NFT News in 2025: The Shift Toward Utility and Market Evolution
Non-Fungible Token (NFT) is a type of digital asset ownership certificate based on blockchain technology, characterized by uniqueness and indivisibility. Early NFTs primarily focused on the fields of digital art and collectibles (such as CryptoPunks), but by 2025, their connotation has significantly expanded.
Today, NFTs are widely used in areas such as game items, digital identity authentication, tokenization of physical assets (such as real estate), and educational diplomas, becoming a key carrier that connects the physical world with the digital ecosystem. Market data confirms this trend: the total market value of NFTs has reached $10.4 billion (a year-on-year increase of 63%), and the number of monthly active wallets has surpassed 17.2 million, demonstrating a deep integration of technology implementation and user participation.
Recent Updates: Market Adjustment and Innovative Breakthroughs
Since the second quarter of 2025, the NFT market has shown polarization. On one hand, trading volume is under short-term pressure, with sales declining by 18.43% week-on-week to $116.9 million in the past week, but the number of buyers remains stable at 1.06 million (a year-on-year increase of 50.56%), reflecting a solid fundamental demand in the market. On the other hand, innovative practices are frequently emerging:
- Technical Integration: G.U. Group’s new patent “Location-Bound NFT System” can dynamically generate and distribute NFTs through user geofencing, enhancing the linkage of offline scenarios;
- Transformation of the lending market: The trading volume of NFT lending has decreased by 97% from the peak in 2024, and the industry is exploring the use of real-world assets (RWA) such as property deeds as collateral to enhance stability;
- New projects emerging: In July, more than ten projects will be launched, including Space Rush Bounty Hunters (Ethereum sci-fi game NFT), Adderrels (Bitcoin Ordinals chain meme art), promoting content diversification.
Price and Value Drivers
The current valuation logic of NFTs is shifting from “scarcity speculation” to “utility pricing.”
High-priced projects like Verse Patron Token (5,000 USD each) rely on the scarcity of digital art properties, while mid to low-priced projects (such as Early Birds priced around 0.00014 ETH) depend on community empowerment and functional integration.
The performance of the underlying public chain also affects costs: Solana attracts high-frequency trading due to its low transaction fee of less than $0.15 (a 60% reduction compared to 2023), while Bitcoin Ordinals has become an emerging carrier network for high-value NFTs (such as OWL) due to its security.
In market volatility, NFTs with real收益模型 (such as brand co-branded membership rights and game item rentals) exhibit significantly stronger anti-drawdown resilience.
Future Outlook: Infrastructure and Scenario Revolution
The continuous evolution of the NFT industry relies on three core directions:
- Cross-chain interoperability: Platforms like Polkadot are building NFT cross-chain protocols to enable seamless asset transfers between multiple chains, enhancing liquidity;
- Deep integration of RWA: The tokenization of physical assets such as real estate and supply chain finance will broaden the category of NFT collateral, revitalizing the lending market;
- Dynamic Functionality Expansion: The “evolving NFT” based on smart contracts can update metadata in real-time according to user behavior (such as game achievements, credit history), becoming a core component of digital identity.
With the improvement of regulatory frameworks and the implementation of enterprise-level applications (such as Starbucks’ NFT membership program), NFTs will transform from speculative vehicles into Web3 Economic infrastructure.
