Ether, which recently pushed past the $4,000 milestone, has been a key driver behind the NFT market surge

The non-fungible token (NFT) sector soared to a market capitalisation of over $9.3 billion as Ethereum-based collections increased along with the price of Ether.

NFT data tracker NFT Price Floor showed on Wednesday that the overall market capitalisation for NFT collections had reached $9.3 billion, a 40% increase from July. According to DappRadar data, NFTs had a market capitalisation of $6.6 billion last month.

Ether, which recently pushed past the $4,000 milestone, has been a key driver behind the NFT market surge. ETH traded above $4,600 and had a market capitalisation of more than $557 billion, as per CoinGecko.

Since many NFTs are based on the Ethereum mainnet, their sales and valuations are denominated in ETH. Because of this, bullish momentum of the crypto asset translates into higher market values and increased activity in the NFT space. At one time, the top 10 NFT assets by market cap were Ethereum-based.

CryptoPunks retains its spot as the top NFT collection by market capitalisation. NFT Price Floor data shows that the collection is worth at least 526,900 ETH (around $2.4 billion).

In the last seven days, CryptoPunks had nearly 4,200 ETH in volume, worth around $20 million. During the week, the collection had 90 total sales, averaging at $217,331 per NFT.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) follows CryptoPunks in the rankings with a valuation of $602 million, while Pudgy Penguins follows closely with $591 million.

Still, while BAYC leads in valuation, the Pudgy Penguins collection tops BAYC in terms of seven-day volume. DefiLlama data suggests that Pudgy Penguins had a volume of $8.7 million in the past week, while BAYC had $6.3 million.