NFT makes a spectacular comeback with 530 million USD in transactions in July, surpassing DeFi.

According to a report from DappRadar on August 7, the NFT market experienced a strong bounce back in July, surpassing DeFi in terms of user activity. This shift marks an important milestone, indicating that NFTs may gradually be regaining public attention after a prolonged period of gloom since the bear market of 2022.

NFT trading volume has nearly doubled

Data from DappRadar shows that the NFT trading volume in July surged by 96%, reaching 530 million USD. However, the number of transactions decreased slightly by 4%, with only about 5 million NFTs being bought and sold during the month.

NFT reverses user DeFi activity | Source: DappRadarThis reflects a significant change in buyer behavior: fewer transactions but each transaction's value is considerably higher. Specifically, the average selling price of each NFT has more than doubled, from 52 USD in June to 105 USD in July.

Platforms aimed at professional users and creators are the biggest beneficiaries in this growth surge. Among them, Blur accounts for up to 80% of the total NFT trading volume on Ethereum, thanks to the participation of professional traders and the lending feature Blend.

Trading volume and NFT sales in 2025 | Source: DappRadarConversely, OpenSea remains the exchange with the highest number of daily active users, around 27,000 traders, thanks to its diverse listing system and support for multiple blockchains.

Zora, a platform built on the Base network, is also gaining traction thanks to its Layer 2 solution and the native token ZORA, which helps reduce the cost of minting NFTs.

DappRadar evaluates that the NFT market has made significant progress compared to the early boom period. NFTs are no longer limited to artworks or digital collections, but are expanding into many practical applications such as digital identity, event tickets, gaming, and asset tokenization in the real world.

DeFi also shows impressive growth

Although NFTs dominated in July, the DeFi sector also performed well with significant growth. The total value of assets locked (TVL) in DeFi increased by more than 30%, reaching 259 billion USD by the end of the month, and hitting a new peak of 270 billion USD on July 28.

This growth is driven by increasing user demand and new capital flowing into lending, trading, and tokenized assets.

One of the prominent trends in DeFi this month is tokenized stocks. The number of wallets interacting with these types of assets has skyrocketed from around 1,600 to over 90,000, helping the market capitalization of this sector increase by up to 220%. This shows that assets in the real world (RWAs) are receiving increasing attention.

In terms of blockchain, Ethereum still leads absolutely with a TVL of 166 billion USD, far ahead of Solana in second place with 23 billion USD. Ethereum's dominance is largely due to the nearly 60% increase in ETH price in July, supported by positive signals from regulators and high staking interest rates, reaching 29.4% APY.

In the Solana ecosystem, Hyperliquid has emerged as a notable name, accounting for 35% of the network's total revenue in July. This platform has recorded high demand for derivative products, handling over 60% of the total 24-hour perpetual trading volume, with 15.3 billion USD in open interest and 5.1 billion USD in USDC bridged.

Thạch Sanh