Bankless: Five Major Predictions for NFTs in 2025
Original Article Title: 5 NFT Predictions for 2025
Original Article Author: William M. Peaster, Bankless
Original Article Translation: Wuzhu, Golden Finance
Driven by record-breaking minting activity and the continued growth of use cases, NFTs solidified their position as a cornerstone of crypto innovation in 2024.
The new year is poised to push the boundaries of NFTs even further as real-world applications drive mainstream adoption, cultural breakthroughs redefine the concept of ownership, and with momentum from all sides, the space is set to achieve even greater heights in 2025!
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
According to Electric Capital's annual developer report, the NFT space experienced its most active year to date.
Benefiting from low transaction fees on Ethereum's layer 2 solutions and increasing competition from alternative layer 1 solutions, creators launched more NFT contracts than ever before and met similar strong demand: minting volume, transaction volume, and the number of active minting wallets all hit historic highs in 2024.
Looking ahead to 2025, the crypto space should brace for another wave of NFT innovation and activity. Rekindled interest from creators and consumers, coupled with improvements in user experience and groundbreaking consumer-facing applications, should set the stage for unprecedented growth.
We will closely monitor new developments in the Abstract ecosystem and the continued rise of on-chain proxies like Virtuals and Wayfinder as the vanguard of NFT adoption.
Infrastructure Will Play a Bigger Role
While NFTs are most commonly associated with the proliferation of image-based on-chain collectibles, we anticipate that less obvious non-fungible use cases will see the most adoption in 2025.
Stablecoin issuer Liquity recently integrated NFTs for V2, enabling users to transfer or trade their collateral debt positions. Polymarket's conditional NFTs have facilitated the creation of prediction markets, and the emerging AI agent creation platform Virtuals uses NFTs in its Immutable Contribution Vault (ICV) system to track contributions.
NFT will continue to be a comfortable format for artists to distribute their creations, but expect this transformative technology to play a larger role in practical on-chain applications.
The Cambrian Explosion of Gaming
In October, Starknet partnered with Cartridge's L2 Gaming Master to stress test its L2 and set a new L2 speed record in the process! During the trial period, Starknet's average fee was only $0.002 per transaction, processing up to 867 transactions per second.
The rise of account abstraction has greatly improved the user experience for crypto newcomers. Although mainstream laggards have yet to adopt crypto gaming at scale, the sector provides gamers with in-game item ownership and introduces token incentive mechanisms, allowing them to explore new data while promoting financial inclusion.
With blockchain infrastructure continuing to improve in 2025, we expect the increasing popularity of on-chain gaming to drive L2 to its first-ever +1k TPS.
Bitcoin Puppets Poised for Breakthrough
Imagine this: It's November 2025, and BTC has just surpassed $500,000. The United States under the leadership of Donald Trump continues to accumulate BTC as a strategic reserve, and this momentum shows no signs of slowing down.
In this era of newfound abundance, BTC whales may seek to flaunt their wealth through top-tier NFT projects (similar to what Ether OG did during the last bull market). As a consensus game leading in the niche Ordinals space with strong community support, Bitcoin Puppets have a unique advantage to capture the lion's share of these inflows.
Under such favorable conditions, Bitcoin Puppets may not only ride the wave of the bull market but also solidify their position as a top 5 NFT collection by the end of the year.
CryptoPunks Poised to Set New Records
Some of the largest NFT sales in cryptocurrency are CryptoPunks, with the "Alien" variant of this PFP series firmly leading the sales charts! An Alien Punk 5822 was sold for a record-breaking 8,000 ETH (24 million USD) near the peak of the 2022 NFT bubble, and two of these highly coveted collectibles changed hands in 2024 at a staggering eight-figure price.
We expect ETH to rebound in 2025 as both institutions and individuals seek greater access to decentralized finance and on-chain computation. With these powerful tailwinds, record-breaking sales of Alien CryptoPunks may occur.
You may also like
Pantera Capital Partner: How Tokenization is Restructuring the Private Equity and Early Investment Ecosystem?
New York Proposes Stricter Stablecoin Issuer Rules Aligned With Federal GENIUS Act
NYDFS proposed stricter stablecoin issuer rules aligned with the GENIUS Act, covering reserves, custody, redemption timelines, audits, and capital buffers.
Every exchange is a "Universal Exchange."
The counterattack of traditional finance: Alliance chains are quietly reviving
CryptoQuant Says Bitcoin Profitable Supply Is Near 45% Pressure Zone as On-Chain Data Points to Market Repricing
CryptoQuant said Bitcoin’s profitable supply is nearing the 45% pressure zone, signaling rising market stress, unrealized losses, and a possible on-chain repricing phase.
Bitcoin Falls Below 200-Week Moving Average as On-Chain Data Shows Over Half of Supply in Loss
Bitcoin dropped below its 200-week moving average as on-chain data showed over 50% of circulating supply is now in loss, signaling rising market stress.
CFTC Reportedly Plans New Prediction Market Rules Focused on Manipulation Risk and Public Interest Review
The CFTC is reportedly preparing new prediction market rules focused on manipulation risk, public interest review, and retail trader protections.
Meet the new WEEX trial fund—your gateway to greater profits
WEEX Labs Lands at Dutch Blockchain Week: A Disruptive Crypto × AI Conversation Sets Sail in Amsterdam
SK Hynix Reportedly Plans U.S. ADR Listing as Early as August, With SEC Approval Possible in Late June
SK Hynix may pursue a U.S. ADR listing as early as August, with SEC approval reportedly possible in late June amid strong AI chip supply chain demand.
SpaceX vs Tesla vs xAI: Which Elon Musk Trade Has the Biggest Upside in 2026?
OpenAI Reveals It Has Confidentially Submitted an S-1 to the SEC, Keeping the Door Open for a Future IPO
On June 9, according to an OpenAI announcement, the company recently confidentially submitted a draft S-1 registration statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), beginning the preliminary compliance process for a potential initial public offering. OpenAI said it chose to disclose this proactively because it expected the news might leak; however, the company has not yet set a specific listing timeline, and related arrangements may still take some time.
Latest research from 13 top universities including Cornell University: The current state, challenges, and misconceptions of the fusion of Crypto and AI
Deconstructing Anthropic: The Best AI Company, Possibly Also a Type of Organizational Invention
Apollo and Blackstone Reportedly Back $35 Billion Anthropic Chip Financing as Deal Details Remain Unclear
On June 9, according to currently available news alerts, Apollo and Blackstone Group participated in a $35 billion financing for an Anthropic “chip project.” Based on the original wording of the report, the funding has already been raised, but public information remains limited. The financing structure, use of proceeds, project entity, and whether Apollo and Blackstone participated through equity, debt, or project financing have not yet been disclosed.
Humanity Protocol Security Incident Escalates: More Than $31 Million Stolen From Related Addresses as Attacker Continues Selling H for ETH
On June 9, according to monitoring by Onchain Lens, more than $31 million has been stolen from addresses linked to Humanity Protocol, and the attack is still ongoing, with the hacker continuously swapping H tokens for ETH. Project founder Terence Kwok later confirmed the security incident on X, saying the issue involved a private key leak.
Bloomberg: As Bitcoin Weakens, Stablecoins and RWA Continue to Drive Expansion in Crypto Businesses
In June, Bloomberg reported that despite Bitcoin falling below $60,000 last week, wiping out about $235 billion in market value within seven days, and dropping close to 50% from last year’s peak, some core businesses in the crypto industry are still expanding, mainly in stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization (RWA), payments, and infrastructure. The report also noted that overall altcoin activity has contracted significantly: altcoin market capitalization has fallen from a peak of about $431 billion in November 2021 to around $170 billion, and among the tens of millions of tokens issued in recent years, fewer than 1,700 still maintain meaningful trading activity.
Galaxy Deep Research Report: How Hyperliquid's HIP-4 Upgrade Changes the Landscape of Prediction Markets?
Pantera Capital Partner: How Tokenization is Restructuring the Private Equity and Early Investment Ecosystem?
New York Proposes Stricter Stablecoin Issuer Rules Aligned With Federal GENIUS Act
NYDFS proposed stricter stablecoin issuer rules aligned with the GENIUS Act, covering reserves, custody, redemption timelines, audits, and capital buffers.
Every exchange is a "Universal Exchange."
The counterattack of traditional finance: Alliance chains are quietly reviving
CryptoQuant Says Bitcoin Profitable Supply Is Near 45% Pressure Zone as On-Chain Data Points to Market Repricing
CryptoQuant said Bitcoin’s profitable supply is nearing the 45% pressure zone, signaling rising market stress, unrealized losses, and a possible on-chain repricing phase.
Bitcoin Falls Below 200-Week Moving Average as On-Chain Data Shows Over Half of Supply in Loss
Bitcoin dropped below its 200-week moving average as on-chain data showed over 50% of circulating supply is now in loss, signaling rising market stress.
