Author: DWF Ventures Source: X, @DWFVentures Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance

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

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

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

1. Despite the slowdown in the NFT field over the past two years, developers Still actively building to create more added value for their ecosystem (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 just a few months after launching their tokens.

3. The recent issuance 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.

In order 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 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 expectation of airdrop, the floor price of Pudgy NFT once reached a record high of 35ETH. As of now, according to @Dune data, $PENGU has 615,000 on-chain currency holders.

AbstractChain It 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 launches @animecoin token this month. Following the announcement, its NFT floor price increased by 2 ETH. $ANIME is tied 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 release.

@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 of Memeland’s NFT series, including MVP, Captainz, and Potatoz, via airdrop.

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

@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, this is 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.