2024 is about to pass. At the end of 2024, the airdrop of Magic Eden's token $ME and the collective rebound of Ethereum's 'old blue chips', especially the token $PENGU of 'Fat Penguin' Pudgy Penguins, the tangible wealth effect has finally brought back market attention to NFTs.
What kind of year has it been for NFTs? Rhythm BlockBeats reviews the NFT market of the past 12 months for you. After reflecting on the NFT market for 2024 with us, how would you rate the performance of the NFT market in 2024?
January: The pattern of the world being divided into three parts initially formed, the end of 'hexagonal avatars'.
In December 2023, the total monthly transaction volume of Solana NFTs exceeded approximately $365 million, slightly surpassing Ethereum's approximately $363 million. Looking back, this marked the beginning of the NFT world being divided among Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin (Ordinals). Although at the end of the year, Ethereum reaffirmed its status as the current king chain of the NFT industry through absolute monopoly on top market cap NFT projects and player volume, if we rewind to January this year, the NFT market will have to go through this whole year in a divided stance.
Ethereum NFTs began this year with 'vintage Mickey Mouse'. Due to U.S. laws allowing copyright ownership for only 95 years, in January this year, the copyright for the old Mickey Mouse was no longer owned by Disney and became public domain. Thus, we saw 'Mickey Mouse' dominating the charts on OpenSea.
Image source: OpenSea
But immediately after, there was bad news—Twitter canceled the use of NFTs as Twitter avatars. This seemed to tell us that apart from crypto players, no one in the world would care whether an avatar is worth $10 or $100,000. Regardless, do you still remember this 'hexagonal avatar'?
Image source: X
The star new projects of this month include:
Pizza Ninjas (Bitcoin Ordinals), another Tier 1 project in the Bitcoin ecosystem has been born.
RSIC (Bitcoin Ordinals), the most popular pre-mined rune NFT series quietly airdropped before the rune protocol went live, making pre-mined runes fashionable.
Tinfun (Ethereum, later migrated to Blast), the power of the Chinese community has reshaped the glory of the Ethereum mainnet.
ittybits (Ethereum inscriptions), a 10x opportunity in a niche track, sparked a rise in the entire small image of Ethereum inscriptions, but unfortunately had no successors.
CryptoUndeads (Solana), a presale that made a fortune with the Cabal platform, streaked across like a meteor.
February: ERC-404 'Pandora's Box', Yuga Labs acquires 'Moonbirds'.
The concept of 'integrated tokens' shined brightly in early February, with the first project of ERC-404, 'Pandora's Box', undoubtedly being the absolute star of early February, having surged nearly 30 times.
Image source: Pandora
At that time, we had such a concept—
ERC-404 directly shaped a 'token symbiosis relationship', capable of being traded on CEX and also a disruption to existing NFTfi products. As long as oracles are introduced, leveraging native NFTs based on ERC-404 becomes easy (directly going long or short on ERC-20 tokens), and direct lending is also easy, no longer just storing small images at designated addresses but can operate directly based on ERC-20 tokens.
But now, this concept has not been realized; instead, the 'Hybrid token mixing' model that became popular later on Solana, where the rise of meme coins drove the rise of community cult-like NFT series, showcased the effect of liquidity dual spirals.
In February, Yuga Labs announced the acquisition of the development team PROOF behind Moonbirds, possessing top NFT IP/projects such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, 'Monkey Land' Otherdeed, Meebits, and Moonbirds, becoming an NFT 'giant'. At that time, our viewpoint was—
Yuga Labs is no longer cool, and the time left for Yuga Labs to think may be limited; this will be a race against the bull market.
Now it seems that the attention and excellent market performance that Pudgy Penguins and Doodles received at the end of the year provide evidence for this viewpoint.
The star new projects of this month include:
Quantum Cats (Bitcoin Ordinals), although at that time the sale price of 0.1 Bitcoin led to some market divergence, now at a price of 0.3 Bitcoin, the blue-chip Bitcoin NFT status of this project has become indisputable.
March: Blast mainnet launch, Runestone airdrop triggers rune craze.
The Blast mainnet went live on March 1, marking the 'first shot' of the March NFT market. However, overall, the lively scene this month was Bitcoin Ordinals.
First was the rise of the 'DMT (a concept that derived a form of generative art based on Bitcoin block data)' concept that began at the end of February. As the leader of the DMT concept, Natcats created a single sales record of 1.3 Bitcoin before any Bitcoin NFT trading market was launched.
Image source: X
Next was the Runestone airdrop that occurred in mid-March, this enormous-scale airdrop included over 112,000 Bitcoin addresses, and within just two days became the third largest NFT series by total market value across all chains. It is also the predecessor of today's number one rune $DOG.
Image source: BlockBeats
The impact of the Runestone airdrop on the Bitcoin ecosystem is profound, with 'free, fair, and big truck' becoming the evaluation criteria for the excellence of Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem projects for a long time this year.
At the same time, on Solana, Mad Lads reached its peak this month, and holders were very happy to await their Wormhole airdrop.
Overall, it was a relatively lively month, but there were still some disappointing news. Starbucks announced that its NFT loyalty reward program 'Starbucks Odyssey' on Polygon would shut down after this month, and Kevin Rose also sparked controversy due to selling a bunch of small images.
The star new projects of this month include:
Runestone (Bitcoin Ordinals), the legend of runes starts from this stone.
CENTS (Bitcoin Ordinals), 10,000 minted and on-chain penny tokens, have become the highest market value art series in Bitcoin.
Plutocats (Blast), quite like 'Nouns' on Blast, soared due to obtaining far more Blast Gold allocation than other NFT projects.
Crypto Valley (Blast), this farming game issued 1,500 free 'farmer' characters, causing a temporary FOMO, but has long been neglected.
April: Bitcoin welcomes the halving, Base NFTs have seen growth.
In the star new projects of March, we should also include the Open Edition series 'MUTATIO' released by XCOPY on Base, which sold 1,023,831 pieces during the 2-day minting period, with total sales exceeding 700 Ethereum.
Image source: BlockBeats
But the highlight was the meme token $FLIES launched by the project's community in April, which surged under the recommendation of XCOPY himself.
On the Blast network, the game fantasy.top, 'Friend Trading', continues to be popular.
Of course, the Bitcoin network is still the hottest. The epic Bitcoin produced from the halving was sold at a price of 33.3 Bitcoin, giving birth to an epic Bitcoin rune. It seems that everything in the Bitcoin ecosystem is stabilizing positively, but in the end, this epic Bitcoin did not yield good returns for players, and it was even a failure...
The star new projects of this month include:
Blob (Bitcoin Ordinals), a self-funded airdrop, launched with an all-star lineup and even took the epic Bitcoin. Just when everyone was expecting a new Bitcoin blue-chip to appear as a generative art positioning, it collapsed due to a series of chaotic operations. This could be one of the most disappointing Bitcoin NFT investments in the past year.
Prometheans (Bitcoin Ordinals), the CyberKongz team's first attempt in the Bitcoin ecosystem, was a successful airdrop, but afterwards they stumbled in the sales of the PFP series and then left the Bitcoin ecosystem, abandoning rune number 2 DECENTRALIZED.
May: The beginning of a quiet transition.
Starting from this month, the NFT market of 2024 began to enter a relatively quiet phase.
This month, there was really not much to say from the perspective of degens fighting on-chain. The news was mostly about things like Pudgy Penguins' toys entering the stores of the retail giant Target in the U.S., and DeGods returning to Solana.
The standout this month was Milady, rising against the trend.
June: Cold and desolate, pitifully tragic
This month, we saw CryptoPunks under 30 Ethereum. This is the first time since August 2021 that the floor price of CryptoPunks has fallen below 30 Ethereum.
Image source: BlockBeats
In addition, Three Arrows Capital spent about 140 Ethereum in total to acquire a full set of golden skin BAYC + 2 MAYC + BAKC, totaling four Yuga Labs NFTs, which were auctioned at Sotheby's on June 18. At the peak of NFTs, the price of this set of assets should have exceeded 1,000 Ethereum. However, in June, the floor price of BAYC once fell below 9 Ethereum.
It can be said to be the darkest hour for NFTs. Until the last week of June, the old Ethereum blue-chip NFT projects finally showed a rebound. CryptoPunks rebounded by 24%, $BAYC once reached a rebound of 30%, Pudgy Penguins once rebounded by 50%, and Azuki once rebounded by 35%. The flagship Mad Lads on Solana also rose by 40%, and the top Bitcoin projects NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets also rose more than 20%.
In June, another NFT project became popular due to the airdrop from LayerZero, which is Kanpai Pandas. Market dissatisfaction with the LayerZero airdrop spread to this project, and there were doubts about it being a 'whale warehouse', but it actually wasn't.
At the end of June, Abstract, the now popular 'Penguin Chain', also made its debut in its current new form. The predecessor of Abstract, Frame, as an NFT Layer 2 chain, had been silent since extending the airdrop pre-claim period after its announcement on January 30. Finally, at the end of June, Frame finally revealed its trump card—this chain was acquired by Pudgy Penguins' newly established parent company Igloo. Thus, all three brands of the Igloo ecosystem were unveiled—Pudgy Penguins, the on-chain IP licensing platform Overpass, and Frame.
Frame has undergone a brand overhaul. Besides being renamed Abstract, the overall vision has been upgraded from empowering creators and providing a more convenient and safer NFT user experience to targeting mass consumers and promoting large-scale adoption of crypto.
Looking back, the spark after the winter began to ignite at this time. In addition to Abstract, there were also some star new projects in June:
Writ of Passage by The Beacon (Arbitrum), total supply of 10,000, minting price of 0.115 Ethereum, sold out in 7 minutes after entering the FCFS round. Selling 10,000 NFTs at this price in the market environment at that time was indeed rare; of course, this was mainly because it was essentially a pre-sale of tokens.
Gigabud (Solana), the public sale price at that time was 1.25 $SOL. As the official PFP of Grass 'WiFi Grass', this series not only brought a considerable number of airdrops later but could also be sold for more than 1.25 $SOL after the airdrop, making it very profitable.
End of the year: directly recovering to a heated state.
The few months that were left blank without writing were not due to my laziness, but rather because there was really nothing worth writing about. Some things happened during these blank periods:
Magic Eden confirmed it would issue tokens, and in the end of the year, the airdrop of $ME provided NFT players with generous returns.
Azuki confirmed it would issue tokens.
NFTs began to gradually become popular as a means of cold-starting many projects from mid-year. At that time, what was popular were Free Mint projects with a total supply of 1,000 or even fewer, clearly stating there would be token airdrops in the future. By the end of this year, we saw the wildly popular Kaito.
On the Solana network, the rise of NFT series driven by the popularity of meme coins blurred the boundaries between memes and NFTs, with the most typical representative being Retardio Cousins.
Ape chain was small and hot for a while, with low mint prices producing some high-multiple projects, but in terms of the amount of returns, there were no cases that shocked the market.
Everyone's impression of the end-of-year events is very deep, with OpenSea's token issuance already on the way, and chains like Abstract, Monad, Berachain, and Story that have not issued tokens have ignited the related NFT projects due to the potential wealth effect of token airdrops, letting Doodles, Azuki, and even Cool Cats soar. New star projects began to emerge, such as Abstract's On-chain Heroes and Fukuhedrons on the Bitcoin network.
The long-awaited spring returns to the earth, with only one old blue-chip quietly leaving the stage, which is Clone X. This old blue-chip project with a Nike background announced its cessation of operations on December 3, shocking all NFT players just like announcing no longer eating at a New Year's Eve dinner.
Looking forward to the new year, Abstract's mainnet will go live in January, and Monad, Berachain, Story may also present new opportunities, just hope that everyone doesn't go online too tightly, as fragmentation is unfriendly to degens.
On the foundation of Ethereum's old blue-chip stability, although it is difficult for Ethereum to produce projects that can compete with old blue-chips (the investment and resources of old blue-chips are really hard to imagine that there will be investors putting in great effort to chase after what old blue-chips have already achieved), new narratives might bring new opportunities, such as AI-related NFTs.
More and more token issuance projects may choose NFTs as a low-supply and easy-to-control starting method as a preheating means.
Bitcoin NFTs still have room to grow upwards.
NFTs are no longer the NFTs we are familiar with; the content and IP narrative no longer meet the current version standards for filtering new projects, with 'token issuance' and 'conspiracy' becoming mainstream. However, it does not prevent us from discovering the high-quality content we like and love from within, and NFTs are still growing.
Perhaps the concept of NFTs is already outdated, but the thing we like to play with has not changed; it has always been images.
I am finally about to finish my words. Now, how would you rate the NFT market for 2024?
This article is reprinted with permission from: (Rhythm Blockbeats)
Original author: Cookie
'2024 NFT Market Review! These JPGs still don't want to exit the stage, directly recovering to a heated state at the end of the year' this article was first published in 'Crypto City'.
