Is the NFT Trend Returning?

Recently, there has been a significant movement in the NFT market and all eyes have turned to this area again. There is only one question in mind: Are the old glorious days of NFTs returning?

First of all, before touching on the recent developments, let’s take a look at the popular recent history of NFTs between 2021 and 2024.

2021: The Explosion Year of NFTs Peak Popularity: 2021 was a year in which NFTs received wide coverage in the mainstream media and attracted great attention. Beeple’s NFT called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” became a milestone when it sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s auction. NBA Top Shot made sports-based NFTs popular by making millions of dollars in sales. CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club Projects such as (BAYC) have pioneered NFT collections to become cultural icons. Investment and Technology-Focused Developments: Ethereum, NFT It has become the most used blockchain for transactions, but its high gas fees and environmental impacts have attracted criticism. Alternative chains such as Polygon, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain have gained popularity by offering cheaper and environmentally friendly solutions. Impacts on the World of Arts and Entertainment: Artists, musicians, and celebrities , showed great interest in NFT projects. Music groups such as Kings of Leon released their albums as NFTs.

2022: The Year of Market Maturation and ChallengesMarket Correction and Crash:In early 2022, the NFT market was still strong, but towards the middle of the year, NFT sales decreased along with the decline in the overall crypto market. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the bankruptcy of major crypto platforms such as FTX shook market confidence.Innovative Increase in Usage Areas: GameFi and Game NFTs: Play-to-Earn (P2E) concept, It became popular with games such as Axie Infinity, but was criticized for sustainability issues. Metaverse and Virtual Lands: Platforms such as Decentraland and The Sandbox led to the rise of virtual land NFTs. Regulations and Legal Issues: Regulatory efforts for the NFT market have begun in the USA and Europe. Although this increased the transparency of the market, it created uncertainty.2023: Adaptation and DiversificationNext Generation NFT Uses:Dynamic NFTs: NFTs that change based on user interaction have come to the fore.Soulbound Tokens (SBTs): Proposed by Vitalik Buterin, non-transferable NFTs began to be used in education, identity and professional certificates. Corporate Participation: Big brands such as Nike, Adidas and Gucci, NFT based products and digital fashion collections. Starbucks and Reddit developed NFT-based loyalty programs and gained millions of users. Community-Centered Projects: Communities were established around NFT collections through DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). Artists and creators intermediary by reaching their fan base directly eliminated.2024: Despair, Technological Developments and Integrations

The first six months of 2024 were a period in which the hopes of the crowd investing in NFTs gradually diminished.

In both popular PFP collections and art collections, new declines of up to 50% were observed on top of the base price declines of up to 80% in 2022 and 2023, and despair reached its peak. However, on the other hand, developments were continuing on the following issues:

Technological Advances: Ethereum’s Merge update, which greatly reduced energy consumption, alleviated environmental concerns in the NFT ecosystem. Decreases in transaction fees were also observed. Both the proliferation of L2 networks (such as Arbitrum, Blast and Optimisim) and the diversification of L1 networks (such as Sui, Sei and Aptos) brought periodic movements. Mobility continued significantly in the Solana ecosystem with low transaction fees and fast transactions. Major collectibles like Madlads have reached high base prices. Institutionalization and Mainstreaming: NFTs are starting to be integrated by more industries. New usage areas have emerged, especially in the fields of ticketing, finance, health and education. Trump’s NFT collection reached volumes of thousands of ETH. States began to increase regulations on NFTs to protect digital property rights.
Transformation of Social Perception: While the speculative approach towards NFTs has decreased, long-term value propositions and benefits have come to the fore. The community engaged in serious discussions on these issues. Uses outside of collection and art (e.g. ticketing, licensing) continued to grow.
Last Quarter 2024: Comeback

The NFT market, which has not been able to deliver what is desired in terms of price and performance, has shown a great comeback in the last 2 months.

Trump’s election victory, the liquidity in the crypto market almost doubling in the last 30 days, the approach of the tax period in America and the 80% increase in the ETH price are just a few of the important reasons that have mobilized the NFT market.

Weekly NFT trade volumes increased from $90M to $210M.

After a 2-3 year period at 3-4 ETH levels, the Pudy Penguins collection rose to 32 ETH with the $PENGU token news, while many collections such as Bored Ape Yatch Club and Fidenza saw a 50% increase in their base price.

At the same time, on the Eclipse, Vana and Celestia side, the OG collections experienced a 10-fold increase in mint price. $NST, the Ninja Squad NFT collection token of Ninja Traders, one of the largest Turkish communities, has achieved a 20-fold increase compared to last year with its recent price movements.

In addition, Magic Eden, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, launched the tokenized $ME token, while the news about the establishment of the Opensea Foundation shook the markets 1-2 days ago.

Looking at all these developments, it seems obvious that the trend in NFTs has started to turn positive again and will not resemble its old enthusiastic days in the coming months.

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