Pudgy Penguins help drive weekly NFT sales to more than $400 million. These were the 5 best-selling digital collections.

• NFT sales had a breakthrough year in 2021, and over the past 12 months, volume has hit $25 billion.
• But after nearing $1 billion in a single week in January, NFT sales have slowed amid an ongoing bear market in cryptocurrencies.
• These were the five best-selling digital collectibles that helped drive $439 million in NFT sales over the past week. 

The cryptocurrency boom over the past few years has helped propel a newer market to record heights: digital collectibles known as NFTs. 

The craze has pushed total NFT sales volume to $25 billion over the past year as artists, investors, and entrepreneurs descend upon the nascent Web3 space. 

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique, irreplaceable, mostly digital items that users buy and sell online.

NFTs use blockchain technology to keep a digital record of ownership, similar to cryptocurrencies. They were first launched on ethereum, the same blockchain that supports the cryptocurrency ether, and most NFTs can still only be purchased using ether.

But a months-long sell-off in cryptocurrencies has taken a bite out of NFT sales more recently. Weekly NFT sales have been more than cut in half from its early January peak of nearly $1 billion, according to data from NonFungible.com.

Weekly NFT sales jumped 46% from $300 million to $439 million in the past week. Bored Ape Yacht Club and Cryptopunks have maintained their dominance as the most popular NFTs to own, which shows no signs of slowing down after the creators of BAYC, Yuga Labs, acquired Cryptopunks from Larva Labs.

These were the five best-selling collections over the past week, according to NonFungible.

5. Cool Cats

7-Day Sales Volume: $5.8 million
Number Sales: 200
Highest Sale Price: $99,000

Explainer: "Cool Cats are a collection of programmatically, randomly generated NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The 1st generation consists of 10,000 randomly assembled cats from over 300k total options. Cool Cats that have a variety of outfits, faces and colors – all cats are cool, but completed outfit cats are the coolest."

4. Pudgy Penguins

7-Day Sales Volume: $9.8 million
Number of Sales: 1,315
Highest Sale Price: $47,000

Explainer: "With 8,888 Pudgy Penguins sliding around on the freezing Ethereum blockchain, each Penguin is an official member of the Pudgy Penguins community found in the freezing cold, arctic region of the metaverse."

3. Doodles

7-Day Sales Volume: $51.6 million
Number of Sales: 1,217
Highest Sale Price: $867,325

Explainer: "Doodles come in a joyful range of colors, traits, and sizes with a collection size of 10,000. Doodles are a funky bunch that like to role play or transmogrify themselves into delicious treats. Holding a Doodle allows you to participate in coordinating the Doodles Community Treasury."

2. CryptoPunks

7-Day Sales Volume: $34.6 million
Number of Sales: 286
Highest Sale Price: $2.0 million

Explainer: "10,000 unique collectible characters with proof of ownership stored on the Ethereum blockchain. The project that inspired the modern CryptoArt movement."

1. Bored Ape Yacht Club

7-Day Sales Volume: $67.3 million
Number of Sales: 689
Highest Sale Price: $722,000

Explainer: "BAYC is a collection of 10,000 Bored Ape NFTs — unique digital collectibles living on the Ethereum blockchain. Your Bored Ape doubles as your Yacht Club membership card, and grants access to members-only benefits."