In this post:
- Big collections saw a crash in their floor price.
- Some collections still rely on irrational loyalty and holding the NFT as an exclusive club card.
- NFTs are here to stay, employed by meme token projects, Web3 games and marketers.
Who remembers NFT in 2024? Maybe some Pudgy Penguin owners also received ZK tokens. Others may have moved on to ordinals, hoping to start at the ground floor with a brand-new valuable collection. Older NFTs, though, are not doing so well and are seeking ways to survive.
At the peak of the NFT bull cycle in 2021, Punks reached a price floor of $500K. NFT minting was an anything-goes market, where it was the norm to sell whole collections in minutes, even before unveiling the images and the information about rare traits.
Artists like Beeple also made their fortunes after selling a single NFT. Yuga Labs grew its influence, launching a token and establishing a real-world presence. The NFT boom, however, was tied to crypto’s performance, and prices slid as the 2022-2023 bear market wiped out value.
Floor prices are crashing for major collections
After the 2023 bear market, NFT collections no longer rallied to command exorbitant prices. For some, it was a long way down. In June, Crypto Punks, the bellwether collection for all NFT, reached a price floor of 26 ETH, an all-time low. Punks have been losing ground since the start of 2024, when they still managed to recover a respectable price floor of 60 ETH.
Even in this bear market, Punks are still not even for sale on OpenSea, and some changed hands for the last time in 2021. Blur is still an active market for NFT, but despite the floor price data, the actual bids do not exceed 10 ETH. At this rate, older early buyers that sold at the top are eyeing their old NFT for a re-entry.
Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) is not faring much better. In just a couple of days, BAYC erased 20% off its floor price, sinking to 8.86 ETH.
It’s starting to look like a negative trend, unless one takes into account Miladies, the collection that refuses to make sense. In fact, Miladies reached a record floor price of 4.75 ETH, a 0.06 ETH mint price and all holders are just refusing to sell, listing only under 5% of all Miladies ever minted. Pudgy Penguins, another peak collection, are holding on for now, with a 8.3 ETH floor price and a big social media presence.
Hackers will also not refuse an NFT when it comes for free, as wallet draining is still a common exploit.
Not all collections are in the dregs, and some are keeping still-prohibitive floor prices. Yet the rapid sinking is sparking fears that previous holders are divesting.
What is keeping NFT above the water
NFT collections are claiming exclusivity, so some holders are unwilling to sell for the status their BAYC or MAYC avatar confers. Other collections quickly reoriented themselves to farming, making each owner eligible for further mints and airdrops. With that goal in mind, early buyers are in no rush to part with their exclusive club pass.
New projects are also willing to hitch their wagon to the fame and high visibility of top NFT collectins, not to mention an enthusiastic social media crowd. Even in 2024, NFT may still be usable for various forms of staking, farming, or other incentives to simply hold and never sell.
The opportunities were still available for only a handful of NFT from top collections. NFT farming was also a transient solution; some platforms discovered it was not sustainable. Blur, one of the most active NFT resale markets with farming features, brings underwhelming results during its latest Season 3 farming campaign.
With hot resale markets slowing down, the owners of valuable NFT would have to generate another token or participate in a reward system. In the final analysis, this required a Ponzi-like structure, with new inflows to support the value of early entrants.
Staking only temporarily saved collections like Pudgy Penguins and Miladys, which minted xDMT tokens and became eligible for OMNI and ZK airdrops.
Is the NFT model still viable?
The times of NFT commanding millions of dollars and high-profile sales in art galleries may be gone. But the collection-based model, the ethos of holding and some form of staking may be here to stay. Even the Goblintown collection has not crashed to zero, holding a floor of 0.07 ETH and recent sales above $500.
Recently, meme token collections have also been trying to offer value with NFT. Instead of holding NFT for token airdrops, some token projects are promising NFT for holding onto their collection. Later, the NFT avatars can add to the community’s swag and serve as marketing.
Games continue to create NFT items, offering long-term holding and trading opportunities. The NFT model also extended to Ordinals and Runes, which are now trying to repeat the success of Punks and Apes.
The other big problem for NFT will be the hosting of actual images, which may become the responsibility of the owners. Unlike Ordinals, NFT images require some form of hosting to display the image, though they retain a permanent record on the blockchain.
For some NFT collections, it is precisely the irrational and senseless holding that may revive older images. Some see NFT as a marker of a new online culture with a blockchain component. While the era of big NFT mints and peak prices may be over, the idea of a self-owned identity may be here to stay, and new projects may revive its value through tokens, rarity, or other tools.
NFT no longer offers fast earnings, but they helped create the model of a community ready to hold without selling. Some collectors may also be waiting to return or rally their communities for new types of assets and investments.
