Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
At the end of the year, the crypto industry also ushered in its own "year-end summary moment". Compared with the hot sectors such as AI, Meme, Desci, etc., NFT is undoubtedly a little lonely. If it weren't for the launch of the fat penguin PENGU token at the end of the year, many people might have the question of "Did the NFT bull market really exist?"
Looking back at the whole year of 2024, the NFT track can be said to have a "bad fate". Despite this, it still undoubtedly has a place in the crypto market, and even becomes a trend that runs through it. In conjunction with this article, Odaily Planet Daily will review with readers a series of representative events in the NFT track in 2024, so that we can recall this year of "love and hate" for NFT.
First half of 2024: A dreamy start and 'King of Meme'
Returning to the beginning of 2024, I believe for many NFT players, it can be described as a 'dreamy start.'
After experiencing a series of NFT hype in the BTC ecosystem, market sentiment warmed up for a time; the prices of BTC NFTs like Node Monkeys and Puppet Monkeys once reached as high as 0.5 BTC. Now that BTC has broken the new high of 108,000 USD, it still leaves people in disbelief. To speak bluntly, for many BTC inscription players and NFT players, as well as later rune players, going back and forth, constantly FOMO-ing, the outcome is likely to be 'the harder you work, the more you lose money', and it might be better to just hold the coins still.
But in any case, under the good news stimulus of the imminent approval of the BTC spot ETF, '2024, belonging to the NFT track' has finally begun, and the first to take the stage is the Ethereum ecosystem NFT project - Tinfun.
January Tianfang: The 'IP dream' of top KOLs in the Chinese NFT circle
As a top KOL in the Chinese NFT circle, the launch of Tinfun undoubtedly embodies a lot of Laser Cat's effort. Additionally, the Alpha community behind it, the Eastern ink painting style of Tinfun NFT, and the narrative of the martial arts world are also among the many reasons why Tinfun has attracted considerable attention.
After Azuki achieved great success, countless players in the Chinese NFT circle hoped to have an NFT project that could truly represent 'Eastern aesthetics' to break through, gathering a group of its own fans in the crypto world, to prove to the world: 'Chinese culture is the coolest!' From the NFT examples revealed by the project, Tinfun undoubtedly has this potential, hence many people have high hopes for it. Moreover, Tinfun's mini games also received community support, especially as the end of the year approached the Spring Festival, the atmosphere for entertainment games was relatively strong. Additionally, Tinfun also made minor innovations to the NFT minting process - creating the 'money minting' method to avoid the gas waste caused by NFT players minting in advance.
Due to various favorable stimulants, on January 7, the day of public sale, the deposits received by the TinFun project exceeded 10,000 ETH in less than 24 hours, equivalent to about 22.8 million USD; and on January 8, the amount of participation reached the expected target of 25,000 ETH, leading to an early end to the public sale. Due to the large amount of participation, many overseas bloggers suspected that Laser Cat would 'run away directly', after all, in the dark forest of the crypto circle, human nature is often hard to withstand the test.
However, it is obvious that Laser Cat and the team behind it are not this type of person; Laser Cat himself even stated, 'I might fail, but I will definitely not run away.'
The airdrop and secondary trading after Tinfun also sparked market FOMO, with the floor price once breaking 0.8 ETH; however, after the opening of the image, the artistic details and homogenization issues of Tinfun NFT inevitably faced market skepticism, coupled with Tinfun's subsequent planning of 'IP development route', ultimately couldn't escape the fate of 'floor price spiral decline' for NFT projects.
According to data from the NFTGo website, the current floor price of Tinfun NFT is around 0.11 ETH, but the average transaction price is around 0.5 ETH, and the number of holding addresses has gradually decreased to about 1400.
Information related to Tinfun's floor price, source: NFTGo
It is worth mentioning that, influenced by the third phase of Blur's activities and expectations for the Blast airdrop, Tinfun decided through community voting in early March to migrate the project to the Blast chain. Subsequently, some Tinfun holders also received certain Blast ecological golden points and other rewards due to various Blast projects or activities, but as for NFT rewards, it can only be said that it was better than nothing.
Looking back now, on some level, the Tinfun project illustrates one thing: NFT projects still cannot escape the 'liquidity trap' and avoid the issue of token/NFT price spiraling down in the cryptocurrency market, especially in the development route of IP, which is undoubtedly even more difficult.
February Nobody: 'The halo of Stephen Chow' enhances the NFT community
If Tinfun set a good tone for NFTs in 2024, then the NFT project Nobody under Stephen Chow seems to be another 'celebrity NFT project' that 'rose to prominence.'
The project took more than half a year, initially named Moonbox after the Moonlight Treasure Box from Stephen Chow's famous movie (A Chinese Odyssey), later changed to Nobody to enhance community attributes, with community members even writing songs and painting under the name Nobody, initiating a series of secondary creations. After Tinfun successfully launched relying on 'money minting', Nobody followed suit and also successfully completed an NFT sale.
Moreover, after the sale ended, Nobody's floor price rapidly increased by about 5 times, and on February 5, the floor price once broke 0.9 ETH, with a trading volume of 2500 ETH, triggering countless people to FOMO into the market, with buy orders constantly coming in. It must be said that at that time, many NFT players, influenced by previous stereotypes that 'star NFT projects are all scams, just a money grab', did not deeply participate in this project and were equally unprepared for this wave of aggressive price increase.
Of course, those who did not benefit from this surge naturally avoided the 'blow' they could have endured from the subsequent drop in floor prices.
Although later Stephen Chow himself interacted with NFT holders on the Nobody community Discord, even opening an account on the X platform to solicit community feedback on the project's future development, and the founder of Memeland, a fellow notable figure in the Hong Kong NFT circle, Chen Zhancheng (9 gagceo.eth), even bought Nobody #889 NFT at a price of 19.52 WETH to express support, Nobody later still followed the path of most NFT projects, experiencing 'doubt over the opening of images' and subsequently seeing the price plummet, eventually breaking below the issue price of 0.19527 ETH in mid-March and gradually falling into silence.
According to data from the NFTGo website, the current floor price of Nobody is around 0.054 ETH, with the number of holding addresses around 3000. As for Stephen Chow's X platform account, the last update has been left on June 1 of this year, regarding a promotion of the 9527 theater short play.
Information related to Nobody NFT floor price, source: NFTGo
Thus, another 'failed case of celebrity NFT' has been added, and the King of Comedy, a generation's movie emperor Stephen Chow, could not break this curse.
March BOME: A meme coin frenzy triggered by NFT artists
As March arrives, there are not many specific NFT projects worth mentioning, but as sung in the theme song of (Ultraman Diga): 'A new storm has appeared, how can we stand still?'
Just as the market was immersed in the joy of BTC breaking new highs, a meme coin frenzy triggered by NFT artists has quietly brewed in the background.
Crypto artist Darkfarms 1 first fired the 'first shot of NFT artists issuing tokens in 2024'; perhaps someone had done this before him, but they had never reached the height of the project he released, because this meme coin is called - BOME (Book Of MEME). After raising 10,000 SOL, Darkfarms 1 also endured the test of human nature, not running away with the funds, but innovatively adding a large amount of money into the token liquidity pool, thus launching a '3-day express Binance' meme coin miracle.
On March 14, shortly after the sale of BOME, its market value quickly broke 50 million USD; within 9 hours, its market value surpassed 100 million USD, and its price broke 0.0015 USD, increasing more than 30 times from the issue price.
On March 15, BOME's price broke 0.0025 USD, continuing to set new highs; subsequently, its price skyrocketed like a rocket, successfully breaking 0.01 USD around midnight on the 15th, with its market value increasing to nearly 700 million USD.
Affected by the soaring price of BOME, the floor price of the NFT series SMOWL previously launched by Darkfarms once broke 0.4 ETH, with a single-day increase of 71.14%, and a 7-day increase of 713.66%; in addition, on the day BOME went live, the number of active addresses on the Solana network reached nearly a month's peak (1.19 million), showing a maximum increase of 115.66% during the period from February 14 to March 14; influenced by the BOME craze, the number of new meme tokens issued on the Solana network surged from March 14 to 16, with 8,849 new SPL tokens added on March 14, expected to surpass the near month's peak (9,690) this week.
Moreover, BOME has also pioneered a new asset issuance method called 'donation-based token issuance,' inspiring countless imitators. For example, the NFT artist and crypto KOL Kero (@KeroNFTs) initiated the meme project COCO (Little Crocodile), which received over 42,000 SOL, worth over 7.5 million USD, just two hours after launching the donation. The market went crazy for a while. In addition, Mfers founder Satoshi and Doodles co-founder also followed suit, with meme coins like MFERSCOIN issued by NFT artists becoming active on Solana, ETH, and Base ecosystems.
Of course, this path of token issuance has also brought more scams to the market, including the crypto KOL VT, who defrauded over 20,000 BNB, the crypto old scythe Huang Licheng (Maji) who defrauded over 190,000 SOL, and Dexter behind GM.ai who raised nearly 160,000 SOL, all actual beneficiaries in this process.
But all of this cannot skip the crucial step, which is - listing BOME on Binance.
On March 16 at noon, according to the official announcement, Binance will launch BOME 1-50x U-based perpetual contracts on March 16, 2024, at 20:30 (UTC+8).
As soon as the news broke, market sentiment began to shift from frenzy to madness.
After all, for many crypto projects that have experienced several rounds of VC investment and community financing, getting a token lined up for listing on Binance is a challenging task, while now, a meme coin released by an NFT artist completed the 'Binance listing journey' in just three days, a journey that many projects cannot finish in three years. This inevitably leads to a sense of frustration, as if 'doing a serious project cannot compare to issuing a meme coin.' Coupled with the emergence of the Solana ecosystem's one-click token issuance platform pump.fun, the 'meme coin frenzy' that has set the tone for this year and even this cycle has begun.
Although subsequently Binance took advantage of the high market sentiment and good liquidity to quickly list a batch of 'VC coins', many 'high FDV, low circulation' project tokens are hard to avoid being abandoned compared to meme coins, which have a lower understanding threshold, broader public base, and lower buying costs.
After all, in the eyes of many, countless seemingly legitimate VC coins, from the perspective of usefulness, are even less valuable than 'meme coins that make people smile and provide emotional value.'
From another comparative perspective, meme coins are also fungible tokens (homogenized tokens) of NFTs. We detailed this viewpoint in our article (Meme coins: a complete substitute for NFTs) back in May; feel free to revisit it.
Regarding the NFT track, in the first half of the year, the 404 protocol, which focused on the concept of 'image-to-coin conversion', once sparked market FOMO, with the price of Pandora protocol token PANDORA exceeding 30,000 USD, showing exaggerated increases. The subsequent 314 protocol (see our article (Will the 314 protocol be the next ERC 721?)) also brought short-term attention to the market, but ultimately faded into obscurity due to unsustainable liquidity.
Three noteworthy things about the NFT track in the first half of the year:
One is taking advantage of the meme coin frenzy in the Solana ecosystem, Base also attracted a certain market liquidity in March and April due to the low interaction costs of the ecological network, during which NFTs also briefly gained some market attention. We previously introduced some representative projects in our article (Counting the leading NFTs in the Base ecosystem, who rises, who falls, who issues tokens?); although no project ultimately succeeded in breaking through, it still brought some incremental growth to the NFT track in 2024.
Second, this year coincides with the U.S. presidential election year, and as the Republican presidential candidate, Trump has also 'frequently exerted effort' in the NFT track. Previously, he launched his first NFT series 'Trump Digital Trading Cards' in December 2022; in 2023, he released two new NFT series 'Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2' and 'Mugshot Edition', earning a total profit of 7.15 million USD from these NFTs, which indirectly confirms that celebrity NFTs indeed have strong money-earning capabilities, although the outcome is likely to be a mess.
Third, Charlotte Fang, the founder of the well-known NFT series Milady, also initiated a fundraising activity in June, announcing the launch of a meme called CULT on the Ethereum chain, which raised over 20 million USD within just 7 hours, showcasing the market's enthusiastic and feverish reception of meme coins to an astonishing extent. However, no one expected that this would take a waiting period of almost half a year.
And in the second half of the year, the aftershocks of the above events will continue.
Second half of 2024: Internal troubles and external troubles with a surge in token issuance
As we enter the second half of the year, with the meme coin frenzy in full swing, the NFT track once again welcomes its 'garbage time.'
Countless blue-chip NFT projects have fallen silent, as if disappearing from public view, and only a few NFT project founders like Pudgy Penguins and Weirdo Ghost Gang remain active on the X platform, keeping an eye on market movements and occasionally reporting on project updates and their views on industry developments.
Once again, the limited attention of people has been drawn back to NFTs, by the once 'largest NFT trading platform in the world' OpenSea - still facing its 'crypto enemy' - the U.S. SEC.
At the end of August, according to market news, the NFT market OpenSea received a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, becoming another 'crypto project under scrutiny' after Coinbase, Lido, Bittrex, Uniswap, and Robinhood. Through this incident, we also conducted an in-depth discussion of the current industry issues of NFTs in our article (OpenSea receives SEC Wells Notice, a premature defeat for the NFT track?). The subsequent trends of many NFT projects also confirmed our judgment at that time.
As the industry continues to develop, NFTs have gradually become the 'identity certificate' and 'equity certificate' for many projects. The previous 'IP carrier' and 'collectible value' have gradually been compressed, and the 'marketing effect' that many Web2 companies and brands had high hopes for has also yielded little, but the NFT track has welcomed another round of market expectations, which is - NFT platforms or NFT projects issuing tokens.
In addition to Blast, which has a close relationship with the NFT trading market Blur, the multi-chain NFT trading platform Magic Eden and the soon-to-be-released new version of OpenSea are also highly anticipated. Animoca Brands' NFT projects Mocaverse, blue-chip NFTs Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, and Doodles are also among the potential token issuance projects.
Thus, the NFT market is prolonging its garbage time while hoping for new hope.
In September, during the WLFI launch of the crypto project, U.S. presidential candidate Trump attributed his change in attitude toward Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to the success of his NFT series.
At the end of October, famous crypto artist Beeple stated that 'NFT speculators have left the market, leaving only core enthusiasts.'
In November, according to CryptoSlam data, in October 2024, NFT trading volume reached 356 million USD, a month-on-month growth of 18%, breaking the trend of seven months of decline. Additionally, the total trading volume of NFTs also increased, with 7.2 million transactions in October, a 42% increase from 5 million in September.
At the beginning of December, on the edge of the market's patience being worn thin, the eagerly awaited 'NFT project token issuance tide' had not yet arrived. What came first was the bad news that the blue-chip NFT CloneX/RTFKT, which once had a floor price of more than a dozen ETH, would cease operations in January 2025.
But the market is already too late to mourn or even grieve for it; what follows is the long-awaited NFT project token issuance tide that has been waiting for nearly six months -
On December 9, the meme coin project CULT, initiated by Milady's founder Charlotte Fang, which raised over 20 million USD, finally officially launched, allowing NFTs to be briefly remembered again. For more details, please refer to our article (CULT officially launches, is NFT's old guard issuing tokens a bull market ride or the last dance?).
On December 10, the ME Foundation announced that TGE has gone live, users can claim and stake ME tokens, and claiming ME tokens requires loading the Magic Eden mobile app and completing the claim. All unclaimed ME will belong to ME stakers.
On December 17, Pudgy Penguins officially announced that PENGU had gone live and was open for claiming. Eligible participants can start claiming PENGU, including holders of Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, Rogs, and SBTs. Holders have 88 days to claim, and all unclaimed supplies will be permanently locked/destroyed after the 88th day. For more information about Pudgy Penguins and the parent company behind it, please refer to our previous articles.
It is worth mentioning that the issuance of tokens by the Fat Penguin has gained general recognition from market users because of its grand vision, distributing varying amounts of PENGU tokens to holders from the Solana ecosystem, various other NFT series holders, and even OG wallets from the Ethereum ecosystem.
At this moment, approaching the end of 2024, the suspense of token issuance in the NFT track is gradually being revealed, with later contenders including OpenSea, which has registered a foundation in the Cayman Islands, Azuki, whose founder claims that 'Animecoin will combine vision, product, and real use cases, different from other meme coins,' and even Doodles, whose founder hinted that the project is about to issue tokens. However, whether they can replicate the wealth creation miracle of Pudgy Penguins and PENGU remains an unknown.
Conclusion: When NFT narratives are no longer attractive, token issuance becomes a double-edged sword.
Finally, from the perspective of industry data, according to CryptoSlam data, the total sales of NFTs for the year 2024 are estimated to be around 8.5 billion USD, although far below the peak of previous years, the number of buyers has surprisingly seen a growth of over 62%, reaching 7.5 million people.
Although the narrative of NFTs is no longer as attractive as it was in 2022, capable of attracting millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, it undoubtedly still holds an irreplaceable position and function in the crypto market as a technical means. Of course, for NFT projects, token issuance is not necessarily a universally profitable good thing; rather, it is a double-edged sword with both advantages and disadvantages: if token issuance goes smoothly, with reasonable token prices and satisfactory or relatively satisfactory returns for market users, then it is a good thing for all; but if NFT projects do not have a clear and comprehensive plan and regard token issuance as 'the last straw,' then the final result is likely to be drowning in the water.
After experiencing a high opening and low closing, or more accurately a low opening and low closing phase, the NFT market can now be said to have entered a stage of bottoming and rebounding. Whether there will be a new round of resurgence in 2025 still depends on the narrative direction, capital flow, and focus of attention in the market.
But regardless, the story continues, NFTs will always be the endorphin that stimulates the crypto market to keep surging; money never sleeps.
