The NFT track, which has long been cold, seems to have seen some signs of recovery for a long time.
CoinGecko data shows that the total market value of the NFT sector has rebounded to above 6 billion US dollars, now reported at 6.417 billion US dollars, with a 24-hour increase of 23.2%. The increase in transaction volume is even more exaggerated. The total transaction volume in the past 24 hours is about 40 million US dollars, and the transaction volume increase is about 318.3%.
Among mainstream NFT projects, CryptoPunks, Moonbirds, and Pudgy Penguins performed particularly well.
CryptoPunks is because a giant whale spent millions of dollars last night to sweep 45 pieces (the giant whale also swept many Chromie Squiggles). NFT artist Jediwolf counted that a total of 76 CryptoPunks changed hands in the short 5 hours from last night to this morning, which is the largest sweep action of the series since 2021. As of press time, the floor price of CryptoPunks is temporarily reported at 47.5 ETH, with a 24-hour increase of 15.9%.
Moonbirds is because OpenSea briefly changed its official X avatar to Moonbirds series pictures last night, which boosted a wave of popularity. As of press time, the floor price of Moonbirds is temporarily reported at 1.94 ETH, with a 24-hour increase of 33.3%.
Pudgy Penguins, which can be called the 'light of the industry' in the NFT winter, recently appeared in the second season of the American drama (Poker Face), capturing a certain amount of traffic outside the circle. As of press time, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins is temporarily reported at 16.4 ETH, with a 24-hour increase of 13.8%.
In addition to the above-mentioned major projects that performed well, most NFT projects have shown good gains. As of press time, BAYC has increased by 13.2% in 24 hours, Azuki has increased by 26.8% in 24 hours, and the Bitcoin ecosystem is no exception. Taproot Wizards has increased by 30.3% in 24 hours.
In addition, NFT concept coins have also ushered in a big rise. OKX market, as of press time, BLUR is temporarily reported at 0.1176 USDT, with a 24-hour increase of 27.4%, currently ranking third on the OKX gain list.
Regarding the recovery of the NFT market, although there were people 'shouting orders' in the market earlier, there have been too many 'milk methods' surrounding NFTs in the past few years, but what has been exchanged is that the track is getting colder day by day, and retail investors have long been numb to similar 'shouting orders' rhetoric.
On July 16, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicted on the X platform that 'ETH Season is here, and DeFi and NFT markets will benefit and make a comeback', but at that time, the vast majority of replies below his dynamic were mainly jokes.
However, as the 'altcoin season', which has also been eagerly awaited by the market recently, has gradually shown some signs of coming, there are also more discussions surrounding whether the NFT market can recover.
BitmapPunks founder and well-known NFT collector FreeLunchCapital said today that institutions have contacted it in advance to try to harvest ambushes - 'Starting two weeks ago, some institutions have contacted me and made some interesting offers. Everyone knows that I don't sell NFTs, but that's not the case. If the other party has resources, can attract more people to pay attention to NFTs, and help the industry to a higher level, I will consider conducting over-the-counter transactions.'
Abstract contributor 0xCygaar and other old players who were active in the last NFT cycle are even directly calling out that 'NFT Season is finally back'.
Regarding the sudden recovery of NFTs, the logic is not too difficult to understand.
On the one hand, as ETH rebounded strongly and quickly rose to a high level, the follow-up funds will consider related investment targets while paying attention to ETH. Since NFTs originated in the Ethereum ecosystem, and most of the top projects are still concentrated in the Ethereum ecosystem, the NFT sector can be regarded as an alternative choice to ETH to a certain extent. From the perspective of transaction volume, the NFTs with the largest transaction volume are still the top projects on the Ethereum chain with relatively sufficient liquidity, which shows that the funds for this small rebound mainly come from within the Ethereum ecosystem.
On the other hand, after a long period of downturn, the entire NFT market has undergone sufficient washing - weak hands have left the market, and the dealers who intend to control the market may have already completed the selection of targets and the layout of chips. Considering the non-standard liquidity characteristics of NFTs themselves, NFTs may be a more manageable choice for market control than altcoins.
But the current problem is that because the NFT market was too cold before, the consensus on the track has almost collapsed. Even if the short-term popularity has increased, it is still unknown whether more retail investors and funds can follow up.
In other words, the current situation is - if you say that the altcoin season is coming soon, perhaps many retail investors will be willing to pay the bill, but if you say that NFTs will skyrocket soon, it seems that it is better to believe that I am Qin Shihuang...
Is the NFT summer back? Let's take a look at what new actions the old projects have
The 'Punk Sweep' reappeared after 4 years, and only one address spent 8 million US dollars to clean up 46 CryptoPunks in one go, completely detonating the NFT community's popularity.
Not only CryptoPunks, but the overall transaction volume of the NFT market has rebounded again in the past few days, and even exceeded the high point in February this year. According to data from the Coingecko platform, the total market value of the NFT sector has increased by 29% in 24 hours, breaking through 6.7 billion US dollars, and the transaction volume has soared by 372% to 45 million US dollars.
Crypto seems to have abandoned the NFT sector for a long time, but the 'notorious' MoonBird has recently made moves, seemingly preparing to take the IP path of 'Pudgy Penguins'. The overall NFT market is rebounding, and OpenSea, which has been announced for a long time but has not yet issued a token, has been mentioned many times recently. Can we ask that question, 'Is NFT Summer back?'
Large households clean up CryptoPunks after 4 years
Four years ago, in July 2021, '0x65d' spent about $7 million to sweep 104 CryptoPunks in one go, which is the legendary 'Punk Sweep'. In March 2022, these 104 CryptoPunks were estimated at $20-30 million as a whole at Sotheby's for auction, but twenty minutes after the auction started, '0x65d' cancelled the auction.
Four years later, in July 2025, '0x1bb' spent about $8 million to sweep 46 CryptoPunks in one go. Seeing 'Punk Sweep 2.0' as ETH gradually approaches its historical high point really gives a sense of the destiny of the times.
The funds for this address '0x1bb351C5410b2f6BaE36a74aA6B38a9800AE72D6' to purchase NFTs were transferred from Coinbase Prime one day ago. In addition to 46 CryptoPunks, this address also purchased 11 leading generative art Chromie Squiggles.
According to the data on the chain, some of the funds used to purchase NFTs were also transferred from the address '0xF1CDC3De7819f93fB93D0c52001d4Fa495Ab471D', and the funds of this address were also transferred from Coinbase Prime one day ago, and also purchased 19 Chromie Squiggles.
That is to say, '0x1bb' purchased a total of 46 CryptoPunks and 30 Chromie Squiggles, with a total consumption of about 8.6 million US dollars.
Currently, the identity of '0x1bb' is still mysterious. No one knows which giant whale or institution is behind this address. After the copyright of CryptoPunks was acquired by Infinite Node Foundation for about 20 million US dollars in May this year, the official tweet of Infinite Node Foundation has not been updated with any tweets. Therefore, this is a 'mysterious rise' - I don't know who '0x1bb' is, and I don't know why he suddenly bought in with such a large amount of money.
But the big purchase by '0x1bb' clearly ignited the NFT market sentiment:
Is Moonbirds going the old road of penguins?
The rise of Moonbirds is particularly eye-catching among all these projects. In the past week, the floor price of Moonbirds has increased by nearly 3 times, and if the timeline is extended to the past 3 months, the floor price of Moonbirds has increased by nearly 11 times.
On May 31 this year, Moonbirds was acquired by Orange Cap Games from Yuga Labs. As soon as the news came out, the floor price rose by nearly 3 times. After a period of adjustment, Moonbirds started to explode.
Moonbirds is currently conveying a 'Pudgy Penguins CTO 2.0' image. In 2022, after Luca Netz took over Pudgy Penguins, the team quickly went to work, giving the entire IP a new look, and becoming the top IP in the NFT circle today.
Orange Cap Games, which acquired Moonbirds, is also well-known for making the card game 'Vibes TCG' using the Pudgy Penguins IP. At the end of 2024, Orange Cap Games completed a $2 million angel round of financing, which helped 'Vibes TCG' come into being. On June 10 this year, they announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx and Yuga Labs.
In 2023, Pudgy Penguins' $9 million seed round of financing was also led by 1kx.
Spencer Gordon-Sand, CEO of Orange Cap Games, is a well-known figure in the circle. He founded Spencer Ventures, a fund focusing on NFTs, in 2022. After Orange Cap Games acquired Moonbirds, the new team quickly delivered some visible changes to the community like Pudgy Penguins did back then.
Spencer: In the 51 days after acquiring the entire Moonbirds series, we have been at the top of the daily transaction volume list of ETH NFTs for 5 days, confirmed the airdrop from the social application Towns, confirmed the free Pokémon cards, let the OpenSea official tweet change to our avatar, established a Telegram announcement channel that already has 25,000 people, put 1.4 million US dollars into the lottery to buy our Telegram stickers, obtained 350 US dollars in financing led by 1kx, hired new team members and will be announced soon.
It can be said that Moonbirds was liberated from the strategic contraction trend of Yuga Labs and became an IP that a new company is vigorously developing. While the price is rising, it reminds everyone of the way Pudgy Penguins looked back then, which has greatly changed the fundamentals of Moonbirds.
Which other projects have changed today?
Although Ethereum is still the main force behind the rise in NFT due to the recent rise of ETH, there are many projects in both the Solana and Bitcoin ecosystems that have followed this wave.
Solana Ecosystem
Solana officials directly posted the images of four NFT project parties today and captioned 'We're so back'. In fact, these four Solana NFT projects have developed different directions in their respective fields.
Among them, Solana Monkey Business (SMB) in the upper left, as one of the earliest NFT projects deeply cultivated in the Solana ecosystem, still occupies the top of the gain list, with a 24-hour increase of 36% and a floor price of 25 SOL, and the transaction volume has exceeded 650,000 US dollars.
This NFT project operated by MonkeDAO is known for its community, including innovative measures such as running Solana validation nodes, and its core founding team Nom and SolportTom are also the founding team members of the launch platform LetsBonk/BONK, which is now successfully fighting against Pumpfun.
In addition, SolportTom also mentioned another project by his 'DeRUG' (AKA CTO) - Taiyo Robotics also rose sharply, with the floor price rising by 40% in 24 hours to 60 SOL, and the transaction volume exceeded 260,000 US dollars. It has risen 10 times in the past month. According to Tom, this is the first CTO project in the Solana ecosystem that is now popular with the 'CTO concept'.
Tom also told about his experience of being 'forced CTO' at the time. When he first entered the circle, he was still a development team working for clients with no fame. At that time, we had a small BD team that would go to their Discord to send messages when each new project MINT, saying that we could provide some services, such as deploying Candy Machine, etc.
Later, Taiyo found the team and said they wanted to make a market where users could buy custom assets and replace parts on their bots, and pulled TOM's team into Discord and gave the team a role, but then they basically 'disappeared from the world'.
As a result, the people in the community thought they were also team members, but TOM himself couldn't figure it out. 'I didn't want my reputation to be ruined because of this, so I decided to take over this project myself, using it as a endorsement of community credibility and trying to gain some goodwill'.
Different from SMB's deep cultivation of the Solana community, Claynosaurz's path is more like the 'American' Azuki. This project is led by an experienced team of animators and focuses on high-quality content creation. The transaction volume in the past 24 hours has reached 120,000 US dollars. Claynosaurz recently won the Gold Award for animation excellence at the Collision Awards. At the same time, team members also participated as invited guests in one of the most well-known animation exhibitions held in San Diego - COMIC CON, becoming one of the most popular animation NFTs in the Solana project.
The floor price of Mad Lads, the former Solana leader, rose by 20% in 24 hours, and the floor price returned to 40 SOL. The old NFT project Galactic Geckos also rose sharply, with the floor price almost doubling in 24 hours, now quoted at 6.5 SOL.
Ordinals Ecosystem
The Ordinals ecosystem has been silent for a long time, but it has also stirred up some waves, in addition to NodeMonkes, whose floor price rose by 30% in a single day (although it is still far from ATH).
That is the current leader of the Ordinals ecosystem, the wizard Taproot Wizard. Except for a few wizards bought with several bitcoins after the opening, the current Taproot Wizard is only 6 orders away from reaching ATH again. Priced in today's increasingly expensive Bitcoin, the floor price is as high as $25,000. Not to mention that buying an NFT costs 'digital gold' Bitcoin, it is hard not to think that Taproot Wizard's next plan may be far more than just a 'community'.
With more and more NFT projects and old OGs 'reviving', does this NFT craze represent that the NFT field can be recognized by the capital market and become the receiving end of the bull market funds overflowing, or is it ultimately just a 'flash in the pan' after countless attempts to revive?
We don't know, just like we don't know how long 'is coming' is for OpenSea.
#CryptoPunks #bayc #MoonBirds #PudgyPenguins
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