Author: Nancy, PANews

It's already 2026, and by all accounts, the story of NFTs should have turned a new page by now.

Once auctioned for astronomical prices, most NFTs have now devolved into little images that no one cares about; many NFT projects are struggling to pivot, sell, or shut down; the once top-tier event NFT Paris has recently announced its cancellation, even embroiled in refund disputes.

In a prolonged down cycle over the past few years, with hot money exiting and narratives failing, "NFTs are dead" seems to have become a market consensus.

However, in this week of 2026, the NFT market unexpectedly showed signs of recovery, with prices rising and trading volumes warming up. Are NFTs really back? What are the players still holding the fort in the market actually engaging with?

New Year’s Good Start, Price Increase Feels Like a Different Era

Entering 2026, the long-silent NFT market finally stirred with a hint of long-lost ripples.

According to CoinGecko data, since the beginning of 2026, the overall market value of NFTs has increased by over $220 million in the past week. Data from NFT Price Floor further indicates that in the past week, hundreds of NFT projects have seen price increases, with some projects even recording triple to quadruple-digit gains. For players who have endured several years of down cycles, the fantasy has long been shattered, and this market trend feels like a different era.

Although this is just a drop in the bucket compared to historical highs, the long-awaited green market is still enough to provide some comfort to the players who have held on.

However, peeling back the veil of rising prices, the current market recovery seems more like a game of existing funds within a very limited scope, rather than a true revival driven by new capital. The extreme lack of liquidity is a fatal flaw that the current market cannot ignore.

From the weekly transaction volume perspective, among over 1,700 NFT projects, only 6 reached a million-dollar trading volume, 14 had trading volumes in the hundreds of thousands, and only 72 were in the tens of thousands range. Overall, this is very scarce. Even for the higher-volume leading projects, the number of actively traded NFTs accounts for only a single-digit percentage of total supply, with the vast majority of NFTs seeing transaction numbers in the single digits or even zero.

In fact, The Block's 2025 report also showed that there was no strong influx of re-entry funds into the NFT market throughout the year, speculative enthusiasm significantly cooled, and the multi-chain flourishing pattern returned to Ethereum's dominance. The total transaction volume for the year dropped to $5.5 billion, a decrease of about 37% compared to 2024; the total market value of NFTs shrank dramatically from about $9 billion to around $2.4 billion.

These data indicate that the so-called recovery has not changed the fact that NFTs have long been extinguished. Today's NFTs have already devolved into "old assets," with only old players trapped within, while new funds have long ceased to be interested.

Great Exodus and Survival Stories, Funds Flowing to New Battlefields

In this prolonged deep winter chill, from infrastructure to blue-chip projects, various forms of survival stories are unfolding.

For instance, trading leader OpenSea is no longer fixated on JPEG images but is transforming its business to token trading through airdrop incentives; the once mainstream NFT blockchain Flow is exploring DeFi growth points; Zora has abandoned the traditional NFT model, shifting to a new track of "content as tokens"; even the iconic NFT Paris event was canceled due to depleted funds and has been reported to be unable to refund sponsorship fees, highlighting the industry's plight.

Even those leading NFTs that still show a glimmer of vitality have fallen into the strange cycle of "getting applause but not sales," where brand influence has not translated into a price moat. For example, while Pudgy Penguins has successfully raised IP awareness in the mainstream world and physical toys are selling well, it still cannot escape the gravitational pull of floor price and token price declines.

The decisive exit of Web2 giants like Reddit halting NFT services and Nike selling its RTFKT brand further shattered the market's last fantasies about mainstream adoption.

However, the decline of NFTs does not mean the disappearance of collecting and speculative demand; the funds have simply shifted to a new battlefield. Compared to virtual images on-chain, the physical markets for trendy toys, cards, and more are still being hyped, such as Pokémon TCG trading volumes exceeding $1 billion, with revenues over $100 million.

Not only ordinary collectors but even crypto elites are starting to vote with their feet, returning to physical assets and top collectibles.

For example, crypto artist Beeple has turned his attention to creating physical robots, with his celebrity dog robots being sold out; Wintermute co-founder Yoann Turpin jointly invested $5 million to purchase dinosaur fossils; Animoca founder Yat Siu splurged $9 million on a Stradivarius violin; and Tron founder Justin Sun bought the high-priced banana artwork "Comedian" for $6.2 million.

In the current market environment, ordinary investors need to face the reality of NFT liquidity exhaustion.

Saying Goodbye to the Logic of Little Images, These NFTs Are More Popular

After experiencing the baptism of a bubble burst, the NFT market has not fallen into a complete liquidity drought but has shifted towards targets with high risk-reward ratios or clear value support.

· Speculative and Arbitrage Demand: Some players believe the market has hit bottom and are buying to capture price mismatches for short-term trading, which carries high risk-reward ratios.

· "Golden Shovel" Attribute: These are currently the NFTs with relatively high market participation and liquidity. The essence of these NFTs is no longer collectibles but financial certificates for obtaining future token airdrops, mostly meaning gaining airdrop/whitelist eligibility. However, once expectations materialize, it can be bearish; once the snapshot is completed or the airdrop is issued, if the project does not empower the NFTs with new capabilities, the floor price often plummets rapidly, even to zero. Therefore, these NFTs are more suitable as short-term investments or arbitrage tools rather than long-term value storage.

· Celebrity/Top Project Endorsement: The value of these NFTs is driven by attention economics, and endorsements from celebrities or top projects often significantly enhance visibility and liquidity, creating short-term premiums. For example, the leading DEX HyperLiquid's NFT series Hypurr NFT, which was airdropped to early users, saw a price surge after its launch; Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's recent change of profile picture to a Milady NFT led to a noticeable increase in its floor price.

· Top IPs: These NFTs have often moved beyond simple speculation, with investment logic leaning more towards cultural recognition and collectible value, showing relative price resilience and long-term value storage capabilities. For instance, CryptoPunks was officially included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York at the end of last year.

· Acquisition Narrative: When a project is acquired by a more powerful investor, the market will reprice, expecting its IP monetization capabilities and brand moat to strengthen, thus driving prices up. For example, prices for Pudgy Penguins and Moonbirds saw significant increases after being acquired.

· Real-World Asset Integration: By linking real assets on-chain, NFTs can gain clear physical value support, while reducing downside risks and enhancing out-of-circle capabilities. For example, the recently popular Pokémon card tokenization platforms Collector Crypt and Courtyard allow users to trade ownership of cards/items on-chain, with the physical items being held by the platform.

· Utility Features: NFTs are returning to their tool attributes, serving specific application scenarios. For example, NFT ticketing, as voting rights for DAO decisions, and AI on-chain identities (such as Ethereum ERC-8004 launching NFT-based AI agent identities) etc.

From this perspective, compared to chasing meaningless little images, NFTs with practical utility or clear upward expectations are gradually becoming the focus of capital attention.

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