2024 NFT Year in Review: From a Dreamy Start to a Lackluster Finish, Have We Begun to See Signs of a Rebound?

Original Article Title: "2024 NFT Annual Summit: From Leading the Meme Trend to Completing the 'Final Dance' of Coin Issuance"

Original Article Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

As the year draws to a close, the crypto industry is also embracing its "year-end summary moment." Compared to hot topics such as AI, Meme, and Desci, NFTs have undoubtedly appeared somewhat lonely. If it weren't for the year-end wave of the fat penguin PENGU token launch, many would have wondered, "Did the NFT bull market really exist?"

Looking back at the entire year of 2024, for the NFT track, it can be described as a "turbulent journey." Nevertheless, it still undeniably holds a place in the cryptocurrency market and has even become a driving force in trends, a constant presence. In this article, Odaily Planet Daily will review a series of representative events from the 2024 NFT track with readers, allowing us to reminisce about this year of "love-hate interweaving" with NFTs.

2024 First Half: Dreamy Start and the "King of Meme"

Returning to the beginning of 2024, it can be said that it was a "dreamy start" for many NFT players.

After experiencing a series of NFT hype in the BTC ecosystem, market sentiment briefly warmed up, with BTC NFTs like Node Monkeys and Puppet Monkeys reaching prices as high as 0.5 BTC. Looking at the current BTC price breaking a new high of $108,000, it still seems unbelievable. In a harsh truth, perhaps for many BTC inscription players, NFT players, including later Rune players, experienced a lot of fluctuations and continuous FOMO, with the most probable outcome being "the harder you work, the more money you lose," rather than holding steady.

Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances, under the stimulus of positive factors such as the upcoming BTC spot ETF, the "2024 year belonging to the NFT track" finally kicked off. The first to take the stage was the Ethereum ecosystem NFT project—Tinfun.

January: The IP Dream of a Top KOL in the Chinese NFT Circle

As a top KOL in the Chinese NFT circle, Tinfun's launch undoubtedly embodies the efforts of many Laser Cat enthusiasts. In addition, Tinfun's Oriental ink painting style, the Alpha community behind it, and the martial arts world narrative of Tinfun NFTs are also reasons why Tinfun has garnered significant attention.

After the huge success of Azuki, numerous players in the Chinese-language NFT community hoped for a truly representative NFT project highlighting "Eastern aesthetics" to emerge, gather a group of fans in the crypto world, and prove to the world that "Chinese culture is the coolest!" Based on the NFT sample images revealed by the project, Tinfun undoubtedly has this potential, so many people have high hopes for it. Moreover, Tinfun's mini-games were also once popular in the community. As the year-end approached the Spring Festival, the atmosphere of entertainment games was also strong. In addition, Tinfun innovatively redesigned the NFT Minting process by introducing the "Money-Laundering Mint" gameplay, eliminating the trouble of NFT players wasting a large amount of gas during early minting.

Due to favorable stimuli for various reasons, on the public sale day of January 7, the deposits received by the TinFun project had already exceeded 10,000 ETH in less than 24 hours, equivalent to approximately $22.8 million; and on January 8, the participation amount in the public sale reached the target of 25,000 ETH, leading to the early conclusion of the public sale. Due to the significant participation amount, many overseas bloggers at that time doubted whether Laser Cat would "exit scam" directly. After all, in the crypto circle, a place of zero trust, human nature often finds it hard to withstand.

However, Laser Cat and the team behind it are clearly not of that sort. Laser Cat himself even stated: "I may fail, but I will definitely not rug pull."

Subsequent airdrops and secondary trading of Tinfun once triggered market FOMO, with the floor price surpassing 0.8 ETH; but after the reveal, the artistic details and homogenization issues of Tinfun NFTs inevitably faced market skepticism. Coupled with Tinfun's planned "IP development roadmap," it ultimately could not escape the fate of the NFT project's "floor price downward spiral."

According to NFTGo website data, the current floor price of Tinfun NFT is around 0.11 ETH, but the average transaction price is around 0.5 ETH, and the number of holding addresses has gradually decreased to around 1400.

Tinfun Floor Price Information, Source: NFTGo

It is worth noting that influenced by the Blur Phase 3 event and Blast airdrop expectations, in early March, Tinfun once unanimously decided through a community vote to migrate the project to the Blast chain. Some Tinfun holders had also received certain rewards such as Blast ecosystem gold points through various Blast projects or activities, but in terms of NFT rewards, it can only be described as better than nothing.

Looking at it now, to some extent, the Tinfun project illustrates one thing: NFT projects still cannot escape the "liquidity trap" and avoid the downward spiral of project tokens/NFT prices in the cryptocurrency market, especially in the IP development route, undoubtedly making a difficult situation even more challenging.

February: "Stephen Chow Halo" Endows NFT Community

If Tinfun set a good example for NFTs in 2024, then Nobody, an NFT project under Stephen Chow, is more like another "star-studded NFT project" that "rides the wave."

The project lasted for more than half a year and, inspired by Stephen Chow's famous movie "A Chinese Odyssey," initially named Moonbox after the Moonlight Treasure Chest in the film. To enhance its community nature, the project was later renamed Nobody. Some community members even created songs and artwork under the name Nobody, sparking a series of derivative creations. Following Tinfun's successful launch relying on the "pay-for-mint flow," Nobody followed suit, using the same method for its NFT sale, which was also successful.

Moreover, after the sale, Nobody's floor price quickly increased by about 5 times, with the floor price surpassing 0.9 ETH on February 5th, and trading volume reaching 2500 ETH, triggering numerous FOMO buy-ins. It must be said that many NFT players at the time did not deeply participate in the project due to a series of preconceptions such as "star-studded NFT projects are all scams, money grabs, and pump-and-dump schemes." They were equally unprepared for this violent price surge.

Of course, those who missed out on this price surge naturally avoided the subsequent price drop that followed.

Despite this, Stephen Chow himself interacted with NFT holders in the Nobody community Discord, even opened an X platform account page, and solicited feedback from the community on the project's future development. MemeLand's founder and 9GAG CEO, Ray Chan (9 gagceo.eth), a Hong Kong NFT figure, even bought Nobody #889 NFT for 19.52 WETH to show support. However, following the tradition of most NFT projects, Nobody, after facing "image quality questioning," saw its price decline all the way, eventually plummeting below the sale price of 0.19527 ETH in mid-March and gradually falling into silence.

According to NFTGo website data, Nobody's current floor price is around 0.054 ETH, with approximately 3000 holding addresses. As for Stephen Chow's X Platform account, the last update has remained on a post about the 9527 Theater Short Drama promotion dated June 1st of this year.

Nobody NFT Floor Price Information, Source: NFTGo

Thus, another "Celebrity NFT Failure Case" is added, and even the comedy king and film emperor Stephen Chow failed to break this curse.

March BOME: A Meme Coin Frenzy Sparked by an NFT Artist

As we entered March, there wasn't much specific NFT project worth mentioning, but just as the theme song of "Ultraman" sings, "A new storm has emerged, how can we stand still?"

Just as the market was immersed in the joy of BTC breaking to new highs, a frenzy of meme coins sparked by an NFT artist was quietly brewing in the background.

Crypto artist Darkfarms 1 was the first to launch the "2024 NFT Artist Coin Release," perhaps someone had done it before him, but no one had ever reached the height of the project he released because the name of this meme coin is BOME (Book Of MEME). After raising 10,000 SOL in donations, Darkfarms 1 also withstood the test of humanity, did not rug pull and run away, but innovatively added a large sum of money to the token liquidity pool, setting off a "3-day Binance express" meme coin miracle.

On March 14th, shortly after BOME's launch, its market cap quickly exceeded $50 million; within 9 hours of going live, its market cap had surpassed $100 million, the price breaking above $0.0015, rising over 30 times from the issuance price;

On March 15th, BOME's price broke through $0.0025, reaching new highs; thereafter, its price soared like a rocket, around midnight on the 15th, BOME's price successfully exceeded $0.01, and its market cap grew to nearly $700 million.

Driven by the soaring price of BOME, the floor price of the NFT series SMOWL previously launched by Darkfarms once surpassed 0.4 ETH, with a daily increase of 71.14% and a 7-day increase of 713.66%; furthermore, on the day BOME was listed, the number of active addresses on the Solana network reached nearly a month-high (1.19 million), with the highest growth in active addresses from 02.14 to 03.14 at 115.66%; influenced by the BOME craze, from March 14 to 16, the Solana network witnessed a sharp increase in the issuance of Meme coins, with 8,849 new SPL tokens added on March 14, expected to surpass the near-month high (9,690) later this week.

Not only that, BOME also pioneered a new type of asset issuance called "Donation-based Coin Launch," triggering countless imitators. For example, NFT artist and crypto influencer Kero (@KeroNFTs) initiated the Meme project COCO (Little Crocodile), which received over 42,000 SOL worth over $7.5 million within 2 hours of the donation launch, causing a frenzy in the market. Additionally, Mfers founder Satoshi, Doodles co-founder, and others followed suit, and Meme coins issued by NFT artists such as MFERSCOIN became active in the Solana, ETH, and Base ecosystems.

Of course, this coin issuance path has also brought more scams and chaos to the market, including crypto influencer VT, who later scammed more than 20,000 BNB, crypto veteran Huang Licheng (Maji) who scammed over 190,000 SOL, and Dexter behind GM.ai, who raised nearly 160,000 SOL.

However, all of this cannot bypass a crucial step—a Binance listing for BOME.

On March 16, according to the official announcement, Binance will list BOME's 1-50x inverse perpetual contract on March 16, 2024, at 20:30 (GMT+8).

Upon this news, market sentiment shifted from madness to frenzy.

After all, for many crypto projects that have gone through several rounds of VC investments and community funding, the token's ability to queue for listing on Binance is a very challenging task. Now, a Meme coin released by an NFT artist has completed in just 3 days what many projects couldn't achieve in 3 years on the "Binance listing journey," making it hard not to feel a sense of defeat that "doing a serious project cannot compare to releasing a Meme coin." Moreover, Solana's one-click coin issuance platform pump.fun has also begun to emerge, laying the groundwork for this year's and possibly this cycle's prevailing theme of the "Meme Coin craze."

Although Binance subsequently took the opportunity to list a batch of "VC Coins" when the market sentiment was high and liquidity was good, many project tokens with "high FDV, low circulation" not only absorbed liquidity unilaterally from the market but also, compared to meme coins with lower entry barriers, a broader community base, and lower buying costs, are difficult to not be abandoned.

After all, in the eyes of many, countless VC Coins that appear to be serious projects, from a utility perspective, are even less valuable than "Meme Coins" that bring a knowing smile and emotional value to people.

Looking at it from another comparative perspective, Meme Coins are also Fungible Tokens of NFTs, and we have elaborated on this viewpoint in detail in the article "Meme Coins: A Complete Substitute for NFTs" in May of this year. Feel free to review.

Regarding the NFT track, the 404 Protocol, which focused on the concept of "image-to-token conversion" in the first half of the year, once caused a market FOMO. The price of the Pandora Protocol token, PANDORA, once exceeded $30,000, with exaggerated gains. Subsequent protocols like the 314 Protocol (details can be found in the article "Will the 314 Protocol Be the Next ERC-721?") also brought short-term market attention, but ultimately faded into obscurity due to unsustainable liquidity.

Regarding noteworthy events in the first half of the year in the NFT track, three things are worth mentioning:

First, leveraging the Solana ecosystem's Meme Coin craze, Base also attracted some market liquidity in March and April due to the ecosystem's low network interaction costs. During this time, NFTs also briefly gained some market attention. In the article "Counting the Top NFTs in the Base Ecosystem, Who Rose, Who Fell, Who Launched Tokens?" we introduced some representative projects. Although no project successfully broke through afterward, it also brought some incremental value to the 2024 NFT track.

Second, this year coincides with the U.S. presidential election year, and as the Republican presidential candidate, Trump also made frequent efforts in the NFT track. Previously, he launched the first NFT series "Trump Digital Trading Cards" in December 2022, followed by two new series of NFTs in 2023, "Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2" and "Mugshot Edition." With these NFTs, Trump made a total profit of up to $7.15 million, indirectly confirming that - celebrity NFTs indeed have strong money-making abilities, although the result is most likely a mess.

Thirdly, Charlotte Fang, the founder of the well-known NFT series Milady, also initiated a fundraising campaign in June, teasing the release of an Ethereum blockchain-based meme called CULT. In just 7 hours, it raised over $20 million, showcasing the market's fervor and enthusiasm for meme coins, which still astonishes to this day. But no one expected that this moment would only be halfway through the year.

As for the second half of the year, the ripple effects of the aforementioned events will continue.

2024 Second Half: Internal Challenges, External Threats, and the Coin Issuance Craze

Entering the second half of the year, as the meme coin craze intensifies, the NFT track once again experiences a "garbage time."

Countless blue-chip NFT projects have disappeared, seemingly vanishing from the public eye. Only a few NFT project founders, such as those of Pudgy Penguins and Weirdo Ghost Gang, remain active on various platforms, monitoring the market's movements, occasionally updating on the project's progress and sharing their views on the industry's development.

Once again, redirecting people's limited attention to NFTs is the former "world's largest NFT trading platform," OpenSea — along with its "crypto foe," the U.S. SEC.

By the end of August, according to market sources, the NFT marketplace OpenSea received a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), becoming another "crypto project under scrutiny" following Coinbase, Lido, Bittrex, Uniswap, and Robinhood. This incident led us to explore the current industry-wide issues in the article "OpenSea Receives SEC Wells Notice, Is the NFT Track Predestined for a Major Setback?" at that time. The subsequent developments of many NFT projects have since confirmed our previous assessment.

As the industry continues to evolve, NFTs have gradually become the "identity credentials" and "equity certificates" of many projects. The once "IP carrier" and "collectible value" have been compressed. The "marketing value" that many Web2 companies and brands pinned their hopes on has also yielded minimal results. However, the NFT track has ushered in another round of market expectations — NFT platform or NFT project token issuance.

In addition to Blast, closely tied to the NFT trading platform Blur, multi-chain NFT marketplace Magic Eden and the upcoming new version of OpenSea are also highly anticipated. Projects such as Animoca Brands' NFT project Mocaverse, blue-chip NFTs like Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, and Doodles are also among the potential token issuance projects.

And so, the NFT market languished in its own garbage time, waiting for a new hope on the horizon.

In September, during a crypto project WLFI event, U.S. presidential candidate Trump attributed his changing attitude towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to the success of his NFT series.

By the end of October, renowned crypto artist Beeple posted stating that "NFT speculators have left, leaving only core enthusiasts behind."

In November, according to CryptoSlam data, in October 2024, the NFT trading volume reached $356 million, an 18% increase compared to the previous month, breaking a seven-month streak of decline. Additionally, the total number of NFT trades also saw an increase, with 7.2 million trades in October, a 42% increase from September's 5 million trades.

In early December, as the market's patience wore thin, the much-anticipated "NFT Project Coin Release Wave" had yet to arrive. Instead, news came first that RTFKT, the studio behind the blue-chip NFT CloneX/Clone Humans, which once had a floor price of over ten ETH, would cease operations in January 2025.

But the market had little time to mourn or even grieve for it. Following swiftly was the eagerly awaited NFT Project Coin Release Wave that had been brewing for nearly six months—

On December 9th, the meme coin project CULT, initiated by Charlotte Fang, founder of the NFT project Milady and raising over $20 million, finally went live, briefly bringing NFTs back into people's minds. For more details, refer to the article "CULT Goes Live, Is NFT Elder's Coin Release a Bull Market Ride or Last Dance?"

On December 10th, the ME Foundation announced that the TGE had gone live, and users could claim and stake ME tokens. Claiming ME tokens requires loading the Magic Eden mobile application and completing the claim. All unclaimed ME tokens will belong to ME stakers.

On December 17th, the Pudgy Penguins team announced that PENGU had gone live and was open for claiming. Eligible participants could start claiming PENGU, including holders of Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, Rogs, and SBTs. Holders have 88 days to claim, and all unclaimed supply will be permanently locked/destroyed after the 88th day. For more information about Pudgy Penguins and its parent company, refer to our previously published articles "Acquiring Frame, Building Abstract Chain, Disrupting Base: Can Pudgy Penguins Carry the Banner of the Consumer Economy?" and "Pudgy Penguins Coin Release Imminent: Can PENGU, Abstract, and OpenSea Hit a Triple Jackpot?"

It is worth mentioning that the reason Fat Penguin's token launch has gained widespread acceptance from the market users is because of its grand gesture of airdropping varying amounts of PENGU tokens to entities beyond its own ecosystem, including the Solana ecosystem, many other NFT series holders, and even Ethereum ecosystem OG wallet holders.

As the year 2024 draws to a close, the suspense of token launches in the NFT space is gradually being revealed one by one. Later contestants include OpenSea, which has already registered a foundation in the Cayman Islands, Azuki, whose founder claims that "Animecoin will combine vision, product, and real use cases, unlike other meme coins," and even Doodles whose founder hinted at an upcoming token launch. However, whether they can replicate Fat Penguin and PENGU's wealth-creation miracle remains an unknown.

Epilogue: When the NFT Narrative Loses Its Allure, Token Launch Becomes a Double-Edged Sword

Finally, from an industry data perspective, according to CryptoSlam data, the total NFT sales in 2024 amounted to around $8.5 billion, although significantly lower than peak values of previous years, the number of buyers saw a rare growth of over 62%, reaching 7.5 million transactions.

While the NFT narrative no longer carries the same allure as it did in 2022, easily attracting investments of millions, tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars, undoubtedly, as a technological tool, it still holds an indispensable position and role in the crypto market. Of course, for NFT projects, token launches are not necessarily a one-size-fits-all boon but rather a double-edged sword: a successful launch with a reasonable token price and satisfactory or relatively generous returns to market users is undoubtedly a cause for celebration. However, if an NFT project lacks a clear and comprehensive plan and sees token launch as a "last-ditch effort," the likely outcome is drowning in the sea.

Having gone through a phase of highs and lows, or more precisely, lows from the start, the NFT market can now be said to have entered a phase of rebounding from the bottom. Whether 2025 will usher in a new round of revival still depends on the narrative direction in the market, capital flows, and areas of focus.

Nevertheless, the story continues, and NFTs will always be the endorphin that stimulates the continuous flow of the crypto market, where money never sleeps.

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