NFT Market Sees First Sales Rebound of 2025 in May as Buyer Interest Surges

After months of declining momentum, the NFT market finally showed signs of life in May. Sales of non-fungible tokens jumped 15% from April, reaching $430 million, marking the first month of growth in 2025, according to data from CryptoSlam.

The uptick follows five straight months of declining volumes, which had dropped from a $900 million peak in December 2024. But May brought a shift—not only in total sales, but also in the number of participants. Transactions hit a yearly high of 5.5 million, while unique NFT buyers surged by 50%, climbing to over 936,000, up from around 622,000 in April. That’s the largest buyer count recorded since October 2024.

At the same time, the number of unique sellers dropped to roughly 284,600, the lowest seen since April 2021 on CryptoSlam’s platform. This divergence between rising demand and shrinking supply could lead to more competitive bidding and potentially drive up valuations for digital collectibles.

“The NFT market will see a bounce back this year, probably just after BTC sees its top of the cycle,” said Yehudah Petscher, a strategist at CryptoSlam.

He added that while the signs point to recovery, the surge is unlikely to match the explosive growth seen in 2021 and 2022. “Don’t expect a repeat of the 21/22 euphoria that we saw in NFTs,” Petscher warned.

Analysts suggest new forms of utility may be needed to sustain momentum. According to DappRadar’s Sara Gherghelas, tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs) could be the next major catalyst for NFT adoption, especially in the context of decentralized finance and lending. Gherghelas pointed to April’s performance by Courtyard—a platform focused on RWA-linked NFTs—which helped push Polygon NFT sales to $22.3 million, briefly overtaking Ethereum in weekly volume.