The creation and trading of NFTs have become the main on-chain activities in the current blockchain ecosystem. According to information shared by Etherscan, 95% of on-chain transaction activities on mainstream EVM blockchains in the past few weeks have been related to NFTs.
Etherscan also noted that compared to the previous method of issuing meme coins through the ERC20 token standard, the cost of deploying/minting/transferring tokens on the EVM is lower because the text data is written in the Input Data during the engraving process.
However, Etherscan also pointed out that NFTs on Ethereum are quite counterintuitive because they rely on third parties to index these transactions and apply token rules. In other words, although engraving on Ethereum provides a different way to handle token-related operations compared to smart contracts, this method is not as intuitive and efficient as smart contracts in automating and decentralizing the execution of token rules.
Although NFTs on the EVM blockchain may not be intuitive from a technical and application perspective, this issue has not been a major concern for retail investors. Since mid-November, NFTs have been frequently created on the EVM chain, leading to a surge in on-chain activities and a significant increase in Gas fees, which has even affected the normal operation of some networks like Arbitrum.
Etherscan believes that, in a way, NFTs, apart from bringing speculation, can also be seen as a stress test for blockchain and infrastructure providers to assess their limitations.
