Nearly All NFTs Are Literally Worthless, According To Damning Study

It's undeniable that much of the world has moved on from the once-inescapable craze of NFTs as people grew bored of Bored Apes and left Lazy Lions behind, but perhaps nothing proves that quite like a recent study from Dappgambl.

During the heyday of NFTs, their doubters felt that the garish JPEGs were scams — "collectibles" whose value was inflated by a zealous market, but ultimately worthless. According to Dappgambl's study, many NFTs are now literally worthless.

The study intended to survey the health of the NFT market and analyzed 73,257 NFT collections. Of those surveyed, 69,795 of them have a market cap of 0 Ethereum (ETH). In essence, this means that an estimated 95 percent of NFTs literally are worth nothing currently.

The study further finds that of all the NFTs minted that they surveyed, only 21 percent were ever sold. "Our study identified 195,699 NFT collections with no apparent owners or market share," Dappgambl wrote. The site further stated that the environmental impact of creating those unsold, worthless NFTs is the equivalent of "the yearly emissions of 3,531 cars."

Dappgambl decided to check their data while ignoring the giant swath of unsold, worthless NFTs and look at only the top-value items, but the outlook for NFTs there was similarly bleak, as 41 percent of the top NFTs are selling between $5 and $100 — a far cry from the days when NFTs regularly made headlines for selling in the millions.

"These statistics not only underline the disparity within the top echelons of the NFT world but also serve as a stark reminder that, despite all the glitter and allure, genuine value in this market can be elusive," Dappgambl wrote.

Offering some advice on how the NFT market could bounce back from being literally worthless, Dappgambl opined that NFTs need to actually do something.

"To weather market downturns and have lasting value, NFTs need to either be historically relevant (akin to first-edition Pokémon cards), true art, or provide genuine utility."

This advice echoes what many critics at the height of the NFT craze were saying about the phenomenon — that they were useless and oftentimes very ugly.

It seems, by Dappgambl's analysis the only way for NFTs to bounce back from death is to change what fundamentally made NFTs appealing for its biggest champions in the first place.