Year-End Review: 2021 Marks the Explosive Inception Year of NFTs, Three Major Trends Worth Watching

In the blink of an eye, 2021 has drawn to a close. If we review the development of the entire crypto market this year, NFTs are undoubtedly among the top topics. If 2020 was the year of DeFi, then 2021 can be said to be the year of NFTs' powerful explosion.

From art paintings, collectibles, to avatars, images, to music, social, and then to games, metaverse , NFTs have undergone "updates and iterations" and "evolution" this year. "Everything can be an NFT," it seems capable of sparking with anything. As a digital certificate of contract based on blockchain technology, NFTs have characteristics such as verifiability, uniqueness, indivisibility, and traceability, receiving enthusiastic welcome and finding application scenarios. Since the beginning of this year, many celebrities, influencers, well-known brands, and enterprises have successively created and launched their own NFTs. Driven by these trends, NFTs have thoroughly gone viral and "broken out of the circle."

So, looking back at 2021, what trends in the NFT space are worth attention? And how should we look forward to the future of NFTs?

Trend One: From Rise to Explosion

If we divide the development history of NFTs into several stages: marked by the birth of CryptoPunks, 2015-2016 as the germination period, 2017 with the launch of CryptoKitties, the following 4 years (2017-2020) as the development period, and 2021 entering the early explosion stage. NFTs have rapidly moved from "playthings" in niche circles to mass public vision, and global market investors are excited about the future prospects of NFTs. Therefore, we believe that one of the main development trends of NFTs this year is from rapid rise to accelerated explosion.

As of December 27, 2021, the current total market capitalization of NFTs has reached $10.349 billion, an increase of times from the beginning of the year ($6.174 million). Looking back at the entire 2021, especially after entering July, the market entered explosive growth. Currently, the number of NFT holders is 1.356 million, a 7-fold increase from the beginning of the year, among which whale addresses holding NFTs worth more than $1 million reached 826.

Looking at a one-year dimension, the NFT market experienced peaks in trading volume in mid-to-late August, late September, and early December. In the last half month, trading numbers and trading volume have slightly declined. Current latest data shows that trading volume in the recent 7 days is $240 million. The average daily trading price peaked on February 26 and October 29. As of December 27, the total trading volume of the NFT secondary market is $17.176 billion, and total trading accounts reached 8.74 million.

In terms of project numbers, according to NonFungible data, there are as many as 230 NFT-related projects, a growth of over 65% in project numbers compared to the first quarter of this year. These projects involve collectibles, metaverse , art, games, trading platforms, and other fields, with collectibles accounting for about 50%.

The reason NFTs can develop so rapidly is mainly because after being pushed into mainstream vision, they "broke out of the circle" with momentum like a bamboo shoot. Let's briefly review several important events in 2021 that drove the NFT explosion:

On March 11, 2021, digital artist Beeple's work "Everydays: The First 5000 Days" was auctioned at Christie's starting from $100, finally selling for $69.34 million, refreshing the record for the highest auction price for digital art. This auction thoroughly ignited the NFT market.

On March 11, CryptoPunks #3100 sold for an astronomical price of 4200 ETH, setting a new record for single NFT avatar sales.

On March 22, an NFT copy of Twitter's former CEO Jack Dorsey's first tweet message from 2006 was sold for nearly $3 million.

In May, a set of NFT works "CryptoPunks" containing 9 punk头像 sold at Christie's for $16.9625 million.

In July, Axie Infinity game daily active users surpassed Honor of Kings, boosting the booming development of the NFT market, with trading volume surging 10 times.

Trend Two: Rapid Expansion of Ecological Forms

Accompanying the explosive momentum of NFTs, NFTs have rapidly expanded from initial crypto collectibles to more application areas, including avatars, images, art paintings, game items, virtual real estate, music albums, metaverse... In addition, NFTs are also receiving widespread social attention. Many internationally renowned brands, financial, technology, and other well-known enterprises, news media have successively joined the ranks of NFT layout, launching NFT collectibles, games, etc. Investment and financing events in the NFT field are also growing continuously. Both in terms of industry and capital, it reflects that the NFT field has welcomed explosive development this year.

We know that NFTs' initial main application scenario was digital collectibles. The characteristics of NFTs made them quickly become a representative of identity recognition in the crypto art circle. Since the beginning of this year, after well-known crypto artists such as Beeple brought NFTs into the mainstream, the form of NFTs began to iterate rapidly, application areas gradually expanded, and corresponding infrastructure and ecological value chains also gradually improved.

Currently, the main ecological forms include avatars, collectibles, artworks, games, metaverse, land assets, utilities, social, IP, music, DeFi, etc. Avatars, collectibles, and artworks have been the dominant forms of the market this year, with avatar NFTs accounting for as much as 49.4% of total value share, followed by collectibles at 23.05%. In addition, a major trend worth noting this year is that NFT application forms have rapidly expanded, with use cases in blockchain games, metaverse, utilities, social, music, and other fields growing significantly.

Next is the expansion of NFT projects and product forms, which has driven the gradual improvement of the entire ecological industry chain. Jasmine Zhang, partner at blockchain venture capital fund A&T Capital, and investment manager Fiona He divide the NFT industry value chain into three layers according to NFT liquidity, from bottom to top: infrastructure layer, protocol layer, and application layer, to sort out the investment logic in this field.

Source: A&T Capital "From Minting to Circulation: A Comprehensive Overview of the NFT Industry Value Chain"

This layered diagram of the industry value chain relatively clearly and comprehensively shows the current ecological layout of NFTs. The infrastructure layer mainly covers underlying public chains, side chains/Layer2 , development tools, token standards, storage, and wallets . The protocol layer includes NFT minting protocols and primary circulation markets, liquidity protocols, DeFi+NFT. The application layer mainly includes various vertical applications based on the protocol layer as well as pan-secondary markets, finance, etc. It can be seen that under this year's explosive momentum, NFT ecological development has begun to take shape, and infrastructure services related to NFTs have also become more complete.

Trend Three: NFTs Become the Value Carrier of GameFi

The last trend to mention is the combination of blockchain games and NFTs—GameFi. In March 2021, blockchain games with the GameFi concept began to rise. In July, GameFi games represented by Axie Infinity welcomed explosive growth. During this period, the number of blockchain games increased dozens of times.

Among this, the popularity of NFTs is a factor that cannot be ignored. GameFi is the combination of DeFi+Game+NFT, mainly benefiting from the maturity of DeFi and NFT technology and products. NFTs provide the survival soil for GameFi, becoming one of the value carriers of its in-game economic system, making the market performance of many GameFi projects outstanding, and making GameFi also quickly become one of the most popular areas this year.

Conversely, GameFi has also promoted the continued popularity of NFTs. The characteristics of NFTs make them gradually become widely circulated goods and payment methods in fields such as games and the metaverse world, possessing attributes of collection, value preservation, and circulation, powerfully becoming the support of the metaverse economic system and promoting the further explosion of NFTs. Taking metaverse games Decentraland and The Sandbox as examples, each piece of land in the game corresponds to an NFT, and each NFT owner represents their ownership of this land, which can be created and modified. Therefore, since July this year, the NFT market began to pursue metaverse and GameFi concepts. Under the popularity of these metaverse games, virtual real estate NFTs once became "hot commodities," with prices rising.

Since this year, virtual real estate NFTs of the two major virtual world games Decentraland and The Sandbox have almost dominated the sales TOP rankings. Especially Decentraland EST #4339 set this year's highest transaction price on November 23—$2.4102 million.

In other non-metaverse concept games, Loot, Axie Infinity, Gods Unchained, and other NFT games occupied 90% of the game NFT transaction TOP list, while the highest transaction price this year was Million Dollar Rat's NFT, selling for $1.713 million.

Although the development momentum of games is rapid, according to NFTGO platform data, the market capitalization of Game-type projects currently accounts for 6.56% of total NFT market capitalization, while art, avatar, and other collectible-type NFTs occupy as much as 83%, indicating that the combination field of GameFi and NFTs still has considerable development space.

Finally, let's summarize. Looking back at the entire NFT development in 2021, from established NFT projects like CryptoPunks, CryptoKitties to today's various high-priced NFT avatars and artworks, to celebrities and cultural IPs, and finally to the metaverse and games, NFTs have already become an indispensable component of the current blockchain world. 2021 can deservedly be called the first year of NFT explosion. So, next, what form iterations and ecological evolution of NFTs do you think we will see? We leave this topic to us and all readers with expectant and dialectical thinking.

Appendix: Year-End NFT Market TOP Review

**1. Top 10 NFT Projects by Trading Volume: **CryptoPunks, Art Blocks, BoredApe Yacht Club, Meebits, Rarible, SuperRare, Loot, Cool Cats, CrypToadz by GREMPLIN.

2. Top 5 NFT Trading Markets by Trading Volume : OpenSea, Larva Labs, Rarible, SuperRare, Foundation.

3. Top 3 Public Chains with Most NFTs: Ethereum, Solana, Immutable X.

◆ 2021 Year-End Review Series Articles

|Public Chain Track Review: A Hundred Flowers Blooming, Multi-Chain Prosperity

|2021 Marks the Explosive Inception Year of NFTs, Three Major Trends Worth Watching

|Ethereum L2 Progresses Rapidly with Impressive Achievements

|OKX 2021 Year-End Report: Saluting the Golden Age of Blockchain

|DAO Track Review: High Towers Gradually Rising, Future Promising

Disclaimer

This article may contain product-related content not applicable to your region. This article is committed to providing general information only and is not responsible for any factual errors or omissions therein. This article represents only the author's personal views and does not represent the views of OKX . This article is not intended to provide any advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to purchase, sell, or hold digital assets; or (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins) involves high risk, may fluctuate significantly, and may even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. For questions about your specific situation, please consult your legal/tax/investment professional. The information appearing in this article (including market data and statistical information, if any) is for general reference only. Although we have taken all reasonable precautions in preparing these data and charts, we accept no responsibility for any factual errors or omissions expressed herein. © 2025 OKX. This article may be reproduced or distributed in full, or excerpts of 100 words or less from this article may be used, provided that such use is non-commercial. Any reproduction or distribution of the entire article must also prominently state: "Copyright © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article name and include attribution, for example "Article Name, [Author Name (if applicable)], © 2025 OKX". Some content may be generated or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Derivative works or other uses of this article are not permitted.

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