completing on-chain actions. The timing of the trader-count recovery suggests that OpenSea’s incentives are working exactly as intended: coaxing collectors and flippers who had migrated to rival venues, or to memecoin speculation, back into the NFT fold.

From Chill to Thrill: How We Got Here

Daily NFT traders on Ethereum cratered through 2023 and early 2024 as liquidity rushed to newly fashionable layer-2 networks and to airdrop-fuelled competitors such as Blur. By last December, the seven-day average had slipped below 18 000 wallets — barely a quarter of the peak registered during the “JPEG summer” of 2021–22. Market depth followed suit: January 2024’s monthly volume on OpenSea was under US $60 million, a 99 % drawdown from the record US $5 billion printed in January 2022.

But the picture began to change this spring. OpenSea insiders had teased OS2 since February, pledging a ground-up rebuild that would “become the best destination for everything on-chain,” as co-founder and chief executive Devin Finzer put it. Public launch day delivered a concrete value proposition:

• Multi-asset support: users can now swap fungible tokens as well as NFTs without leaving the site.
• Cross-chain interoperability: Solana, Arbitrum, Base and 16 other chains are integrated into a single order book.
• Lower fees and faster indexing: OpenSea claims a 30 % performance improvement for collection pages and trade settlement.
• Voyages rewards: tasks such as sharing a collection gallery, buying on a newly added chain, or completing a cross-chain swap earn XP that the community widely expects to translate into eligibility for a future $SEA token airdrop.

Blockworks’ early hands-on review described Voyages as “turning OpenSea into a sort of quest experience” where usage, social engagement and on-chain experimentation are gamified.

Incentives in Action

Preliminary data indicate that the programme is creating the desired flywheel. News outlet AInvest reports that monthly active wallets on OpenSea rose 44 % in May, to roughly 467,000, the highest tally since April 2023. Although OpenSea has not disclosed XP distribution numbers, Telegram and Discord channels devoted to “airdrop hunting” are awash with screenshots of users racing to level-up their accounts.

The 40,000-trader milestone on Ethereum offers a cleaner signal because it captures aggregate activity across all marketplaces, not just OpenSea. Nevertheless, chain-level flows line up neatly with the timing of OS2’s release:

While volumes remain a shadow of the 2021–22 frenzy, liquidity has improved enough for collection floors to firm up. Established projects such as Pudgy Penguins and Azuki recorded 15-20 % upticks in floor price over the past fortnight, reversing months of drift.

Why 40 000 Matters

At the height of the speculative mania in June 2022, Ethereum saw just over 42,000 daily NFT traders. That figure became a shorthand benchmark for what “healthy” organic activity looks like when wash-trading and mercenary farming are stripped out. Dipping below 20,000 in late 2023 raised existential questions about the asset class; climbing back to 40,000 suggests that the market still has a large enough engaged user base to sustain new experiments in utility and culture.

Moreover, the rebound coincides with macro tailwinds:

• Layer-2 fee compression: Average gas to purchase an ERC-721 on mainnet fell below US $3 in May, the lowest cost since the London upgrade.
• Regulatory clarity in the U.S.: The SEC formally closed its probe into OpenSea in February, removing an overhang that had deterred corporate IP holders from launching collections.
• Tokenisation megatrend: Brands from Starbucks to Sony continue to pilot NFT-based loyalty passes, keeping mainstream visibility alive even during crypto price drawdowns.

Caution Flags

Not everyone is convinced the surge is sustainable. Observers point out that XP can be farmed with multiple wallets, potentially inflating unique address counts. Blockworks notes a “cynic’s perspective” that OpenSea is paying for engagement by dangling the SEA airdrop “carrot.” On-chain sleuths have already identified clusters of wallets executing low-value round-trip trades to rack up activity points.

Liquidity is another concern. Bitget’s dashboard shows that ETH-denominated NFT turnover, while up week-on-week, is still 95 % below 2022’s record highs. Collections outside the top tier remain thinly traded, and price discovery can be erratic: a single large sell order can move a mid-cap project’s floor by double digits.

Finally, OpenSea’s strategic pivot into fungible tokens brings it into direct competition with decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and cross-chain bridges such as Wormhole. Analysts at AInvest warn that expanding too far beyond NFTs could “dilute focus” just as Blur, Magic Eden and a revitalised LooksRare fight for the same user base.

What Happens Next?

OpenSea declined to comment on when — or even if — XP will convert into a token distribution, saying only that the Cayman-based OpenSea Foundation “is committed to a thoughtful rollout and utility-backed mechanics” for $SEA. In the meantime, Voyages quests will refresh weekly, heightening the incentive to keep wallets active. Competing marketplaces are unlikely to sit idle: Blur has already teased “Season 4” of its own points campaign, and Magic Eden is beta-testing a cross-protocol rewards layer that aggregates activity across Solana, Bitcoin and Ethereum.

For now, however, Ethereum’s on-chain charts tell a story of rekindled curiosity. A market that many pundits had written off as moribund in late 2024 now boasts daily participation on par with its last bull cycle. Whether the renaissance stems from genuine demand for digital collectibles or from speculative positioning for the next airdrop may ultimately be less important than the simple fact that wallets — and therefore users — are back.

As Finzer said in OpenSea’s launch announcement, “OS2 is the foundation for the next generation of OpenSea.” If the numbers hold, it may also mark the foundation of Ethereum’s next NFT chapter.