Crypto data intelligence service Forkast Labs launches new series of NFT indices to track health of digital asset economy
Forkast Labs, a new data intelligence service formed by the January merger of cryptocurrency news site Forkast.News and market tracker CryptoSlam, has launched a series of new non-fungible token (NFT) indices that aim to capture the health of the digital asset economy in real time, the company announced on Tuesday.
The company said its main Forkast 500 NFT index aims to be "a proxy of the entire NFT market", measuring real-time performance across 21 blockchains including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon and Cardano.
Traditional digital asset market rankings primarily rely on data including prices, sales and transaction volumes, through which "it is hard to distinguish the health of the NFT economy", Forkast Labs co-founder and chief operating officer Sarah Chang said in an interview on Monday.
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In contrast, the Forkast 500 NFT index "provides a much more holistic and complete view of the overall market", she told the South China Morning Post.
Non-fungible tokens are displayed on the website of NFT marketplace OpenSea on February 28, 2022. Photo: Reuters alt=Non-fungible tokens are displayed on the website of NFT marketplace OpenSea on February 28, 2022. Photo: Reuters>
Chang added that Forkast Labs also plans to launch separate indices tracking cryptocurrencies later this year.
Forkast Labs' new indices include two separate trackers for NFT performance on Ethereum (Forkast Eth NFT Composite) and Solana (Forkast Sol NFT Composite), two of the most popular blockchains for such assets.
The main Forkast 500 NFT index is weighted by adjusting according to median market capitalisation and number of unique traders, according to the company. It uses a proprietary algorithm to filter out activity considered inorganic, including wash trading, which involves illegal collusion to manipulate prices.
"Traditional metrics often only give a myopic view as they are largely fragmented, price-centric and incomplete," Forkast Labs co-founder and co-chief executive Angie Lau said on Tuesday. "Forkast Labs can provide a deeper and more substantive view of the fundamental performance of digital assets."
Based on the Forkast 500 NFT index's measurement, the global NFT market declined 0.73 per cent on Monday afternoon from a day earlier, but gained 7.44 per cent from the first day this year.
The global NFT market has dropped 85.55 per cent since the beginning of last year, according to the index.
The launch of Forkast labs' new NFT indices reflects investors' growing demand for actionable information about the digital asset economy, as platforms in China expand into Hong Kong after the city threw out a welcome mat for these industries.
In late 2021, easy monetary policies during the pandemic fuelled a surge of public interest in speculative assets including cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The fervour cooled in the second half of last year amid a cryptocurrency market rout set off by the meltdown of several large platforms.
Before merging, both Forkast.News and CryptoSlam were investees of Animoca Brands, the Hong Kong-based blockchain video gaming unicorn behind metaverse and virtual land platform The Sandbox, which in 2021 helped kick off intense investment interest in digital real estate sold as NFTs.
Animoca is also one of the biggest investors in Web3, a loosely defined term that refers to a next-generation World Wide Web built around decentralised technologies such as blockchain. It boasts a portfolio of more than 400 companies.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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