Year-End Review: 2021 Marks the Explosive Year of NFTs, These Three Major Trends Deserve Attention

In the blink of an eye, 2021 has entered its final stages. If we review the development of the entire crypto market this year, NFTs are inevitably one of the top topics. If 2020 was the year of DeFi, then 2021 can be said to be a year of strong explosive growth for NFTs.

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 NFTs," seemingly able to spark with anything. As a digital certificate of contract based on blockchain technology, NFTs have characteristics such as verifiability, uniqueness, indivisibility, and traceability, which have received warm welcome and found application scenarios. Since this year, many celebrities, influencers, well-known brands, and enterprises have successively created and launched their own NFTs. Under the joint impetus of these trends, NFTs have completely become popular and "broken out of the circle."

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

Trend One: From Rise to Explosion

If we divide the development experience of NFTs into several stages: with the birth of Cryptopunks as the marker, 2015-2016 as the embryonic period, 2017 with the launch of Cryptokitties, and the subsequent 4 years (2017-2020) as the development period, then 2021 enters the early explosion stage. NFTs have rapidly entered the vision of the general public from the "plaything" of niche circles. 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, a multiple of the market value at the beginning of the year ($61.74 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, 7 times that of 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, the number of trades and trading volume have declined slightly. The latest data shows that the trading volume in the recent 7 days is $240 million. The average daily trading price reached its peak on February 26 and October 29. As of December 27, the total trading volume of the current NFT secondary market is $17.176 billion, and the total number of trading accounts reached 8.74 million.

In terms of the number of projects, according to nonfungible data, there are as many as 230 NFT-related projects, an increase of more than 65% in the number of projects 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 why NFTs can develop so rapidly is mainly because after being pushed into the mainstream vision, they have "broken out of the circle" with an irresistible momentum. Let's briefly review several important events in 2021 that promoted the explosion of NFTs:

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

On March 11, Crypto Punks #3100 was sold for a sky-high price of 4200 ETH, setting a new record for the single-item transaction price of NFT avatars.

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

In May, a set of NFT works "Crypto Punks" containing 9 punk avatars was sold at Christie's for $16.9625 million.

In July, Axie Infinity game daily active users surpassed Honor of Kings, boosting the explosive 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 fields, including avatars, images, art paintings, game items, virtual real estate, music albums, metaverse... In addition, NFTs are also receiving widespread social attention. Many international big brands, finance, technology, and other well-known enterprises, news media have joined the team of laying out NFTs, launching NFT collectibles, games, etc. Investment and financing events in the NFT field are also growing. Both in terms of industry and capital, it reflects that the NFT field has ushered in explosive development this year.

We know that the initial main application scenario of NFTs 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 fields gradually expanded, and corresponding infrastructure and ecological value chains 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 high as 49.4% of total value, followed by collectibles accounting for 23.05%. In addition, a major trend worth noting this year is that the application forms of NFTs have expanded rapidly, with use cases in blockchain games, metaverse, utilities, social, music, and other fields growing significantly.

Next is the expansion of NFT project and product forms, which has driven the gradual improvement of the entire ecological industry chain. Jasmine Zhang, partner of blockchain investment fund A&T Capital, and investment manager Fiona He divided 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 Review of the NFT Industry Value Chain"

This layered diagram of the industry value chain 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 and general secondary markets, finance, etc. It can be seen that under this year's explosive momentum, the ecological development of NFTs has begun to take shape, and infrastructure services related to NFTs have become more perfect.

Trend Three: NFTs Become the Value Carrier of GameFi

The last trend must mention 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 ushered in explosive growth. During this period, the number of blockchain games increased dozens of times.

And among them, 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 soil for GameFi's survival and become one of the value carriers of its in-game economic system, making the market performance of many GameFi projects outstanding and making GameFi quickly become one of the most popular fields 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 such as collection, value preservation, and circulation, effectively becoming the support of the metaverse economic system and promoting the further explosion of NFTs. Taking the 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 has begun to flock to the concepts of metaverse and GameFi. Under the popularity of these metaverse games, virtual real estate NFTs once became "hot commodities," with prices rising.

Since this year, the virtual real estate NFTs of the two major virtual world games, Decentraland and The Sandbox, have almost dominated the sales TOP ranking. In particular, 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, sold for $1.713 million.

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

Finally, let's summarize. Looking back at the development of NFTs throughout 2021, from old-school NFT projects like Cryptopunks, Crypto Kitties, to today's various sky-high-priced NFT avatars and artworks, to celebrities and cultural IPs, and finally to the metaverse and games, NFTs have already become an indispensable part of the current blockchain world. 2021 can undoubtedly 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: Annual NFT Market TOP Review

**1. Top 10 NFT Projects by Trading Volume: **Crypto Punks, Art Blocks, BoredApe Yacht Club, Meebits, Rarible, Super Rare, Loot, Cool Cats, Cryp Toadz by GREMPLIN.

2. Top 5 NFT Trading Markets by Trading Volume : Opensea, Larva Labs, Rarible, Super Rare, Foundation.

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

◆ 2021 Year-End Review Series Articles

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

|2021 Marks the First Year of NFT Explosion, These Three Major Trends Deserve Attention

|Ethereum L2 Progressed Rapidly with Impressive Achievements

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

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

Disclaimer

This article may contain product-related content that is not applicable to your region. This article is committed to providing general information only and does not assume responsibility 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 of the following advice, including but not limited to: (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, 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 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 statistics, if any) is for general reference only. Although we have taken all reasonable precautions in preparing these data and charts, we assume 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 of this article may be used, provided that such use is non-commercial. Any reproduction or distribution of the entire article must also prominently state: "This article is copyrighted © 2025 OKX, used with permission." Permitted excerpts must cite the article name and include the source, 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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