The year began on shaky ground for NFTs, with major collections struggling to maintain value amid a persistently bearish sentiment. Floor prices dipped across the board as trading volumes waned, leaving many to question whether the NFT market could rebound.
Yet, as the year progressed into the final quarter, new bullishness in the broader cryptocurrency market set the stage for a late-year resurgence. Keep your expectations in check. It wasn’t a 2021/2022-like gold rush, but the vibe shift was welcomed by the NFT faithful.
Leading the charge was Pudgy Penguins, a once-declining collection that blossomed under new ownership starting in 2022, and hit new all-time highs above $100,000 in anticipation of its token airdrop.
OpenSea Token: Everything You Need to Know About the SEA Airdrop for Ethereum NFT Traders
Three years after a peak NFT mania that drove monthly trading volume to billions of dollars and put the Bored Ape Yacht Club on The Tonight Show, the collectible tokens have started regaining attention—and so too is the once-dominant NFT marketplace, OpenSea. Long hoped for and often speculated by NFT traders, OpenSea will soon have a token courtesy of the OpenSea Foundation. The token—SEA—is expected to reward both current and historical users of OpenSea’s platforms, and is “designed to encoura...
This revitalization came as NFT marketplace competition intensified in 2024. Platforms like Magic Eden, Blur, and OpenSea battled for dominance, driving innovation through the inclusion of new blockchains and trading types.
From a sluggish start to an electrifying close, 2024 reminded the world that the NFT space is as dynamic and unpredictable as ever, fueled by the passion of its community and the constant push for innovation.
Here’s some of the top themes from the year in NFTs in 2024.
Bitcoin Ordinals find their footing
Though introduced at the start of 2023, Bitcoin Ordinals—or Bitcoin NFTs, more or less—truly found their stride this year thanks to significant infrastructure upgrades and growing adoption. Early challenges, such as the lack of user-friendly wallets and marketplaces, faded as wallets like XVerse and Unisat made holding Ordinals safer and easier.
Meanwhile, trading became more seamless as marketplaces like Magic Eden and OXK added critical support, drastically improving from the chaotic early days which saw Bitcoin Ordinals traded via spreadsheets in Discord servers.
Bitcoin Ordinals Driving ‘Renaissance’ in BTC Activity: Franklin Templeton
Over the last year, Bitcoin Ordinals have taken the digital collectible world by storm, and they’ve now garnered the attention of financial titan Franklin Templeton. The digital assets division of the global investment firm today featured the rise of Ordinal inscriptions in a new prospectus. “In the past year, Bitcoin innovation and development has seen a renaissance in activity,” Franklin Templeton Digital Assets wrote. “Positive momentum in innovations is primarily driven through Bitcoin NFTs,...
This infrastructure evolution paved the way for standout projects to capture the spotlight, and helped “drive a renaissance in activity on Bitcoin,” according to Franklin Templeton.
Bitcoin Puppets and NodeMonkes led the charge, jumping from modest mint prices to peaks of 0.469 Bitcoin ($33,000) and 0.897 Bitcoin ($56,000) respectively, according to Magic Eden. While prices have since retraced to 0.138 ($14,000) and 0.125 Bitcoin ($12,650) respectively with the price of BTC itself being much higher, their impact on the Ordinals ecosystem remains significant. And other high-profile projects like Quantum Cats and Ordinals Maxi Business have similarly found fervent collector bases.
NFT marketplaces evolve and expand
This year has been pivotal for NFT marketplaces, with OpenSea, Magic Eden, and Blur shaping the narrative in distinct ways. Blur retained dominance in Ethereum NFT trading, but its influence waned during the summer as the NFT bear market dragged on. Plus, its founding team had its attention elsewhere, launching Blast, an Ethereum layer-2 network.
Magic Eden, on the other hand, stole the spotlight with bold innovations in 2024. It led the charge on Bitcoin NFTs and added a decentralized exchange for Runes—Bitcoin's version of meme coins—after the halving. Excitement around the brand culminated in the launch of the ME token by the ME Foundation, which airdropped more than $700 million to users of its protocol.
Magic Eden Traders Rush to Claim Solana Token as Airdrop Value Tops $700 Million
The ME Foundation launched the ME token for users of leading NFT marketplace Magic Eden on Tuesday, with demand for the token driving complaints of issues with the claim process as the size of the airdrop topped $700 million. The ME airdrop was hotly anticipated, with users of Magic Eden hoping to be handsomely rewarded for their NFT marketplace activity. November pre-market trading anticipated a token price of $4.50, which would have seen $562 million handed out, with the pre-market price on Wh...
Meanwhile, OpenSea—the leading marketplace from the 2021 boom—reemerged as a figurehead in the NFT world towards the end of the year. First, CEO Deven Finzer was outspoken about the company’s willingness to “stand up and fight” amid SEC scrutiny of the platform in September.
Shortly thereafter, buzz surrounded the marketplace as its OpenSea 2.0 marketplace overhaul began testing, ultimately fueling questions about a potential future token launch. That speculation only grew as users reported loyalty programs during the closed beta, and an OpenSea Foundation was registered in the Cayman Islands.
OpenSea Token: Everything You Need to Know About the SEA Airdrop for Ethereum NFT Traders
Three years after a peak NFT mania that drove monthly trading volume to billions of dollars and put the Bored Ape Yacht Club on The Tonight Show, the collectible tokens have started regaining attention—and so too is the once-dominant NFT marketplace, OpenSea. Long hoped for and often speculated by NFT traders, OpenSea will soon have a token courtesy of the OpenSea Foundation. The token—SEA—is expected to reward both current and historical users of OpenSea’s platforms, and is “designed to encoura...
Brands come and go
The NFT craze of 2021 saw major brands like Nike and Adidas rush into the space. But a bear market and fading sentiment on NFTs prompted some giants to retreat in 2024.
Among the most significant exits came with Nike’s decision to shut down RTFKT, the fashion and technology studio it acquired in 2021 for an undisclosed sum. Prior to Nike’s move, Starbucks wound down its Web3 loyalty program, Starbucks Odyssey, which the coffee giant operated on the Polygon blockchain.
Nike Is Killing Its Ethereum NFT Sneaker and Avatar Company RTFKT
RTFKT, a digital fashion and technology company that was acquired by Nike in 2021, is shutting down. “Today we’re announcing the plan to wind down RTFKT operations,” the company said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Looking back we’re incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved together.” The company (pronounced "artifact"), which burst onto the digital collectible scene in 2021 selling $10,000 sneakers on Nifty Gateway, built a sprawling ecosystem of Ethereum-based NFTs and...
DraftKings, a major player in the fantasy sports and sportsbook industries, abruptly discontinued its involvement with NFTs, closing its DraftKings Reignmakers fantasy game after several years of operation. The move came amid a class action lawsuit from users and lingering regulatory questions around the space.
But while some major brands took a step back, at least one made a big splash in Web3. McDonald’s jumped into a notable collab, teaming up with NFT collection Doodles for a holiday-themed campaign. The collaboration brought NFT branding into the physical world with custom holiday coffee cups available in McDonald’s locations. It signaled that even in a quieter NFT market, some brands still see potential in creative integrations.
Going token-crazy
Perhaps no narrative has gained as much momentum and attention in the last few months as NFT projects and their connections to fungible tokens, sometimes referred to as utility tokens for their ecosystems.
While NFT collections launching or having an associated token is not a new phenomenon, the rise of tokenization in 2024—and growing optimism about the U.S. regulatory landscape under President-elect Donald Trump—has put token launches squarely back in the limelight.
Most notably, Pudgy Penguins launched its ecosystem token PENGU on Solana this month. The token, which was eligible to claim by more than 7 million unique wallets, provided NFT holders and many other eligible parties with a more than $1.5 billion collective stimulus infusion.
Let It Snow: Pudgy Penguins Release Massive $1.5 Billion PENGU Airdrop on Solana
PENGU, the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem token on Solana, launched Tuesday and quickly leapt into the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, with potentially millions of NFT holders and traders eligible to claim tokens in the airdrop. The Pudgy Penguins token is currently trading for a price of about $0.0335, with a market cap of almost $2.1 billion. That makes it the 76th biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to data from CoinGecko. Newly launched tokens are famously volatile, and CoinGec...
But it’s not just the Pudgy Penguins that have gone the token route in 2024. This year alone the NFT collections Memeland, Milady, and Mocaverse all dropped tokens to their NFT holders and ecosystem participants.
All three of those respective tokens have surpassed and maintained market caps of more than $100 million at the time of writing—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s likely that this narrative will maintain some buzz going into 2025, when Azuki is poised to drop its anticipated ANIME token to its ecosystem and other Web3 users on AnimeChain. Plus, Yuga Labs, the parent company of Bored Ape Yacht Club is expected to continue strong promotion around ApeCoin (APE) amid the recent ApeChain launch.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
