NFT in 2024: Pictures that don't want to leave the scene

Author: Cookie

2024 is coming to an end. At the end of 2024, the airdrops of Magic Eden's token $ME and the collective recovery of ETH's 'old blue-chip' tokens, especially the airdrop of 'chubby penguin' Pudgy Penguins' token $PENGU, have brought real wealth effects and attracted market attention to NFTs after a long absence.

What kind of year has it been for NFTs? BlockBeats reviews the NFT market over the past 12 months for you. After reviewing the NFT market for 2024 with us, how would you rate the performance of the NFT market in 2024?

January: The initial formation of the three-way power in the world, the end of the "hexagonal profile"

In December 2023, the monthly total trading volume of Solana NFTs reached approximately 365 million US dollars, slightly surpassing Ethereum's approximately 363 million US dollars. Looking back, this marks the beginning of the NFT world of Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin (Ordinals). Although Ethereum has proven itself to be the king of the NFT field at present through its absolute monopoly over top market value NFT projects and player volume, if we go back to January this year, 2024, the NFT market will have spent the whole year in a situation where it is divided among the three powers of the world.

Ethereum NFT started this year with 'Vintage Mickey Mouse'. Due to US copyright laws, which only allow ownership for 95 years, in January of this year, the copyright of the old version of Mickey Mouse no longer belongs to Disney and is open to the public. So we saw 'Mickey Mouse' dominating the rankings on OpenSea.

But then, there was some bad news - Twitter has canceled the feature of using NFT as Twitter avatars. This seems to be telling us that, besides Crypto players, no one else in the world will care whether an avatar is worth 10 dollars or 100,000 dollars. Anyway, do you still remember these 'hexagonal avatars'?

This month's star new projects include:

Pizza Ninjas(Bitcoin Ordinals), another Tier 1 level project in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

RSIC (Bitcoin Ordinals), the most popular pre-mined rune NFT series on the Rune Protocol, quietly airdropped before its launch, and the rune pre-mining became popular.

Tinfun (Ethereum, later migrated to Blast), the power of the Chinese community, rekindles the glory of the Ethereum mainnet.

ittybits (Ether Inscriptions), a 10x opportunity in the niche track, driving the overall rise of small images of Ether Inscriptions, but unfortunately lacking follow-up strength.

CryptoUndeads (Solana), the Cabal disk that makes a big profit as soon as it is pre-sold, passes by like a meteor.

February: ERC-404 "Pandora's Box", Yuga Labs acquires "Moonbird"

"The concept of "图币一体" shone brightly in early February, and the first project of ERC-404, "Pandora's Box", was undoubtedly an absolute star at the beginning of February, with a soaring of nearly 30 times."

At that time, we had such a vision -

ERC-404 directly shapes a 'coin-graph symbiotic relationship', which can be traded on CEX and is also a subversion of existing NFTfi products. As long as an oracle is introduced, it is also easy to leverage native NFTs based on ERC-404 (directly going long or short on ERC-20 Tokens) and easy to borrow and lend, no longer requiring storing small images at a specified address, but directly operating based on ERC-20 Tokens.

However, this concept has not been realized, and instead, the hybrid 'graphene mixed' model popular on Solana later, where the rise of meme coins drives the rise of NFT series with cult attributes in the community, shows the effect of the liquidity double spiral.

In February, Yuga Labs announced the acquisition of the development team PROOF of Moonbirds, owning top NFT IPs/projects such as CryptoPunks, BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, 'Monkeyland' Otherdeed, Meebits, Moonbirds, becoming the NFT 'giant'. At that time, the point we raised was—

Yuga Labs is no longer cool, and there may not be much time left for Yuga Labs to think, this will be a race against the bull market.

Now it seems that the attention and outstanding market performance that Pudgy Penguins and Doodles received at the end of the year provide evidence for this view.

This month's star new projects include:

Quantum Cats (Bitcoin Ordinals), although there was some disagreement in the market at the time of 0.1 Bitcoin's price, the current price of 0.3 Bitcoin has made the blue-chip Bitcoin NFT status of the project undisputed.

March: Blast mainnet launched, Runestone airdrop triggers rune craze

The Blast mainnet went live on March 1, firing the first shot in the March NFT market. But overall, the bustling scene this month is Bitcoin Ordinals.

First of all, there is the concept of 'DMT (a concept that has spawned a form of generative art based on Bitcoin block data)' that has been on the rise since the end of February. As the leader of the DMT concept, Natcats set a single sales record of 1.3 bitcoins before even listing on any Bitcoin NFT trading market.

Next is the Runestone airdrop that took place in mid-March, a huge-scale airdrop containing over 112,000 Bitcoin addresses, becoming the third-largest NFT series in the entire chain market value in just two days. It is also the precursor of the current number one rune $DOG.

The airdrop of Runestone has far-reaching implications for the Bitcoin ecosystem, 'free, fair, big truck', these three keywords have been the criteria for judging whether a Bitcoin Ordinals project is excellent for a considerable period of time this year.

Meanwhile, on Solana, Mad Lads have reached their peak this month, and holders are eagerly awaiting their Wormhole airdrop.

Overall, it has been a lively month, but there are still disappointing news. Starbucks' NFT loyalty reward program 'Starbucks Odyssey' on Polygon announced its closure at the end of this month, and Kevin Rose also sparked controversy for selling a bunch of small pictures.

This month's star new projects include:

Runestone (Bitcoin Ordinals), the legend of runes begins with this stone.

CENTS (Bitcoin Ordinals), 10000 smelted penny coins on the chain, has become the most valuable art series listed on Bitcoin at present.

Plutocats (Blast), quite similar to the 'Nouns' on Blast, surged due to receiving Blast Gold allocation far higher than other NFT projects.

Crypto Valley (Blast), this farming game initially released 1500 free 'farmer' roles, causing a FOMO at one point, but it has long been deserted.

April: Bitcoin welcomes halving, Base NFT sees some growth

Among the star new projects in March should also be XCOPY's Open Edition series "MUTATIO" released on Base, which sold 1,023,831 copies during the two-day minting period, with total sales of more than 700 ETH.

But what's hot is the Meme token $FLIES launched by the project community in April, which surged under the recommendation of XCOPY himself.

On the Blast network, fantasy.top, this 'friends buying and selling' game is continuously popular.

Of course, the Bitcoin network is still the hottest. The epic Shishuang, which was traded at a price of 33.3 bitcoins when the halving output, gave birth to an epic Shishuang rune. It seems that everything in the Bitcoin ecosystem is going well, but in the end, this epic Shishuang did not give players much return, it was even a failure...

This month's star new projects include:

Blob (Bitcoin Ordinals), a self-funded airdrop, kicked off with an all-star lineup and even took the lead in winning the epic smart. Just as everyone was expecting a new Bitcoin blue chip to emerge with the positioning of generating art, it ended up collapsing due to a series of tricky maneuvers, playing a trump card and causing a collapse. This may 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. However, they failed in the sales of the PFP series and then abandoned the 2nd rune DECENTRALIZED, leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem.

May: The beginning of a deserted turn

Starting this month, the NFTs of 2024 begin to enter a relatively quiet stage.

There's not much to say about the struggle in the degen layer on the chain this month. The news is basically like toys such as Pudgy Penguins entering the stores of the American retail giant Target, and DeGods returning to Solana.

Milady performed well this month, rising against the trend.

June: Cold and desolate, miserable and sad.

This month, we have seen CryptoPunks below 30 ETH. This is the first time since August 2021 that the floor price of CryptoPunks has dropped below 30 ETH.

In addition, Three Arrows Capital purchased a complete set of four Yuga Labs NFTs, including BAYC, 2 MAYC, and BAKC, for approximately 140 ETH in August 2021 and March 2022. The set was auctioned at Sotheby's on June 18th. At the peak of the NFT market, the price of this asset should have exceeded 1000 ETH. However, in June, the floor price of BAYC dropped below 9 ETH.

It can be said that it is the darkest moment for NFT. Until the last week of June, the veteran Ethereum blue-chip NFT project rebounded. CryptoPunks rebounded by 24%, BAYC rebounded by as much as 30%, Pudgy Penguins rebounded by as much as 50%, and Azuki rebounded by as much as 35%. Solana's flagship Mad Lads also rose by 40%, and the top Bitcoin projects NodeMonkes and Bitcoin Puppets both rose by over 20%.

In June, another NFT project, Kanpai Pandas, became popular due to LayerZero's airdrop. The dissatisfaction with LayerZero's airdrop spread to this project, and there were suspicions that the project was a 'rat warehouse,' but it was not actually the case.

At the end of June, Abstract, now known as the popular 'Penguin Chain', made its first appearance in its new form. Abstract's predecessor Frame, as an NFT Layer2 chain, has been quiet since the extension of the airdrop pre-claim period on January 30th this year. It wasn't until the end of June that Frame finally revealed its big move - the chain was acquired by Igloo, the newly established parent company of Pudgy Penguins. With this, the three brands in the Igloo ecosystem have all been unveiled - Pudgy Penguins, the on-chain IP authorization platform Overpass, and Frame.

Frame has undergone a brand reshaping. In addition to being renamed Abstract, the overall vision has also upgraded from empowering creators and providing a more convenient and secure NFT user experience to targeting mass consumers and promoting the widespread adoption of Crypto.

Looking back, the fire after the cold winter began to burn at this time. In addition to Abstract, there are also some star projects in June:

Writ of Passage by The Beacon (Arbitrum), with a total supply of 10000, was sold out at a minting price of 0.115 ETH within 7 minutes after entering the FCFS round. In the current market environment, it is really rare to sell 10000 NFTs at such a price. Of course, the main reason it can be sold out is because it essentially pre-sold the 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 also could be sold at a price of 1.25 SOL or more after the airdrop, which is very comfortable.

Year-end: Directly revive to scorching

The few months in the middle that were not written about were not because I was lazy, but because there was nothing worth writing about. Some things happened during these gaps:

Magic Eden confirms that it will issue coins, with the final airdrop of $ME to NFT players providing generous rewards by the end of the year.

Azuki confirms that it will issue tokens.

NFT, as a means for many projects to cold start, gradually became popular from mid-year. At that time, the popular projects were Free Mint projects with a total supply of 1000 or even less, directly stating that there would be token airdrops in the future. By the end of this year, we have seen the popular Kaito project.

On the Solana network, the hot meme coin-driven NFT series has blurred the boundaries between meme and NFT, with Retardio Cousins being the most typical representative.

After a period of time, the low-cost Mint price of Ape Chain has produced some high-multiple projects, but there has been no case of shocking the market in terms of the amount of income.

At the end of the year, everyone's impression is deep. OpenSea's currency issuance is already on the way. Chains like Abstract, Monad, Berachain, and Story that have not yet issued currency are ignited by the potential token airdrop related to NFT projects (related reading: What are the NFTs worth paying attention to on unreleased public chains?). The wealth effect of $PENGU's airdrop has caused Doodles, Azuki, and even Cool Cats to soar. New star projects are emerging, such as Abstract's On-chain Heroes and Fukuhedrons on the Bitcoin network.

With the long-awaited arrival of spring, only one old blue-chip quietly left the stage, and that is Clone X. This project, with a Nike background, announced on December 3rd that it would cease operations, shocking all NFT players, just like announcing at the New Year's Eve dinner that they would never eat again.

Looking forward to the new year, Abstract's mainnet will go live in January, and there may be new opportunities for Monad, Berachain, and Story. It is hoped that everyone will not launch too tightly, as it is not friendly to degen to split the flow.

On the basis of the stable and positive trend of Ethereum, although it is difficult for Ethereum to have projects that can rival the old blue chips (the investment and resources of the old blue chips, it is really hard to imagine that there will be investors who will make great efforts to catch up with what the old blue chips have achieved), the new narrative may bring new opportunities, such as AI-related NFTs.

More and more coin issuance projects may choose NFT, a low-volume and easy-to-control starting move, as a preheating method.

Bitcoin's NFT still has room to grow upwards.

NFT is no longer the familiar NFT to us, the content and IP narrative no longer meet the current version standard for screening new projects, 'coin issuance' and 'conspiracy' have become mainstream, but it does not prevent us from still discovering the high-quality content we like and love from it, NFT is still growing.

Perhaps the concept of NFT is outdated, but the thing we enjoy playing with has always been the same, always just pictures.

My speech is finally coming to an end. Now, how would you rate the NFT market in 2024?