The Final Chapter and Reboot of NFTs: A Reflection from Popularity to Obscurity

1. The End of the NFT Craze

The frenzy of the NFT market seems to have come to an end. The token issuance of Pudgy Penguins became the last highlight in this field, while Doodles' token issuance on Solana also failed to stir up much excitement. Even giants like Yuga Labs are continuously reducing their business scope, and even their core IP Cryptopunks has not been spared. Those NFT projects that once sparked frenzy on the Bitcoin network have now nearly returned to zero, and the once-crazy narratives have long since become quiet, with no one paying attention anymore.

10,000 avatars ( PFP ) NFT once represented a beautiful vision - a moderately sized community could help a bottom-up IP project go global. This is in stark contrast to the traditional IP model, which requires a large upfront investment in content creation. Traditional IPs like Disney's Marvel Universe and Star Wars often require years of accumulation and massive investment to resonate with people and ultimately monetize.

In contrast, the threshold for NFTs is extremely low, allowing for quick creation of IP and realization of assetization. Creators only need to pay a small gas fee to sell their works on OpenSea, without the need for support from galleries, toy companies, or film companies, and without requiring a professional team, they can create an IP and become a new artist.

A few years ago, we witnessed some bottom-up IPs becoming popular in the top entertainment circles of Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea. Ordinary artists can also achieve a turnaround through NFT. For Generation Z individuals like me, who grew up watching Japanese anime, being able to participate in IP investment and incubation that were once inaccessible through cryptocurrency is a dreamlike experience.

However, with projects like BAYC continuously launching new series and the disastrous release of Azuki's sub-series Elemental, the positioning of NFTs has gradually become clearer – they are not a form of equity or investment, but rather more like an expensive luxury item with accompanying membership benefits. The project teams also hope that holders will continuously purchase new series to support their roadmap for future IP content development. This contradictory seed has thus been sown – the project teams are well aware that content development costs are high, but without developing content IP, they will lose vitality. Issuing a sub-series every few months continually consumes the enthusiasm of the original series holders, tormenting everyone in the community. Waiting for content to yield returns may take years, or it may never come at all. The cracks begin to widen, beautiful illusions shatter as floor prices fall, leaving only various disputes.

2. The Ace MCN in the Trendy Toy World - PoP MART

If NFTs are viewed as luxury trend toys for Generation Z, the reasons for their rise and fall become clearer. In this era of fast food culture, lacking content is not necessarily a bad thing, as mere appearance can quickly attract buyers. For example, Azuki's art style aligns well with Asian aesthetics, and driven by consensus, this grassroots NFT series became the third largest blue-chip project right after BAYC. Well-known trend toys in the real world, such as Bearbrick(, the B.Duck little yellow duck, and Molly, also lack content support, yet they all became popular for their unique appearances.

However, trends are always changing rapidly, and IPs without content as value support may become outdated at any time. Limited by the cultural characteristics of the cryptocurrency circle and the low success rate of NFT projects, project teams often continuously launch derivatives around a single IP. But the reality is that when the core value of the IP is not yet formed, this trend has already passed.

Of course, there are also some PFP projects with rich content support, such as Japanese NFTs. In the past, I have seen at least four or five projects with well-known Japanese anime IPs that hope to make a name for themselves in the NFT market. However, they seem to have overlooked a few key issues: first, the fanbase of the IP is almost completely unrelated to the NFT community; secondly, the peripheral products of Japanese anime are already overwhelming, why would fans spend hundreds of times the price to buy a small image? Most importantly, this small image is just an image, and the future application space is almost zero. Even if you purchase a Gundam NFT, you can only gain access to the "SIDE-G" of the Gundam metaverse. The profits Bandai earns from models, games, and animations are naturally unrelated to you; the NFT community may even be seen as outliers among the entire Gundam fanbase. In this regard, the pain points of GameFi projects are actually very similar.

It seems that PFP projects have become a false proposition, with only the pragmatic spark of Pudgy Penguins continuing to make efforts. So, do these small images have another way out? I believe PoP MART may provide a different answer.

This small grid store, born in the Beijing Oumeihui Shopping Center, turned around by relying on the agency of Sonny Angel. This one series alone contributed nearly 30% of PoP MART's sales at that time. The envious copyright holder reclaimed the exclusive agency rights a year later, but this move instead led to the birth of an IP empire.

The founder of PoP MART, Wang Ning, had a very simple idea: to create proprietary IP that cannot be taken away by others. In 2016, PoP MART collaborated with Hong Kong designer Wang Xinming to launch its first self-owned toy series - Molly. This pouting little girl quickly became popular across the country, and with the uncertainty of the blind box play and the dopamine drive, PoP MART initiated its first round of rapid growth. By 2019, the annual sales of the single IP Molly had reached 456 million yuan, becoming PoP MART's core source of income at that time.

This model, which combines Japanese gachapon with high-end trendy toys, has also been quite common during the NFT boom in the following years. Basic elements are designed by artists and then assembled into a series of images for sales and operations by the project party. NFTs typically also adopt a blind box format during the initial launch phase, where the project party releases various rare combinations of images to enhance players' purchasing desire.

The two only differ in the form of release, but tens of thousands of NFT projects and various blue-chip projects have generally failed. So why is PoP MART迎来第二春?

I once attributed the reasons to difficulties in implementation and high purchase thresholds. From the current perspective, the former indeed poses a problem, but the latter is not necessarily the case. NFTs also had a grassroots period with free minting )Free Mint(, where Goblintown and MIMIC SHHANS were the star projects of that time, and creators made a fortune solely from transaction commissions. Many NFTs in the inscription era even took decentralization a step further, but this still could not prevent the decline of NFTs. It's easy to form or join an IP community, but the challenge lies in how to sustain it.

Therefore, I think we might have a problem with the model. After the first round of rapid growth, Molly also did not let PoP MART soar; the company's stock price fell from 2021 to 2024, just like NFTs. However, PoP MART has finally started to recover, relying on a whole wall of IPs. Today, PoP MART has 12 proprietary IPs, including Molly, DIMOO, BOBO&COCO, YUKI, and Hirono, 25 exclusive IPs including THE MONSTERS) with Labubu(, PUCKY, SATYR RORY, and over 50 non-exclusive co-branded IPs with Harry Potter, Disney, League of Legends, and more.

People's preferences are always changing, and the lifecycle of an IP is limited, but what if I have hundreds of options? Nowadays, Labubu is very popular in Europe, America, and Southeast Asia, and the value retention of its peripheral dolls can be called "plastic Moutai." Yuga Labs' ideals were ultimately realized in Web2, and this is not a coincidence.

We should rethink what the IP business is, what the development roadmap for NFTs is, and why PoP MART can achieve such high success without content support?

![Issuing tokens is not the goal: The final chapter and reboot of NFT])https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-4e24f95a4f9ab5873edaf4528cbce987.webp(

Three, the Path to Success of Pudgy Penguins

The success of Pudgy Penguins lies in pragmatism, pragmatism, or pragmatism. The NFT itself is difficult to distinguish technically, no matter how cleverly the minting process is designed, it ultimately ends up being just a JPG image. The real challenge for NFTs lies in the realization of IP, which is hundreds of times more difficult than creating 10,000 PFPs. Yuga Labs wants to build a metaverse, while Azuki hopes to create anime. These ideas are cool, but for these projects that cost millions, they will only seek financial support from community members.

In this highly compressed world, people are eager for quick success. Holders want to make big money, and project teams want to reach the top in one go. Very few blue-chip projects are willing to humble themselves, resulting in more severe failures the more impatient they become. The original team of Pudgy Penguins was also such an impatient grassroots team, and after their reputation was damaged, they sold the project at a low price.

At this time, the little penguin encountered the true helmsman, Luca Netz. This professional, with years of experience in physical marketing, has brought the little penguin back to where it belongs. Luca Netz is truly building a brand, and he operates a company for NFT holders. From marketing to plush toys, and then to future games, every step of the little penguin is solid, the company can be profitable, and the holders can also benefit. There is nothing particularly special about it; it is just doing what it should do. It has been proven that bottom-up IPs can exist in Web3; it's just that there are too many projects that cannot lower their stance.

Therefore, I do not like the term "falsifiability", as if certain things should never have existed. Electric vehicles used to be clumsy, and Siri on the phone was also quite dumb. But this does not prevent the entire city from now being filled with electric vehicles with green licenses, and the development of AI goes without saying.

Many so-called discredited tracks will still be attempted in Web3 in the future, but it lacks a suitable project party.

4. Future Development Path

The path to success seems simple, but in reality, it is fraught with difficulties. The next stop for PFP must break through the inherent logical framework of cryptocurrency, and a significant accumulation is needed to become the next Web3 version of Disney. I have previously discussed whether the scarcity of NFT has been counterproductive in the process of becoming more mainstream. If it is defined as a trendy consumer product, then a scale of 10,000 may be too limited; if it is defined as a type of asset and fundraising method unique to Web3, then the IP must ultimately be transformed into tangible consumer products to fulfill its promises to the community, rather than a bunch of odd sub-series.

Based on the unique culture of the cryptocurrency community and the attributes of NFTs themselves, it is indeed a helpless situation to stick to an IP to the end. How to further develop on the basis of these PFPs? How to expand a project into an IP factory? This may require us to embrace some new concepts and introduce more technologies and gameplay.

5. Issuing Tokens: The End or a New Beginning?

The significance of issuing tokens for NFT projects remains confusing to this day. This practice seems more like an exploitation of the lower tiers by the higher-ups, as well as a dilution of the original value of NFTs. I can only understand it as the project team seeking a convenient way to exit with liquidity.

From APE to DOOD, without exception, they all resemble variations of air coins. The functions they provide often include staking for on-chain transaction dividends, purchasing items in the metaverse, governance rights, and so on. Ideally, it should be a perfect cycle among the holder → staker → developer. But the reality is that it resembles more of an air, trapped in a vicious cycle of falling NFT prices, decreasing mining yields, and declining token prices.

For original NFT holders, although the tokens took away some dividends and rights, most of them will also receive a large airdrop during the token generation event )TGE(, so no one complains. However, in the long run, this is indeed a form of dilution, and the distribution method like Azuki's Anime is even more blatant.