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.