The Collapse of NFTs

The last cry of NFTs stopped at the issuance of Pudgy Penguins tokens; the recent token issuance of Doodles on Solana only made some waves.

Author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke

1. The Collapse of NFTs

The last cry of NFTs stopped at the issuance of Pudgy Penguins tokens. The recent token issuance of Doodles on Solana only made some waves. Yuga Labs' subtraction continues, this time even affecting its most iconic IP, Cryptopunks. Those Bitcoin NFTs in the last wave of NFT revival are also almost worth nothing now. Those once-crazy narratives have indeed long since slipped into obscurity, and no one cares anymore.

The vision of 10k PFP was once beautiful, with a community of just the right size helping a grassroots IP project to go global, which is completely different from traditional IP projects that first invest money to support content. For example, Disney's Marvel Universe, Star Wars, and various animated images often require years of accumulation along with countless funds to make these IPs deeply rooted in people's hearts and ultimately become a gold mine.

NFT is completely different. Its entry threshold is extremely low, and the speed of creating an IP and assetizing IP is quite fast. Creators only need to pay some gas fees to list their artworks for sale on Opensea, without galleries, toy companies, film companies, or any professional teams. An IP and a new artist are thus born.

We witnessed three or four years ago that some grassroots IPs became popular in the top entertainment circles of Europe, America, Japan, and Korea. A grassroots artist can also achieve a reverse leap through NFTs. For me, as a member of Generation Z who grew up watching Japanese anime, being able to participate in IP investment and incubation that ordinary people could not access through Crypto is also a very dreamy thing.

However, after the 'crazy matryoshka' of BAYC and the disaster-level sub-series Elemental of Azuki, the ambiguous status of NFTs gradually became clear. It does not resemble a type of equity or investment. Instead, it looks more like an expensive luxury item with membership benefits. Meanwhile, the project parties hope that we will continue to buy sub-series to support their ongoing investments in the roadmap for the core value of IP. The seeds of contradiction were sown here. Project parties know that creating content is expensive, but without content, the IP will die. Sub-series released every few months constantly drain the OG series holders, tormenting every member of the community, and the feedback from content may take many years to arrive, or perhaps this feedback will never come. The cracks began to widen, and those beautiful fantasies began to collapse with the drop in floor prices, leaving only various conflicts.

2. The Ace MCN in the IP World - PoP MART

If we view NFTs as luxury trendy toys for Generation Z, then the reasons for their rise and fall become clearer. In the fast-food era, having no content is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, it can quickly attract buyers based solely on appearance. For example, Azuki's art style aligns well with Asian aesthetics, and this grassroots-produced NFT series can closely follow behind BAYC to become the third-largest blue chip. In the real world, well-known trendy toys like Bearbrick, B.Duck, and Molly also lack content support, yet they became immensely popular due to their unique appearances.

However, trends are always fleeting. Without content as a core value, these IPs can become obsolete at any time. Limited by the culture of the cryptocurrency circle and the extremely low success rate of NFTs, project parties often continuously create derivatives around a single IP. But the reality is that the core has yet to take shape, and this wind will pass.

Of course, there is a type of PFP project that has ample content support, which is Japanese-style NFT. In the past, I have seen at least four or five projects holding well-known Japanese anime IPs hoping to make a big splash in the NFT market, but they seem to have not considered that the fan base for these IPs is almost completely incompatible with this circle. The second point is that the peripherals of Japanese anime have long been too numerous to choose from. Why would fans spend hundreds of times the price to buy a small image? Of course, the most important point is the third one. This small image can only be an image, and the future empowerment potential is zero. Even if you purchase a high-end NFT, you can only gain access to the entrance of the Gundam metaverse 'SIDE-G'. Wanda's profits from models, games, and animations have nothing to do with you, and the community will not be a part of IP incubation. It is even considered an outsider within the entire Gundam fan base. In this regard, the pain points of GameFi are actually very similar.

Thus, PFP projects have become a pseudo-proposition, with only the pragmatic spark of little penguins still striving hard. So, does the little image have another way out? I believe PoP MART may provide a different answer.

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