DWF Ventures: Interpretation of 4 popular NFT token trends

Author: DWF Ventures

Compiled by: Shan Oppa, Golden Finance

The NFT field ushered in a boom in the "NFT Summer" of 2021 and reached its peak in early 2022. Since then, however, there has been a significant decline in activity.

However, the popularity of NFT has picked up recently with the token issuance of @pudgypenguins and @Azuki.

Let’s take a deeper look at the recent NFT token trends.

Key takeaways

1. Despite the slowdown in the NFT space over the past two years, developers are still actively building to create more added value for their ecosystems (such as launching new tokens and new chains).
2. "Infrastructure layout" has become a new trend in OG NFT projects. Pudgy Penguins (L2), Azuki (L3), BAYC (L3) and Memeland (L2) have entered the infrastructure field to create new blockchain networks. BAYC and Memeland, in particular, decided to build their own new chains a few months after launching their tokens.
3. The recent issuances of $PENGU and $ANIME may inspire other NFT projects to follow suit. Therefore, we may see more NFT projects launch new tokens in the coming year.

Key NFT projects

To better understand the current NFT ecosystem, we will conduct an in-depth analysis of the following projects and their token strategies: Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, BoredApeYC, and Memeland.

Pudgy Penguins

Pudgy Penguins has two related tokens: $PENGU (community/meme token) and @Abstract_Eco (L2). In December 2024, $PENGU was launched on Solana, with over 50% of the tokens distributed to the community via airdrops. Affected by the anticipation of airdrops, the floor price of Pudgy NFT once reached a record high of 35 ETH. As of now, according to @Dune data, $PENGU has 615,000 on-chain currency holders.

AbstractChain is a consumer-oriented zk-rollup L2, formerly known as Frame, and later acquired by @IglooInc. Although the relevant tokens have not yet been issued, both the Abstract and Pudgy communities are looking forward to the launch of the Abstract mainnet in the first quarter of 2025.

Azuki

@Azuki launches @animecoin token this month. Following the announcement, its NFT floor price increased by 2 ETH. $ANIME is bound to AnimeChain, an anime-focused L3 chain (built on Arbitrum Orbit). Similar to $PENGU, $ANIME plans to distribute over 50% of its tokens to the community. With the exception of the company and team/advisor portion, the remaining tokens will be fully unlocked upon issuance.

Memeland

@Memeland is a game studio focusing on Web3 and has launched multiple games and NFT series. In April 2023, Memeland launched the $MEME token and covered all Memeland’s NFT series, including MVP, Captainz and Potatoz, through airdrops.

A year later, Memeland launched Memenet, an L2 network based on Ethereum.

BAYC

@yugalabs is the company behind the NFT series @BoredApeYC and MAYC. In May 2022, they launched @apecoin, the first blue-chip NFT token on the market. $APE is the governance and utility token used within the APE ecosystem.

In September 2024, they also launched ApeChain, an @arbitrum Orbit L3 network similar to @Azuki's AnimeChain. In line with $APE’s strategy, ApeChain is a new chain released a few months after the token’s launch.