'First Ma Ji, then Yi Nengjing, many NFT big shots from the last round are back.'
In 2021, the star effect fueled the NFT frenzy. Now, they return once again, bringing different stories and bets.
Meanwhile, the NFT market's trading volume is warming, and buyers are surging. Behind this apparent recovery, is it the true arrival of spring or an illusion in the cold winter?
Is the NFT market entering a deep shift period?
The macro data of the market presents a confusing contradiction.
On one hand, long-term expectations remain optimistic, with authoritative institutions like Vancelian predicting that the market size will exceed hundreds of billions this year. On the other hand, the short-term reality is unusually cold: DappRadar's report shows that NFT trading volume in the second quarter of this year has fallen nearly 29% compared to the previous quarter.
But this apparent retreat has not triggered market panic; rather, it reveals a structural transformation.
According to DappRadar data, in the second quarter of 2025, despite the total NFT trading volume declining due to a reduction in high-priced collectibles, the number of transactions surged by 78% from about 7.02 million to 12.5 million, and the number of unique buyers also grew significantly by 44% from 651,000 to 936,000.
This set of 'price drop, volume rise' anomalous data reveals the profound changes the market is undergoing, as NFTs quietly shift from a high-priced speculative game for a few to a broader 'popularization process'.
As Coindoo reported: Despite the decline in trading volume, the increase in sales volume and the decrease in average transaction value indicate a broader market participation, with trading momentum shifting from pure speculation to practicality and community consensus.
At this delicate juncture, a group of 'star players' who had previously left are returning. What does their return signify?
Stars return, but are the scythes still sharp?
From Jay Chou's concept PhantaBear to Yu Wenle's ZombieClub, and to Yi Nengjing's own Theirsverse, these projects that were once wildly sought after have now seen their floor price drop over 98% from their peak, nearly to zero, behind the cold numbers are countless investors still silently licking their wounds.
However, to understand today's market, one must look back at those years of intertwining fervor and awakening.
2021: The Peak of Revelry
This is a golden age where dreamers dance with speculators.
Bitcoin surged to a historical high of $69,000, with NFTs jumping from niche collectibles to global topics. In October 2021, Ma Ji Da Ge spent 425 ETH to buy Cyborg Bored Ape, instantly igniting FOMO.
At the end of the year, Jay Chou's concept PhantaBear sold out in 40 minutes, with daily sales exceeding ten million dollars.
2022: The Arrival of the Cold Winter
But the prosperity is fleeting, and under the multiple shocks of black swan events, high inflation, interest rate hikes, and wars, Bitcoin fell below $20,000, and the crypto market cap halved to $1 trillion.
Edison Chen, Yu Wenle, and Yi Nengjing successively launched NFT projects, but ultimately all collapsed in the bear market wave. Theirsverse dropped from 0.219 ETH to 0.02 ETH, a decline of over 96%, leading Yi Nengjing to bear the label of 'Queen of Retail Investors'.
2025: Familiar Faces Return, New Forces Enter
Currently, Ma Ji Da Ge has completed his identity transformation from an NFT whale to a high-leverage trader of meme coins, using real 'cash' to bet on BLAST and PUMP tokens, publicly disclosing profits and losses, becoming the 'number one gambler' coexisting with the market, while Yi Nengjing has also quietly returned.
Moreover, legendary businessman Qian Fenglei entered Web3 at the beginning of the year with a 'billion-dollar fortune', claiming to invest $100 million to create 'Peach Blossom Source NFT', while Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz quietly changed his avatar to Pudgy Penguins.
Everything seems to have returned to 2021, with stars back in place and the market restless, but this time, beneath the heat, there is less blind faith and more restraint.
The Transformation of the Community: From Followers to Value 'Judges'
In the NFT market of 2025, the community is no longer just participants, but has transformed into true 'judges'.
On the surface, the data looks good: NFT trading volume is steadily rising, with blue-chip projects like CryptoPunks, BAYC, and Pudgy Penguins continuously increasing in price, but this time, the community's response is unprecedentedly calm.
'The NFT craze of 2021 will not reoccur.' @RicecakeNFT bluntly stated on X: 'The entry barrier has significantly increased, and investors are paying more attention to practicality and community value.' This statement captures the truth of the NFT market in 2025, where after the retreat of speculative bubbles, value returns to become the main theme.
Community member @waleswoosh predicts: 'In 2025, a top NFT project may no longer exist, while we will see several NFT projects with floor prices above 50 ETH. This year will be a year of repricing and real value.'
In the NFT world of 2025, it appears lively on the surface, but is actually calm.
From speculation to consensus, from frenzy to rationality, this deep shift in the NFT market represents a reshaping of value.
NFTs usher in a renaissance, but does Solana co-founder throw cold water on it?
NFTs seem to be following ETH's path back to $4,000, with established blue-chip NFTs having thawed and revived from an 18-month ice age.
Among them, the trading volume of the CryptoPunks NFT series exceeded $24.6 million last week, setting a record high since March 2024, an increase of 416% compared to the previous week.
On the evening of July 24, NASDAQ-listed GameSquare announced that its board had approved a strategic purchase of CryptoPunk #5577 from DeFi protocol Compound founder and Superstate CEO Robert Leshner.
According to the terms of the acquisition agreement, GameSquare issued $5.15 million in preferred stock to Robert Leshner, which can be converted into about 3.4 million shares of GameSquare common stock at a price of $1.50 per share.
This move triggered a trading frenzy for CryptoPunks NFTs, with significant increases in the floor price and average selling price of CryptoPunks. As listed companies become the main force in hoarding coins, NFTs seem to also need to 'save' themselves through corporate entities.
Previously, Arthur Hayes stated that as ETH rises, DeFi and NFTs will also follow suit, predicting that this round of ETH holders' yields will not outperform CryptoPunks.
The remaining ETH blue-chip NFTs also essentially rose in tandem within a week, with the Moonbirds floor price breaking 2 ETH, rising nearly 50%, and the Milady Maker floor price exceeding 3 ETH, up over 20%.
However, NFTs are just starting to gain momentum. Last Sunday, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Base founder Jesse Pollak opened a 'mutual attack mode' on Twitter over whether creator tokens on Zora could be compared to anonymous meme coins on Pump.fun.
Jesse Pollak stated that the content and creators of creator tokens on Zora hold unique value, equating their tokens on Pump.fun to a logical fallacy, while Anatoly Yakovenko indicated that these tokens are merely products of viral dissemination, with buyers just wanting to flip them quickly. Pollak rebutted that tokens are a powerful technology empowering the flow of creator value, and those who disagree can insist on the viewpoint that 'content has no value.'
In the debate, Anatoly Yakovenko bluntly concluded - 'Memecoins and NFTs are digital garbage, with no intrinsic value', comparing such digital assets to the free game's 'loot box' mechanism.
Although Solana greatly benefited from memecoin-driven activities from 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, toly himself stated that he has repeatedly publicly stated that memecoins have no intrinsic value.
However, toly has unreservedly taken on the role of a meme-pumping KOL in the community, having become famous for 'crazy milking memes on Solana', to the point that towards the end of the Solana meme craze, toly's credibility as an advocate for Solana had nearly vanished.
Fast forward two years, from its creation in December 2023 to the Chinese New Year of the Dragon in 2024, Silly Dragon has become the top meme on Solana, with its creation solely because toly liked the dragon's image and appeared in that form at events.
After Silly Dragon was created, when it had only 1,454 fans, toly had already followed it, a move that caused Silly Dragon to surge tenfold in just 1-2 hours.
Subsequently, as the Silly Dragon community continued to grow, toly became 'addicted to milking', not only subtly tweeting with Dragon emojis but also directly retweeting related Meme project tweets.
Looking back at Solana's rise from obscurity to the third-largest public chain by market cap, its early success was primarily due to Solana's low transaction costs, as most new NFTs and protocols favored Solana as the public chain.
NFTs and memes, as the most prominent identifiers of the crypto-native community, have objectively helped Solana form one of the strongest communities in the entire crypto space. Toly's cutting of NFTs and memes, judging the behavior of speculative assets from a moral high ground, undoubtedly gives the community a feeling of 'eating and cursing the cook'.
With the soaring PENGU token, can Abstract Chain break through among the L2s?
In the past month, the price of the Pudgy Penguins ecosystem token PENGU has significantly risen. Data shows that from June 23 to July 23, 2025, its maximum increase once exceeded 500%, currently reported at $0.038.
Meanwhile, the floor price of the Pudgy Penguins NFT series has also risen over 50%, currently reported at 15.8 ETH (approximately $61,000).
On July 31, it was revealed that the Pudgy Penguins and Abstract teams have officially taken on advisory roles for the U.S. government, participating in the legislative design work related to cryptocurrency. The team has made several trips to Washington, D.C. for policy consultations, and PENGU has submitted applications to regulators to launch a spot ETF product covering NFT and token assets.
Riding the wave of the crypto spring in American politics, the launch anniversary of another project Abstract Chain, which the team is working on, coincides with this time. Can this L2 break through the competition?
As the Ethereum Layer 2 network under Pudgy Penguins' parent company Igloo Inc., Abstract Chain was formerly an on-chain creator economy platform called Frame, with the vision of building blockchain infrastructure focused on 'consumer-level crypto experiences'.
Its technological foundation adopts zkSync's ZK technology and EigenDA's data availability scheme, operating as an Ethereum Layer 2 while providing low-cost and high-speed trading experiences. Its official website clearly states: 'We do not pursue being the 'fastest' or 'most complex' chain but focus on being the 'easiest to use' - allowing new users to access blockchain seamlessly as they would Web2 applications.'
In the early stages of the project, institutional investments were secured from Founders Fund, Fenbushi Capital, 1kx, etc. In July 2025, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz revealed that they are seeking a new round of financing for Abstract and exploring ways for community participation in fundraising.
At the same time, Abstract will continue to optimize the iOS experience and its portal application, aiming to lower the entry threshold for Web3 to the minimum.
One year of progress: from infrastructure to initial ecology emerging
As of July 2025, the total value locked (TVL) on the Abstract Chain network reached $45 million, with over 100 million transactions processed.
The Abstract Chain ecosystem revolves around 'consumer-level scenarios', with recent frequent retweets of collaboration projects from its official account:
Onchain Heroes: An idle RPG running on Abstract Chain, supported by Proof of Play technology. Players send heroes on adventures, earn HERO tokens, craft equipment, and compete on leaderboards. Its Genesis Hero NFT floor price is currently reported at 0.14 ETH, with a token HERO market cap of about $10.5 million.
Moonsheep (SHEEP): Adopting the innovative DN-404 standard (merging ERC-721 and ERC-20), positioned as a hybrid project combining the virality of meme coins with the depth of NFT branding.
Death.Fun: A high-risk, high-reward on-chain game where players bet, select safe blocks to avoid 'death squares', and accumulate multipliers, with the option to settle profits at any time.
In addition, Abstract Chain recently announced a collaboration with Korean K-pop agency Modhaus, which owns top girl groups such as tripleS and ARTMS.
Meme and Community: Cultural Symbols Led by PENGU
Currently, the leading meme coins by market cap on Abstract Chain have also become the main characters of its ecosystem, among which PENGU's market cap has reached $2.3 billion, firmly in the lead, while ABSTER (market cap $32 million), NOOT ($14 million), and others derived from the 'penguin' IP form unique tags through storytelling and community consensus.
For example, ABSTER claims to be the 'legendary penguin deeply rooted in the Abstract Chain code', with its 'inevitable' setting strengthening users' recognition of its 'on-chain cultural symbols'. NOOT attracts users with its 'penguin retro sentiment', echoing Pudgy Penguins' early community memories.
One year after its establishment, Abstract Chain has made initial progress in trading scale, TVL, and ecosystem project incubation, especially attracting users and developers relying on Pudgy Penguins' community influence. Its focus on consumer-level experiences and lowering entry barriers is clear, and cooperation with K-Pop also demonstrates an attempt to break through off-chain cultural boundaries.
However, how to transcend the hype of meme coins and cultivate truly durable and widely user-adopted consumer applications remains the core challenge faced by Abstract Chain and its ecosystem builders.
TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025 Summit Preview
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