2024 NFT Annual Awards: From Leading the Meme Trend to Completing the "Final Dance" with Token Issuance

Author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

As the year comes to a close, the crypto industry also welcomes its "year-end summary moment." Compared to the hot topics of AI, Meme, and Desci, NFTs undoubtedly seem a bit lonely. If it weren't for the recent launch of the Fat Penguin PENGU token at the end of the year, many might wonder, "Did the NFT bull market really exist?"

Looking back at the entire year of 2024, it can be described as "full of ups and downs" for the NFT sector. Nevertheless, it still undeniably holds a place in the crypto market, even becoming a trendsetter that runs through the year. In this article, Odaily Planet Daily will review a series of representative events in the NFT sector throughout 2024, allowing us to reminisce about this year of "mixed feelings" towards NFTs.

The First Half of 2024: A Dream Start and the "King of Meme"

At the beginning of 2024, it can be said that many NFT players experienced a "dream start."

After a series of hype surrounding NFTs in the BTC ecosystem, market sentiment warmed up, with prices of BTC NFTs like Node Monkeys and Puppet Monkeys reaching as high as 0.5 BTC. Considering that BTC has now broken new highs at $108,000, it still leaves people in awe. To speak candidly, for many BTC inscription players, NFT players, and later rune players, the outcome of their frantic trading often ends up being "the harder you try, the more you lose," making it perhaps better to just hold onto their coins.

Regardless, with the upcoming approval of the BTC spot ETF and other favorable stimuli, "the year of NFTs in 2024" finally began, with the first to take the stage being the Ethereum-based NFT project—Tinfun.

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

As a top KOL in the Chinese NFT circle, the launch of Tinfun undoubtedly gathered a lot of effort from Laser Cat. Additionally, the Eastern ink painting style and martial arts world narrative behind it, along with the Alpha community, are among the many reasons why Tinfun attracted significant attention.

After the tremendous success of Azuki, countless players in the Chinese NFT circle hoped for a project that could truly represent "Eastern aesthetics" and stand out in the crypto world, gathering a group of fans to prove to the world: "Chinese flow is the coolest!" From the NFT sample images released by the project, Tinfun undoubtedly has this potential, leading many to place high hopes on it. Moreover, at that time, Tinfun's mini-games were also quite popular in the community, especially as the year-end approached and the festive atmosphere of the Spring Festival was strong; additionally, Tinfun innovated the NFT minting process with a "money flow mint" mechanism, alleviating the issue of excessive gas fees caused by players rushing to mint NFTs.

Due to various favorable stimuli, on January 7, the day of the public sale, Tinfun's project received deposits exceeding 10,000 ETH in less than 24 hours, approximately $22.8 million; and on January 8, the amount participated in the public sale reached the expected target of 25,000 ETH, leading to an early end of the public sale. Due to the large participation amount, many overseas bloggers even suspected that Laser Cat would "run away," after all, in the dark forest of the crypto circle, trust is often hard to come by.

However, it was clear that Laser Cat and the team behind it were not of that kind; Laser Cat himself even stated, "I might fail, but I will never run away."

The subsequent airdrop and secondary trading of Tinfun also sparked market FOMO, with the floor price once exceeding 0.8 ETH; however, after the reveal, the artistic details and homogenization issues of Tinfun NFTs inevitably faced market skepticism. Coupled with Tinfun's planned "IP development route," it ultimately could not escape the fate of "floor price spiral decline" that many NFT projects face.

According to data from NFTGo, the current floor price of Tinfun NFTs is around 0.11 ETH, but the average transaction price is about 0.5 ETH, and the number of holding addresses has gradually decreased to around 1,400.

Tinfun floor price information, source: NFTGo

It is worth mentioning that influenced by the third phase of Blur's activities and expectations of the Blast airdrop, Tinfun, through community voting in early March, unanimously decided to migrate the project to the Blast chain. Subsequently, some Tinfun holders also received certain Blast ecosystem rewards such as golden points due to various Blast projects or activities, but in terms of NFT returns, it can only be said to be better than nothing.

Looking back now, in a certain sense, the Tinfun project illustrates one thing: NFT projects still cannot escape the "liquidity trap" and avoid the spiral decline of token/NFT prices in the cryptocurrency market, especially in the development route of IP, which is undoubtedly more challenging.

February: Nobody—An NFT Community Empowered by the "Stephen Chow Halo"

If Tinfun opened a good start for NFTs in 2024, then the NFT project Nobody under Stephen Chow seems to be another "star NFT project" that "rose by leveraging momentum."

This project took over six months to develop, initially named Moonbox, inspired by the famous movie "A Chinese Odyssey" featuring Stephen Chow's Moonlight Treasure Box. Later, to enhance community attributes, it was renamed Nobody, with some community members even writing songs and creating art under the name Nobody, initiating a series of secondary creations. After Tinfun successfully launched with its "money flow mint," Nobody followed suit and also successfully completed its NFT sale.

Not only that, after the sale ended, Nobody's floor price quickly increased by about five times, reaching over 0.9 ETH on February 5, with trading volume hitting 2,500 ETH, sparking FOMO among countless people. It must be said that many NFT players at that time, influenced by previous stereotypes that "star NFT projects are all scams, just a way to make money," did not deeply participate in this project and were equally unprepared for this violent price surge.

Of course, those who missed out on this price increase naturally avoided the subsequent drop in floor price.

Despite Stephen Chow himself interacting with NFT holders in the Nobody community Discord and even opening an X platform account to support the project and solicit community feedback on its future development, the founder of Memeland and CEO of 9GAG, Chen Zhancheng (9gagceo.eth), even bought Nobody #889 NFT for 19.52 WETH to express support, Nobody still followed the path of most NFT projects, experiencing price declines after facing "reveal skepticism," ultimately dropping below the initial sale price of 0.19527 ETH by mid-March and gradually falling into silence.

According to data from NFTGo, Nobody's current floor price is around 0.054 ETH, with about 3,000 holding addresses. As for Stephen Chow's X platform account, the last update was a promotional post about a short play on June 1 of this year.

Nobody NFT floor price information, source: NFTGo

Thus, another "failed case of star NFTs" was added, and even the comedy king and legendary actor Stephen Chow could not break this curse.

March: BOME—A Meme Coin Frenzy Triggered by an NFT Artist

As March rolled in, there weren't many specific NFT projects worth mentioning, but just like the theme song of "Ultraman Tiga" sings: "A new storm has emerged, how can we stand still?"

Just as the market was immersed in the joy of BTC breaking new highs, a meme coin frenzy triggered by NFT artists was quietly brewing.

Crypto artist Darkfarms 1 fired the "first shot of NFT artists issuing coins in 2024." Perhaps someone had done this before him, but none had reached the height of the project he launched, as this meme coin was named—BOME (Book Of MEME). After raising 10,000 SOL, Darkfarms 1 also withstood the test of human nature, not running away with the funds but innovatively adding a large amount of capital to the token liquidity pool, thus sparking a "3-day fast track to Binance" meme coin miracle.

On March 14, shortly after BOME's launch, its market cap quickly surpassed $50 million; within 9 hours, its market cap exceeded $100 million, with prices breaking $0.0015, rising over 30 times from the issuance price.

On March 15, BOME's price broke $0.0025, setting new highs; thereafter, its price skyrocketed as if on a rocket, successfully surpassing $0.01 around midnight on the 15th, with its market cap growing to nearly $700 million.

Influenced by BOME's soaring price, Darkfarms' previously launched NFT series SMOWL saw its floor price exceed 0.4 ETH, with a single-day increase of 71.14% and a 7-day increase of 713.66%; additionally, on the day BOME launched, the number of active addresses on the Solana network reached a near-month peak (1.19 million), with a maximum increase of 115.66% in active addresses from February 14 to March 14; due to the BOME craze, the number of newly issued meme coins on the Solana network surged from March 14 to 16, with 8,849 new SPL tokens added on March 14, expected to surpass the near-month peak (9,690) that week.

Moreover, BOME also pioneered a new asset issuance method called "donation-based coin issuance," sparking countless imitators. For example, NFT artist and crypto KOL Kero (@KeroNFTs) initiated the meme project COCO (Little Crocodile), which received over 42,000 SOL, worth over $7.5 million, just 2 hours after launching the fundraising. The market went wild. Additionally, MFERS founder Satoshi, Doodles co-founder, and others also followed suit, with meme coins like MFERSCOIN issued by NFT artists becoming active on Solana, ETH, and Base ecosystems.

Of course, this coin issuance path also brought more scams to the market, including the crypto KOL VT, who defrauded over 20,000 BNB, and the crypto veteran Huang Licheng (Maji), who scammed over 190,000 SOL, as well as Dexter behind GM.ai, who raised nearly 160,000 SOL, all of whom were actual beneficiaries in this process.

But all of this could not bypass a crucial step—Binance listing BOME.

On March 16, at noon, according to the official announcement, Binance would launch BOME 1-50x USDT perpetual contracts at 20:30 (UTC+8) on March 16, 2024.

Once the news broke, market sentiment shifted from frenzy to madness.

After all, for many crypto projects that have experienced multiple rounds of VC investments and community financing, having a token lined up for Binance is no easy feat. Yet now, a meme coin released by an NFT artist completed the "Binance listing journey" in just 3 days, a journey that many projects take 3 years to complete, making it hard not to feel a sense of frustration that "doing serious projects can't compare to issuing a meme coin." Additionally, the Solana ecosystem's one-click coin issuance platform pump.fun also began to emerge, thus establishing the "meme coin craze" that would set the tone for this year and even this cycle.

Although Binance later seized the opportunity to list a batch of "VC coins" during a period of high market sentiment and good liquidity, many "high FDV, low circulation" project tokens, aside from extracting liquidity from the market, found it hard to compete with meme coins that have lower entry barriers, broader public bases, and lower buying costs.

After all, in the eyes of many, countless seemingly serious VC coins, from a usefulness perspective, are even less valuable than "meme coins that bring a smile and provide emotional value."

From another comparative angle, meme coins are also fungible tokens (FTs) of NFTs. We elaborated on this viewpoint in detail in our article "Meme Coins: The Complete Replacement for NFTs" in May this year, which you are welcome to review.

Regarding the NFT sector, the 404 protocol, which focused on the "image-to-coin conversion" concept in the first half of the year, also sparked market FOMO at one point, with the price of the Pandora protocol token PANDORA exceeding $30,000, an exaggerated increase. Subsequent projects like the 314 protocol (details can be found in the article "Will the 314 Protocol Be the Next ERC 721?") also brought short-term attention to the market, but ultimately faded into obscurity due to unsustainable liquidity.

Three other noteworthy events in the NFT sector during the first half of the year include:

• First, leveraging the meme coin craze in the Solana ecosystem, Base attracted some market liquidity in March and April due to its low interaction costs, with NFTs briefly gaining some market attention. We introduced some representative projects in the article "Counting the Top NFTs in the Base Ecosystem: Who Rises, Who Falls, Who Issues Coins?" Although no projects successfully broke through afterward, it still brought some incremental growth to the NFT sector in 2024.
• Second, this year coincides with the U.S. presidential election year, and as the Republican presidential candidate, Trump has also "frequently made moves" in the NFT sector. Previously, he launched his first NFT series "Trump Digital Trading Cards" in December 2022; in 2023, he released two new NFT series, "Trump Digital Trading Cards Series 2" and "Mugshot Edition." Through these NFTs, Trump made a total profit of $7.15 million, indirectly confirming the strong money-making ability of celebrity NFTs, although the outcome is likely to be a mess.
• Third, Charlotte Fang, the founder of the well-known NFT series Milady, initiated a fundraising campaign in June, announcing the launch of a meme called CULT on the Ethereum chain. In just 7 hours, it raised over $20 million, and the market's fervor for meme coins remained astonishingly high. However, no one expected this wait would last nearly half a year.

In the second half of the year, the aftermath of these events will continue.

The Second Half of 2024: Internal and External Troubles and the Coin Issuance Craze

As we entered the second half of the year, with the meme coin craze in full swing, the NFT sector once again faced a "garbage time."

Countless blue-chip NFT projects vanished from public view, with only a few NFT project founders like Pudgy Penguins and Weirdo Ghost Gang remaining active on the X platform, keeping an eye on market movements and occasionally reporting on project updates and their views on industry developments.

The limited attention of the public was drawn back to NFTs by the once "world's largest NFT trading platform" OpenSea—and the "crypto enemy" it faced—the U.S. SEC.

At the end of August, according to market news, the NFT market OpenSea received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, becoming another "crypto project under scrutiny" following Coinbase, Lido, Bittrex, Uniswap, and Robinhood. Through this incident, we also delved into the current industry issues of NFTs in our article "OpenSea Receives SEC Wells Notice: Is the NFT Sector Predestined for Defeat?" The subsequent trajectories of many NFT projects confirmed our earlier judgments.

As the industry continued to develop, NFTs gradually became "identity certificates" and "rights certificates" for many projects, while the previous "IP carriers" and "collectible values" were compressed. Many Web2 companies and brands' hopes for the "marketing role" of NFTs yielded little effect, but the NFT sector welcomed another wave of market expectations: that NFT platforms or projects would issue tokens.

In addition to Blast, which is closely related to the NFT trading market Blur, multi-chain NFT trading platforms Magic Eden and the soon-to-be-released new version of OpenSea were also highly anticipated. NFT projects under Animoca Brands, Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, and Doodles were also on the list of potential token issuers.

Thus, the NFT market lingered in its garbage time, waiting for new hope.

In September, at the WLFI launch event for crypto projects, U.S. presidential candidate Trump attributed his change in attitude towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to the success of his NFT series.

At the end of October, renowned crypto artist Beeple stated, "NFT speculators have exited, leaving only core enthusiasts."

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

In early December, as the market's patience was gradually wearing thin, the long-awaited "NFT project token issuance wave" had yet to arrive. Instead, the bad news came that the studio behind the blue-chip NFT CloneX, which once had a floor price of over a dozen ETH, RTFKT, would cease operations in January 2025.

However, the market had no time to mourn or grieve for it, as what followed was the long-awaited NFT project token issuance wave—

On December 9, the meme coin project CULT, initiated by Charlotte Fang, the founder of the NFT project Milady, which raised over $20 million, finally launched, allowing NFTs to be briefly remembered again. For more details, please refer to the article "CULT Finally Launched: Is the NFT Old Guard's Token Issuance a Bull Market Ride or the Last Dance?"

On December 10, the ME Foundation announced that the TGE had launched, allowing users to claim and stake ME tokens. To claim ME tokens, users needed to load the Magic Eden mobile app and complete the claim process; all unclaimed ME tokens would belong to ME stakers.

On December 17, the Pudgy Penguins official account announced that PENGU had launched and was open for claims, allowing eligible participants to start claiming PENGU, including holders of Pudgy Penguins, Lil Pudgys, Rogs, and SBTs. Holders had 88 days to claim, and all unclaimed supplies would be permanently locked/destroyed after the 88th day. For more information about Pudgy Penguins and its parent company, please refer to our previous articles, such as "Acquiring Frame, Creating Abstract Chain, Disrupting Base: Can Pudgy Penguins Carry the Flag of Consumer Economy?" and "With Pudgy Penguins' Token Launch Approaching, Can PENGU, Abstract, and OpenSea Achieve Triple Benefits?"

It is worth noting that the reason Pudgy Penguins' token launch received widespread recognition from market users is that it generously airdropped varying amounts of PENGU tokens not only to its own ecosystem but also to the Solana ecosystem, numerous other NFT series holders, and even Ethereum OG wallets.

As 2024 draws to a close, the suspense surrounding token issuance in the NFT sector is gradually being unveiled, with later contenders including OpenSea, which has registered a foundation in the Cayman Islands, Azuki, whose founder claimed that "Animecoin will combine vision, product, and real use cases, unlike other meme coins," and even Doodles, whose founder hinted that the project would soon issue tokens. However, whether they can replicate the wealth creation miracle of Pudgy Penguins and PENGU remains an unknown.

Conclusion: When NFT Narratives Are No Longer Attractive, Token Issuance Becomes a Double-Edged Sword

Finally, from an industry data perspective, according to CryptoSlam data, the total sales of NFTs in 2024 amounted to approximately $8.5 billion. Although this is far below the peaks of previous years, the number of buyers saw a rare increase of over 62%, reaching 7.5 million.

Although the narrative surrounding NFTs is no longer as attractive as it was in 2022, capable of attracting hundreds of millions or even billions in funding, it undoubtedly still holds an indispensable position and role in the crypto market as a technological means. Of course, for NFT projects, token issuance is not a guaranteed good thing; rather, it is a double-edged sword with both advantages and disadvantages: if token issuance goes smoothly, the token price is reasonable, and market user returns are considerable or relatively satisfactory, then it is indeed a happy outcome for all; but if an NFT project lacks a clear and comprehensive plan and views token issuance as "the last lifeline," then the final outcome is likely to be drowning in the water.

After experiencing a phase of high opening and low closing, or more accurately, low opening and low closing, the NFT market can now be said to have entered a rebound stage. Whether it can welcome a new round of revival in 2025 still depends on the narrative direction, capital flow, and attention focus in the market.

But regardless, the story continues, and NFTs will always be the endorphins that stimulate the crypto market's continuous movement; money never sleeps.