Fueled by record-breaking minting activity and a growing array of use cases, NFTs cemented themselves as a cornerstone crypto innovation in 2024.
The new year promises to push the boundaries of NFTs to the extremes as practical applications drive mainstream adoption and cultural breakthroughs redefine the concept of ownership, positioning this sector for even greater achievements in 2025 as momentum builds on all fronts!
From infrastructure improvements to price surges, here are five bold predictions that I believe will define the next chapter of the NFT revolution. 👇
📈 New Minting Records
The NFT space had its most active year yet, according to Electric Capital’s Annual Developer Report.
Empowered by low transaction fees on Ethereum’s Layer 2 solutions and growing competition from alternative Layer 1s, creators launched more NFT contracts than ever before and were met with equally robust demand: minting volumes, transactions, and the number of active minting wallets all reached all-time highs in 2024.
Looking ahead to 2025, the crypto space should brace itself for another wave of NFT innovation and activity. Renewed interest from both creators and consumers, coupled with improved user experiences and groundbreaking consumer-facing applications, should lay the groundwork for unprecedented growth.
We will be closely following new developments from the Abstract ecosystem and the continued rise of onchain agents, like those from Virtuals and Wayfinder, as the bleeding edge of NFT adoption.
Although NFTs are most readily associated with the picture-plagued onchain collectible variety, we anticipate that non-obvious non-fungible use cases will receive the most adoption in 2025.
Stablecoin issuer Liquity recently integrated NFTs for V2, enabling users to transfer or trade their collateralized debt positions. Polymarket’s conditional NFTs facilitate the creation of betting markets, meanwhile, emergent AI agent creation platform Virtuals uses NFTs in its Immutable Contributions Vault (ICV) system to track contributions.
NFTs will remain a comfortable format for artists to distribute their creative works, but look for this transformative technology to play a bigger role in practical onchain applications.
🎮 Cambrian Gaming Explosion
In October, Starknet teamed up with the onchain gaming maestros at Cartridge to stress test their L2 and achieved new L2 speed records in the process! The trial period yielded average Starknet fees of just $0.002 per transaction and achieved a max 867 transactions per second.
The rise of account abstraction functionality has greatly improved the user experience for crypto novices, and even though mainstream laggards have yet to adopt crypto gaming en masse, this sector gives players in-game object ownership and introduces tokenomic incentives, positioning it to tap new demographics while fostering financial participation.
As blockchain infrastructure continues to improve during 2025, we expect that the rising popularity of onchain gaming titles will push an L2 to +1k TPS for the first time in history.
🌕 Bitcoin Puppets Moon
Picture this: it’s November 2025, BTC just shattered $500k, and Donald Trump’s America continues accumulating BTC for strategic reserves. The momentum shows no signs of slowing.
In this era of newfound abundance, BTC whales may seek to flaunt their wealth (much like Ether OGs did during the last bull market) through top NFT projects. As a consensus play at the forefront of the niche Ordinals sector with strong community support, Bitcoin Puppets stands uniquely positioned to capture the lion's share of these inflows.
Under such auspicious conditions, Bitcoin Puppets may not only ride the bullish wave, but thrive to solidify its place as a top 5 NFT collection by year’s end.
💸 Fresh Record Alien CryptoPunks Sale
Some of crypto’s largest NFT sales have been CryptoPunks, and the “Alien” variety of this PFP collection firmly dominates the top sales charts! Alien Punk 5822 sold for a record 8k ETH ($24M) near the peak of the 2022 NFT bubble, and two of these highly desirable collectibles traded hands for eye-watering 8-figure price tags in 2024.
We’re anticipating an ETH resurgence in 2025 as institutions and individuals alike look to increasingly access decentralized financial systems and onchain compute. On the heels of these profound tailwinds, a new record-setting Alien CryptoPunk sale could be in the cards.
Want to make an impact? Apply for a grant! The Cartesi Grants Program Wave 2 is accepting proposals over the next 6 months, with a funding budget of $500,000 in CTSI to support builders. Not a dev but know talented devs? Refer them to the program and become eligible for a DevDrop reward!
Not financial or tax advice. Bankless content is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
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