NFTs cemented themselves as the cornerstone of crypto innovation in 2024, driven by record minting activity and growing use cases.
The new year promises to push the boundaries of NFTs to their extremes, as practical applications drive mainstream adoption, cultural breakthroughs redefine the concept of ownership, and with momentum building on all fronts, the industry is set to achieve even greater things in 2025!
From infrastructure improvements to price spikes, here are five bold predictions that I believe will define the next chapter of the NFT revolution.
new mint record
The NFT industry has had its most active year yet, according to Electric Capital’s annual developer report.
Thanks to low transaction fees on Ethereum’s layer 2 solutions and increasing competition from alternative layer 1s, creators are launching more NFT contracts than ever before and are seeing equally strong demand: minting volume, transaction volume and the number of active minting wallets both hit all-time highs in 2024.
Looking ahead to 2025, the crypto industry should be ready for another wave of NFT innovation and activity. Renewed interest from creators and consumers, coupled with improved user experience and groundbreaking consumer-facing apps, should set the stage for unprecedented growth.
We will be keeping a close eye on new developments in the Abstract ecosystem and the continued rise of on-chain proxies like Virtuals and Wayfinder as the forefront of NFT adoption.
Source: Golden Finance
Infrastructure will play a greater role
While NFTs are most easily associated with image-heavy on-chain collectibles, we expect non-obvious non-fungible applications to gain the most adoption in 2025.
Stablecoin issuer Liquity recently integrated NFTs for V2, allowing users to transfer or trade their collateralized debt positions. Polymarket’s conditional NFTs facilitate the creation of betting markets, while emerging AI agent creation platform Virtuals uses NFTs in its Immutable Contribution Vault (ICV) system to track contributions.
NFTs will remain a comfortable format for artists to distribute their creations, but expect this transformative technology to play a greater role in actual on-chain applications.
Source: Golden Finance
Cambrian game explosion
In October, Starknet partnered with on-chain gaming masters at Cartridge to stress-test its L2 and set a new L2 speed record in the process! During the trial period, Starknet’s average fees were just $0.002 per transaction and it could process up to 867 transactions per second.
The rise of account abstraction has greatly improved the user experience for crypto newbies, and while mainstream laggards have yet to adopt crypto gaming at scale, the industry has given players ownership of in-game items and introduced token incentives to enable them to play Boost financial engagement while mining new data.
As blockchain infrastructure continues to improve in 2025, we expect the growing popularity of on-chain gaming to push L2 to reach +1k TPS for the first time ever.
Source: Golden Finance
Bitcoin Puppets are about to break out
Picture this: It’s November 2025, Bitcoin has just topped $500,000, and the United States under Trump continues to accumulate Bitcoin as a strategic reserve. This momentum shows no signs of slowing down.
In this era of newfound abundance, Bitcoin whales may try to show off their wealth through top NFT projects (much like Ether OG did during the last bull run). As a consensus game with a leading position in the niche Ordinals industry and strong community support, Bitcoin Puppets has a unique advantage and can occupy the largest market share of these inflows.
With such favorable conditions, Bitcoin Puppets may not only ride the bull wave but also solidify its status as a top 5 NFT collectible by the end of the year.
Source: Golden Finance
CryptoPunks may set a new record
Some of the biggest NFT sales in cryptocurrency have been CryptoPunks, and the “Alien” variety of this PFP series firmly dominates the top of the sales charts! Alien Punk 5822 sold for a record 8k ether ($24m) near the peak of the NFT bubble in 2022, with two of these highly sought-after collectibles changing hands for eye-popping 8-figure prices in 2024 .
We expect Ethereum to recover in 2025 as institutions and individuals alike seek increasing access to decentralized financial systems and on-chain computing. Amid these profound tailwinds, record-setting Alien CryptoPunk sales could be on the cards.
Source: Golden Finance
This article is reproduced with permission from: (ForesightNews)
Original author: William M. Peaster, Bankless
“Will there be a bull market for NFT in 2025? Top 5 predictions from foreign media: Chain games will explode, be blue-chip or hit new highs. This article was first published in "Crypto City"
