Key Takeaways
- X2Y2, once the second largest NFT platform, announced it will shut down on April 30.
- The NFT platform was operational for 3 years and launched in February 2022.
- NFT platforms are dying out amid a fizzle-out in the NFT trend.
The nonfungible token (NFT) platform X2Y2 announced it will officially shut down on April 30, 2025. This highlights the diminishing market interest in NFTs after their peak in 2021-22.
X2Y2 was among the leading NFT marketplaces, once reaching the second spot only behind the market leader OpenSea.
X2Y2 to Shut Down Amid 90% Decline in NFT Trading Volume
According to the official announcement , X2Y2 will officially shut down towards the end of April, ending its three-year operation amid a 90% decline in NFT trading volume since its peak.
The NFT marketplace has a cumulative trading volume of $5.6 billion and currently ranks third largest in-game NFT platform.
The official announcement read:
“We fought tooth and nail to be #1, but after three years, it’s clear it’s time to move on. The NFT chapter taught us a lot—most of all, that lasting value beats chasing trends. That lesson’s why we’re drawing a line here, not a pause or a maybe, but a full stop on X2Y2 as we knew it.”
The firm might be winding down its NFT business but will pivot towards Artificial Intelligence and offer more useful crypto investment products.
Although the announcement didn’t delve into the details of the new project, it teased a potential yield-based product that AI could govern.
The X2Y2’s demise highlights another painful end to a crypto use case hyped to be the next big thing in crypto’s last bull cycle.
OpenSea Struggling to Keep Afloat
The NFT bust is not limited to the once-second-largest NFT trading platform; even the market leader OpenSea is struggling to keep up with changing trends and a dying digital collectible ecosystem.
According to data from Defilama, OpenSea’s revenue has sunk to a few hundred thousand from millions in December.
OpenSea planned to revive the platform with a new look and broader ecosystem and announced a token launch in February. However, a month later, it has not announced any further details .
Each bull cycle, a new crypto use case gets popularised to the point of being a “bubble.“ In 2017, initial coin offerings (ICOs) became the top trend, with billions of dollars raised by hundreds of new projects on the promise of building the next best thing in the decentralized world.
However, over 90% of the projects became scams as the bear market arrived.
Similarly, in the 2020-21 cycle, NFTs became the most significant trend, with celebrities and artists raking in millions of dollars for JPEGs. Within three years, most of these NFT collectibles had lost more than 90% of their value.
Was this Article helpful?
