Written by: 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.
The first half of 2024: A dream start and the “King of Memes”
Back to the beginning of 2024, I believe that for many NFT players, it can be called a "dream start".
After experiencing a series of NFT hype in the BTC ecosystem, market sentiment has warmed up for a while, and the price of BTC NFTs such as Node Monkey and Puppet Monkey once reached 0.5 BTC. Now that the BTC price has broken through a new high of $108,000, it is still incredible. To be frank, for many BTC inscription players, NFT players, and later rune players, rushing left and right, FOMO continues, and the ending is likely to be "the harder you work, the more money you lose", it is better to hold the currency.
But in any case, with the BTC spot ETF about to be passed and other favorable stimuli, "2024, the year belonging to the NFT track" has finally begun. The first to enter this stage is the Ethereum ecosystem NFT project - Tinfun.
January Tianfang: The "IP Dream" of the Top KOL in the Chinese NFT Circle
As a top KOL in the Chinese NFT circle, the launch of Tinfun undoubtedly embodies a lot of hard work of Laser Cat. In addition, the Alpha community behind it, the oriental ink painting style of Tinfun NFT and the narrative of the martial arts world are also many reasons why Tinfun has attracted much attention.
After Azuki achieved great success, countless players in the Chinese NFT circle hoped that an NFT project that could truly represent the "Eastern aesthetic" would stand out, gather a group of fans in the crypto world, and prove to the world that "Chinese style is the best!" According to the NFT sample pictures revealed by the project, Tinfun undoubtedly has such a possibility, so many people have high hopes for it. Not only that, at that time, Tinfun's mini-games were also once welcomed by the community. At the end of the year and the Spring Festival, the atmosphere of entertainment games was also relatively strong; in addition, Tinfun also made micro-innovations to the NFT Mint process-creating the "money-making Mint" gameplay, eliminating the trouble of NFT players wasting a lot of gas when they rush to cast first.
Due to various favorable factors, on January 7, the day of the public sale, the deposits received by the TinFun project exceeded 10,000 ETH, equivalent to 22.8 million US dollars, in less than 24 hours; and on January 8, the participation amount of the public sale reached the expected target of 25,000 ETH, and the public sale ended ahead of schedule. 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 where there is no trust, human nature is often difficult to stand the test.
But Laser Cat and the team behind it are clearly not that kind of people. Even Laser Cat himself said, "I may fail, but I will never run away."
Tinfun's subsequent airdrops and secondary transactions also triggered market FOMO, and the floor price once exceeded 0.8 ETH; but after the release of the image, the artistic details and homogeneity issues of Tinfun NFT were inevitably questioned by the market. Coupled with Tinfun's subsequent planned "IP development route", it ultimately could not escape the fate of the NFT project's "floor price spiral decline".
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 around 1,400 now.
Tinfun floor price information, source: NFTGo
It is worth mentioning that influenced by the third phase of Blur’s activities and the expected Blast airdrop, Tinfun passed a community vote in early March and unanimously decided to migrate the project to the Blast chain. Later, some Tinfun holders also obtained certain Blast ecosystem gold points and other rewards due to various Blast projects or activities, but in terms of NFT returns, it can only be said that it is better than nothing.
Looking at it now, to some extent, the Tinfun project illustrates one thing: NFT projects are still unable to break away from the "liquidity circle" and avoid the downward spiral of project tokens/NFT prices in the cryptocurrency market, especially on the IP development route, which is undoubtedly even more difficult.
February Nobody: NFT community blessed by "Stephen Chow's Halo"
If Tinfun has made a good start for NFT in 2024, then Stephen Chow's NFT project Nobody is more like another "star NFT project" that "takes advantage of the trend."
The project took more than half a year. The name of the project was Moonbox, which was inspired by the Moonlight Box in Stephen Chow's famous movie (A Chinese Odyssey). Later, in order to enhance the community attributes, it was changed to Nobody. Some community members even wrote songs and drew pictures in the name of Nobody, launching a series of secondary creations. After Tinfun successfully launched the "Money Mint", Nobody followed suit and also used it to sell NFTs and successfully completed the sale.
Not only that, after the sale ended, the floor price of Nobody quickly increased by about 5 times, and on February 5, the floor price once exceeded 0.9 ETH, and the trading volume reached 2500 ETH, which triggered countless people to enter the market with FOMO and continuous buying. It must be said that many NFT players at that time did not participate deeply in the project due to the influence of a series of previous stereotypes such as "celebrity NFT projects are all scams, money-making, and a one-shot flow", and they were also unprepared for this wave of violent pull.
Of course, if you don't get the "meat" of this wave of price increases, you will naturally avoid the "hit" of the subsequent wave of floor price declines.
Although Stephen Chow himself went to the Nobody community Discord to interact with NFT holders and even opened an X platform account to solicit community feedback on the subsequent development of the project, and Memeland founder and 9 GAG CEO Chen Zhancheng (9 gagceo.eth), who is also a celebrity in the Hong Kong NFT circle, bought Nobody#889NFT at a price of 19.52 WETH to directly express his support, Nobody was still like most NFT projects. After experiencing "questioning the opening of the picture", the price fell all the way, and finally in mid-March, the NFT fell below the issue price of 0.19527 ETH, and then gradually fell into silence.
According to data from the NFTGo website, the current floor price of Nobody is around 0.054 ETH, and the number of holding addresses is around 3000. As for Stephen Chow’s X platform account, the last update was on June 1 this year, which was a promotion for the 9527 Theater short play.
Nobody NFT floor price information, source: NFTGo
Since then, the "celebrity NFT failure case" has been added. Even Stephen Chow, the king of comedy and a generation of movie emperor, has not been able to break this curse.
BOME in March: A Meme Coin Carnival Triggered by NFT Artists
As March approaches, there is not much to say about specific NFT projects, but as the theme song of (Ultraman Tiga) says: "A new storm has emerged, how can we stand still?"
Just as the market was immersed in the joy of BTC price breaking a new high, a Meme coin carnival craze triggered by NFT artists has been brewing quietly.
Crypto artist Darkfarms 1 took the lead in firing the "first shot of NFT artist coin issuance in 2024". Perhaps someone had done this before him, but never reached the height of the project he released, because the name of this Meme coin is - BOME (Book Of MEME). After raising 10,000 SOL, Darkfarms 1 also withstood the test of human nature. Instead of absconding with the money, it pioneered a large amount of funds to join the token liquidity pool, thus setting off a "3-day fast pass through Binance" Meme coin miracle.
On March 14, shortly after BOME was launched, its market value quickly exceeded 50 million U.S. dollars; 9 hours after its launch, its market value exceeded 100 million U.S. dollars, and its price exceeded 0.0015 U.S. dollars, an increase of more than 30 times compared with the issue price;
On March 15, the price of BOME broke through $0.0025, setting a new record. Afterwards, its price skyrocketed like a rocket. At around 12 o'clock in the evening of the 15th, the price of BOME successfully broke through $0.01, and its market value increased to nearly $700 million.
Affected by the soaring price of BOME, the floor price of the NFT series SMOWL previously launched by Darkfarms once exceeded 0.4 ETH, with a single-day increase of 71.14% and a 7-day increase of 713.66%; in addition, the number of active addresses on the Solana network reached a peak in nearly a month (1.19 million) on the day BOME was launched, and the number of active addresses increased by as much as 115.66% from February 14 to March 14; affected by the BOME craze, the number of newly issued Memes on the Solana network surged from March 14 to 16, with 8,849 new SPL tokens added on March 14, which is expected to surpass the peak in nearly a month (9,690) this week.
Not only that, BOME also pioneered a new asset issuance method of "fundraising-style coin issuance", which has triggered countless imitators. For example, the Meme project COCO (Little Crocodile) initiated by NFT artist and crypto KOL Kero (@KeroNFTs) received more than 42,000 SOLs, worth more than 7.5 million US dollars, within 2 hours of launching the fundraising, and the market was crazy about it. In addition, Mfers founder Satoshi, Doodles co-founder and others followed suit, and Meme coins issued by NFT artists such as MFERSCOIN are also active in Solana, ETH, and Base ecosystems.
Of course, this coin issuance path has also brought more scams to the market, including the crypto KOL VT who subsequently defrauded more than 20,000 BNB, the crypto old sickle Huang Licheng (Maji) who defrauded more than 190,000 SOL, and Dexter behind GM.ai who raised nearly 160,000 SOL. They are all actual beneficiaries of this process.
But all of this cannot skip a crucial step, which is Binance listing BOME.
At noon on March 16, according to the official announcement, Binance will launch BOME 1-50x U-based perpetual contracts at 20:30 on March 16, 2024 (Eastern Time Zone 8).
As the news came out, market sentiment began to move from crazy to insanity.
After all, for many crypto projects that have gone through several rounds of VC investment and community financing, it is not easy for tokens to be listed on Binance. Now, a Meme coin released by an NFT artist has completed the "Binance listing journey" in just 3 days, which many projects cannot complete in 3 years. It is hard not to feel frustrated that "making a serious project is not as good as issuing a Meme coin." In addition, Solana's one-click coin issuance platform pump.fun has also begun to emerge. Since then, the "Meme coin craze" that has laid the main theme of this year and even this cycle has begun.
Although Binance later seized the opportunity to launch a batch of "VC coins" when market sentiment was high and liquidity was good, many "high FDV, low circulation" project tokens, in addition to unilaterally absorbing liquidity from the market, are hard to resist compared to Meme coins, which have a lower understanding threshold, a broader mass base, and a lower purchase cost.
After all, in the eyes of many people, countless VC coins that seem to be doing serious projects are not even as good as "Meme coins that make people smile and provide emotional value to people" from the perspective of usefulness.
From another comparative perspective, Meme Coin is also a fungible token of NFT. Regarding this point of view, we have elaborated on it in our article (Meme Coin: A Complete Alternative to NFT) in May this year. You are welcome to review it.
Regarding the NFT track, the 404 protocol, which focused on the concept of "image-to-coin conversion" in the first half of the year, once triggered market FOMO. The price of Pandora protocol token PANDORA once exceeded US$30,000, with an exaggerated increase. The subsequent 314 protocol (for details, see (Will the 314 protocol be the next ERC 721?)) also brought short-term attention to the market, but in the end it was forgotten by the crowd due to the unsustainable liquidity.
There are three more things worth mentioning about the NFT track in the first half of the year:
First, with the help of the Meme coin craze in the Solana ecosystem, Base also attracted a certain amount of market liquidity in March and April due to the low cost of interaction in the ecological network. Among them, NFT also briefly gained a certain amount of market attention. We have introduced some representative projects in the article (Counting the top NFTs in the Base ecosystem, who rises, who falls, and who issues coins?). Although no project successfully broke through afterwards, it also brought some incremental growth to the NFT track in 2024.
Second, this year is the year of the US presidential election. As the Republican presidential candidate, Trump has also been "frequently making efforts" in the NFT track. He previously launched his first NFT series "Trump Digital Trading Cards" in December 2022; in 2023, he launched two new series of NFTs, "Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2" and "Mugshot Edition". With these NFTs, Trump's total profit reached 7.15 million US dollars, which also indirectly confirmed that the NFTs of celebrities are indeed very capable of attracting money, although the result is likely to be a mess.
Third, Charlotte Fang, the founder of the well-known NFT series Milady, also launched a fundraising campaign in June, announcing the release of a Meme on the Ethereum chain called CULT. In just 7 hours, it raised more than 20 million US dollars. The market's enthusiasm and craze for Meme coins is still astonishing. But no one expected that this wait would take half a year.
In the second half of the year, the aftermath of the above events will continue.
The second half of 2024: Internal and external troubles and the coin issuance boom
As we enter the second half of the year and the Meme coin craze is in full swing, the NFT track has once again entered “garbage time”.
Countless blue-chip NFT projects have disappeared, as if they have disappeared from the public eye. Only a few NFT project founders such as Pudgy Penguins and Weirdo Ghost Gang are still active on the X platform, paying attention to the market trends and occasionally reporting on the project status and their views on the development of the industry.
What once again drew people's limited attention back to NFT was OpenSea, once the "world's largest NFT trading platform" - and the "crypto public enemy" it faces - the US SEC.
At the end of August, according to market news, the NFT market OpenSea received the Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, becoming another "targeted crypto project" after Coinbase, Lido, Bittrex, Uniswap, and Robinhood. Taking advantage of this incident, we also explained in depth the current industry issues of NFT in the article (OpenSea received the Wells Notice from the SEC, and the NFT track was scheduled to fail in advance?). The subsequent trends of many NFT projects also confirmed our judgment at the time.
As the industry continues to develop, NFT has gradually become the "identity certificate" and "equity certificate" of many projects. The former "IP carrier" and "collection value" have gradually been compressed, and the "marketing effect" that many Web2 companies and brands have high hopes for has also had little effect. However, the NFT track has ushered in another round of market expectations, that is - NFT platforms or NFT projects issuing coins.
In addition to Blast, which has a close relationship with NFT trading market Blur, multi-chain NFT trading platform Magic Eden and the upcoming new version of OpenSea are also highly anticipated. Animoca Brands' NFT project Mocaverse, blue-chip NFT Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, and Doodles are also among the potential coin issuance projects.
In this way, the NFT market is delaying its own garbage time while waiting, and is also looking forward to new hope while waiting.
In September, at the launch of the crypto project WLFI, US presidential candidate Trump attributed his changing attitude towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to the success of his NFT series.
At the end of October, the famous crypto artist Beeple wrote that "NFT speculators have left, leaving only core enthusiasts."
In November, according to CryptoSlam data, in October 2024, NFT transaction volume reached 356 million US dollars, an increase of 18% month-on-month, breaking the seven-month decline. In addition, the total number of NFT transactions has also increased. In October, the total number of NFT transactions was 7.2 million, an increase of 42% from 5 million in September.
In early December, when the market’s patience was gradually exhausted, the “NFT project coin issuance boom” that countless people had been looking forward to had not yet arrived. What came first was the bad news that the blue-chip NFT CloneX/RTFKT, the studio behind the clone, which once had a floor price of more than a dozen ETH, would cease operations in January 2025.
But the market has no time to grieve or even mourn for it, and what follows is the NFT project coin issuance wave that has been waiting for nearly 6 months——
On December 9, the Meme coin project CULT, which raised over 20 million US dollars and was initiated by Charlotte Fang, the founder of the NFT project Milady, was finally officially launched, which made people recall NFT for a short time. For details, please refer to the article (CULT is finally launched, is it a bull market ride or the last dance of NFT veterans?);
On December 10, the ME Foundation announced that TGE is now online and users can claim and stake ME tokens. To claim ME tokens, users need to load the Magic Eden mobile application and complete the claim. All unclaimed ME will belong to the ME pledgers.
On December 17, Pudgy Penguins officially announced that PENGU has been launched and is 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 supply will be permanently locked/destroyed after the 88th day. For more information about Fat Penguin and its parent company, please refer to our previous articles (Acquiring Frame, Building Abstract Chain, Subverting Base, Can Fat Penguin Take Up the Banner of Consumer Economy?), (Fat Penguin is about to issue a coin, can PENGU, Abstract, and OpenSea kill three birds with one stone?).
It is worth mentioning that the reason why Fat Penguin's coin issuance has been generally recognized by market users is that it has airdropped varying numbers of PENGU tokens to the Solana ecosystem, many other NFT series holders, and even the Ethereum ecosystem OG wallet in addition to its own ecosystem.
At this moment when 2024 is coming to an end, the suspense of NFT token issuance is gradually revealed one by one. Later players include OpenSea, which has registered a foundation in the Cayman Islands, Azuki, whose founder claimed that "Animecoin will have vision, products and real use cases, which is different from other meme coins", and even Doodles, whose founder hinted that the project will soon issue tokens. But whether they can replicate the wealth-making miracle of Fat Penguin and PENGU is still unknown.
Conclusion: When NFT narrative is no longer sexy, issuing coins becomes a double-edged sword
Finally, from the perspective of industry data, according to CryptoSlam data, NFT annual sales in 2024 will be approximately US$8.5 billion. Although this is far lower than the peak of the past few years, the number of buyers has seen a rare increase of more than 62%, reaching 7.5 million.
Although the NFT narrative is no longer as sexy as it was in 2022, and can easily attract millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, there is no doubt that as a technical means, it still occupies an indispensable position and role in the crypto market. Of course, for NFT projects, issuing coins is not a good thing that can make a lot of money, but a double-edged sword with advantages and disadvantages: if the issuance of coins is smooth, the token price is reasonable, and the market users have considerable returns or are relatively satisfied, then it is naturally a good thing that everyone is happy; but if the NFT project does not have a clear and comprehensive plan, but regards the issuance of coins as the "last straw", then the final outcome is likely to be drowning in the water.
After opening high and closing low, or more precisely opening low and closing low, the NFT market can now be said to have entered the bottoming out and rebounding stage. As for whether it can usher in a new round of revival in 2025, it still depends on the narrative direction, capital flow and attention focus in the market.
But no matter what, the story continues, NFT will always be the endorphin that stimulates the continuous flow of the crypto market, and money never sleeps.
