NFT is an innovation that is as important as BTC.

In April 2024, the CryptoPunk NFT numbered 3100 was bought by a user for $16 million (4,500 ETH), ranking as the third highest price transaction for a single NFT. On April 10, 2025, this CryptoPunk was sold for $6 million (4,000 ETH), resulting in a loss of $10 million compared to the purchase price a year earlier.

Part of the losses can be attributed to the decline in Ethereum prices caused by fluctuations in the macroeconomic environment due to the U.S. “reciprocal tariff” policy, and part can be attributed to the dismal NFT market.

Not just CryptoPunks, the trading volume of popular and high-profile NFT IPs such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, and Pudgy Penguins has been steadily declining since 2022, especially in the particularly poor market performance in recent weeks.

Compared to the highlights of the past two years, NFTs are slowly fading from view. However, NFTs are a relatively new development. The first NFT was born about ten years ago, and it wasn't until the end of November 2017, when Ethereum launched the ERC-721 standard, that this technology began to gain public attention.

NFTs are certainly not limited to representing value as carriers of digital art; they can almost represent any unique or singular item: identity (such as Decentralized Identity DID), virtual avatars, profile pictures (PFP), personal data records, virtual real estate, artworks, assets in games or virtual worlds, music, domain names, and so on.

The core of NFT is digital ownership: as long as you own a certain NFT, you truly own the content specified in that NFT's smart contract, whether it's an image, game item, commercial rights to an asset, or various others. This “true ownership” represents an important paradigm shift in the internet world, reflecting how people used to be accustomed to using goods and services through authorization rather than directly owning them.

In other words, we have truly entered the “digital ownership era of virtual goods,” but it has only been about seven years.

Currently, we usually regard NFTs as a separate field within Web3, alongside the metaverse, cryptocurrencies, RWA, and DePIN. This perspective has both reasonable and unreasonable aspects.

In terms of its reasonable aspects, NFTs themselves can constitute a thriving NFT sector, where various virtual items are minted as NFTs through smart contracts or physical items are mapped onto the blockchain as assets, forming NFT trading markets like OpenSea and Blur.

The unreasonable part is that NFT is a tool that integrates various elements into different fields. NFTs can serve as assets in the metaverse, such as games, real estate, and items; as on-chain circulating assets for RWA; as circulating assets for DePIN project ecosystems; and as unique carriers for identity, avatars, music, videos, domain names, and data.

In the DePIN field of decentralized cloud computing power, transactions and circulation are conducted using computing power resources as carriers—computing power resources can be traded on the platform in the form of NFTs.

Industry insiders have regarded NFTs as an innovation as important as BTC. This understanding reflects that NFTs may play an increasingly important role in the future metaverse and AI era. Both the market and users need a unique, freely transferable, traceable, and secure asset carrier.

The innovative applications of NFTs demonstrate their subsequent potential more significantly compared to traditional centralized projects in the history of technology.

Apple distributes software and content for iOS devices through its closed App Store ecosystem. According to financial reports, in 2013, approximately six and a half years after the iPhone was first launched, Apple's App Store's annual sales reached about $10 billion, with December alone contributing over $1 billion.

Similarly, seven years after NFT technology entered the market, the total NFT trading volume for the year 2024 is approximately $8.9 billion, with a monthly trading volume of about $892 million in December.

Under conditions where the time difference is not significant, the trading volume of NFTs is gradually approaching that of apples.

Interestingly, when the iPhone was first launched, it impressed people with its high price and performance, and the same goes for NFTs, with IPs like Bored Apes and CryptoPunks being valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

With the development of the market, most NFTs are not expensive and are used for various purposes. They may be combined with brands as a tool for brand community cohesion, used by traditional project parties for brand marketing, or utilized for value-added products such as tickets and IP peripherals. Following the nature of NFTs, we can continue to observe their subsequent development.