Remember those days when mainstream media reported on how NFTs were sold for mind-blowing sums of money in Ether? When one of the most talked about topics on the internet was “What are NFTs” It was huge.

We saw some of our favorite memes make the headlines as NFTs for example, Nyan Cat sold for about 300 Eth, Disaster Girl sold for 180 Eth, and Pepe the Frog sold for $1 million. 

Well, today meme coins are now the talk of the town though meme coins also had their run in the past that’s why you might hear phrases like “meme coin season”. 

One of the leaders of this “meme coin season” as some may call it is Pepe the Frog. The green frog is back but not as an NFT but as $PEPE, the meme coin that has added a few millionaires to Earth’s 8 billion population. 

How Are NFTs Doing in 2023?

NFTs kicked off 2023 on a positive note in January NFTs sales volume was $1.49 billion which is an improvement from $746 million in December 2022. All in all sales volume in Q1 2023 was 3.04B growing from 1.88 Billion in Q4 2022.

NFT marketplaces Blur is currently the marketplace with the most daily trading Volume, Blur surpassed OpenSea in February 2023.

According to data from NFTGO in the past 3 months, Blurs has the most trading size by volume with 2,129,135.41 ETH followed by OpenSea with 759,427.27 ETH.

Now to the top NFT collections by sales in the last 30 days, it’s all green at the top as Bored Ape leads the pack in terms of sales and transactions followed by DMarket and Azuki.

At number 10 and 11 are Milady Maker and Nakamigos, two meme NFT collections. 

A Look At Some Meme NFTs in 2023 So Far

Milady Maker is a collection of 10,000 generative pfpNFT’s in a neochibi aesthetic inspired by street-style tribes. The lo-fi avatars were launched by Remilia.

The NFT project has so far had a great year. It started off on a good note in January by reaching a high of 1.887 ETH which is more than 2x 0.73 ETH which was the price it used to close the year 2022. 

Milady Maker ended Q1, 2023 above 1 eth and started Q2 with a bang from an all-time high(ATH) of 2.32 Eth on April 10th to another ATH of 3 Eth on April 29th. 

Milady Maker continued with the same momentum in March reaching a new ATH of 3.75 ETH on March 2nd before breaking into 4 ETH on March 7th. 

At the time of writing its floor price is currently 3.8 ETH with a market cap of $70,145,388.

The same can not be said for Goblintown a meme NFT that has been declining since 2022. After hitting a peak of 7.35 ETH in June 2022.

Goblintown started 2023 with a floor price of 0.65 ETH now in March 2023 it is currently at 0.226 ETH with a market cap of $4,227,047.

In 2023 we’ve also seen the likes of Nakamigos and Redacted Remilos Babies. 

Nakamigos was launched in March, a collection of 20,000 NFTs currently owned by 5890 unique owners.

Take a look at this on March 24th it was trading at 0.01455 ETH and on April 10th it got to an ATH of 0.85 ETH which is 58.4x in less than 3 weeks.

But since then it has been on a steady decline currently trading at 0.19ETH with a market cap of $7,110,494.

Below is an image of the top five trending collections on OpenSea within the past 1 hour at the time of writing. 

Notice how they all have the same art style as Milady Maker? This is very typical in the crypto world once a meme coin or NFT makes wave other similar projects using the same paradigm usually spring up.

One of such similar project is Redacted Remilio Babies a collection of 10,000 neochibi pfpNFT’s expanding the Milady Maker paradigm with the introduction of young J.I.T. energy and schizophrenic reactionary aesthetics. 

The floor price was relatively flat all through Q1 2023, it started the year at 0.1047 ETH by April 5th it had increased to 0.222 ETH since then it has had 3 all-time highs, and its latest all-time high is 1.57 ETH on March 10th. 

Final Thoughts 

Memecoins have been on a rampage so far in Q2 2023, the rise of  $PEPE is nothing short of bewildering, let’s start from when Coingecko started tracing the meme coin. 

On April 18th, 2023, $PEPE was trading at $0.000000190 with a market cap of $72.3 million by March 6th it rallied to an ATH of $0.00000372 and a market cap of $1.678 billion. 

In less than a month $PEPE had done about 194x, remember this is starting from when Coingecko started tracking. 

To me, it is simply the most stunning event that has happened in the crypto space so far this year. 

If you combined all the meme NFT we have talked about so far $PEPE’s market cap which is currently  $742.26 million is light years ahead of their market cap combined. 

Another meme coin Bob Token did about 34x between April 22nd and May 7th. 

Now are meme NFTs doing as well as meme coins in 2023? Well, “so far no” but with the rise of the Milady Maker inspired projects let’s keep our fingers crossed because we will have to watch and see. 

Also Read: How To Launch Your Own Memecoin In Under 30 Seconds

[Editor’s Note: This article does not represent financial advice. Please do your research before investing.]

Featured Image Credit: Chain Debrief 

This article was written by Godwin Okhaifo and edited by Yusoff Kim