p.s. Next week, Metaversal is adding a new special series to the mix: The AI Roundup — chronicling updates and alpha in onchain AI. With this new issue, we’ll be moving from 3 to 4 weekly newsletters, now coming to you every week on Mon, Weds, Fri, and Sat! Expect the same great content, just more alpha for you 🫡
Sponsor: Mantle — Mass adoption of decentralized & token-governed technologies.
That NFT creativity you like is coming back in style—at least if activity around NFTs this past year is any indication!
The context here is Electric Capital just released their latest Developer Report for crypto in 2024, and therein they highlighted how NFT deployments, minting volume, minting transactions, and minting wallets reached all-time highs this year.
There's no doubt that for many people, sentiments around NFTs got gloomy over the course of the last bear market. Personally, I always figured that gloom was way overblown.
That's because nothing fundamentally changed about the endless programmable possibilities here—the first major market cycle just came and went for an entirely new asset genre.
The good news is that more than a few creative tinkerers in our space remained undeterred and have continued to experiment around NFTs, as evidenced by Electric's new Developer Report.
That said, what has changed is the meta. In 2021, trading digital collectibles as luxury Veblen goods was the main approach for many NFTers.
Since then, there has been a huge migration of activity toward more accessible, low-cost social mints, e.g. on Zora where the average mint now is far less than $1 worth of ETH.
This trend is reflected in Electric Capital's new research, which found that 87% (!) of new NFT deployments in 2024 have launched on the Base or Zora Network Layer 2s.
All this is to say that NFTs may have gone under the radar for many this year, but the recent historic activity levels here are a groundswell that I think bodes well for an even bigger year of milestones in 2025. Plan accordingly is my advice!
Season 2: Methamorphosis is now live on mETH Protocol, following the launch of their governance token, COOK, and cmETH, the liquid restaked version of mETH. With cmETH, holders can enjoy yields across multiple restaking protocols like Karak, EigenLayer, Symbiotic, while earning Powder for more COOK.
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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