How much money did creators earn using @ethereum in 2021?

@BLulinski, @_miguelemos, @NazimRizvic and I have been trying to answer that question, and now we're open-sourcing our research for your input.

Current estimate: $3.5 billion

docs.google.com/document/d/1zpHoC_EXKmMEdcmWnLLBCLqevepj2pUe0Gue1UndNbc/edit?usp=sharing

Figuring this out is harder than it looks.

We're trying to only count revenue earned by "creators", but not people who only trade NFTs.

We did this by measuring revenue from ERC-721 mints directly on Ethereum, and looking at sales & royalty data from leading marketplaces.

One roadblock: for marketplaces like @opensea, we weren't able to distinguish primary sales "by the artist" and sales by a collector who minted an NFT.

So we're not counting that data in this total, so we're probably undercounting.

Would love suggestions on this point.

We welcome comments, questions, and feedback!

The doc above lays out our methodology, and links to a spreadsheet with all our data and sources.