Has the fan economy affected the price of non-fungible tokens (NFTs)?

In recent years, with the rapid development of blockchain technology, the emergence of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) has become a disruptive and innovative application that has attracted widespread attention and triggered frenzy. This study examines the momentous but may be easily neglected price factor in the NFT market. Using hand-collected daily data on the number of followers of 150 NFTs on Discord from April 18 to 15 October 2022, empirical results find that the fan economy on social media platforms has a positive impact on NFT pricing. Furthermore, this impact has a certain time-lagged effect. To ensure the robustness of the research, this paper also collects Twitter followers as an alternative indicator to measure the fan economy, and all the empirical results of the Twitter platform are significant. The findings of this paper are of great significance for studying the factors affecting the price of NFTs and provide certain assistance for the decision-making of NFT issuers and investors.