A small group of collections has moved beyond crypto-native speculation and into consumer-facing brands. Pudgy Penguins has continued to present itself as a broader IP business, with recent CoinDesk Research describing more than $13 million in retail sales and over 2 million units sold, while Doodles now frames itself less as a pure collection and more as a creative platform built around content, AI, and brand expansion.
Indeed, the NFT sector has become more selective, with utility-led and gaming-linked activity holding up better than the broad speculative frenzy that defined the earlier cycle.
While a handful of projects are trying to build durable intellectual property, the long tail of profile-picture collections continues to fade.
BeInCrypto asked three industry experts how the NFT market is restructuring, and what will determine which projects survive.
Brand Equity vs. On-Chain Scarcity
The divide now sits at the center of the NFT market’s recovery: whether value can be sustained through real-world brand equity, or whether it still depends on on-chain scarcity.
Federico Variola, CEO of Phemex, is skeptical that most projects can successfully make that transition.
“There are still some difficulties in tying the value of NFTs to brand equity in the physical world when there isn’t a clear revenue or distribution funnel.”
In his view, the core issue is that many NFT brands have yet to prove they generate meaningful business outcomes outside of crypto.
“Because of that, I think the real value of NFTs has always been rooted in on-chain scarcity.”
As market sentiment around scarcity weakened, projects began searching for alternative narratives, from media expansion to merchandise, but often without a clear product-market fit.
“As a result, many of these brands are now stuck trying to pivot from on-chain scarcity toward real-world positioning without having a product-market fit.”
That helps explain why a large share of collections remain significantly below their peak valuations.
Fernando Lillo Aranda, Marketing Director at Zoomex, takes the opposite view. For him, the market has already moved past scarcity as a primary driver of value.
“Most NFTs won’t recover – and they probably shouldn’t. Scarcity alone was never a sustainable value proposition.”
He argues that verification on-chain does not create demand on its own.
“The market learned the hard way that being ‘on-chain’ doesn’t make something valuable – it just makes it verifiable. And verification without demand is irrelevant.”
Instead, he sees the surviving projects as those building real businesses around their IP.
“The only NFTs that have a real future are the ones evolving into actual businesses and IP engines.”
“If your project can’t live outside of crypto, in retail, media, gaming, or culture, then it’s not an asset, it’s a speculation artifact from the last cycle.”
The disagreement relates to execution. The move toward IP-driven value is already underway.
The open question is how many NFT projects can operate as real businesses rather than speculative assets.
Gaming’s Reset: From Play-to-Earn to Play-to-Own
The failure of early NFT gaming models made the speculation versus sustainability debate impossible to ignore.
Play-to-Earn was built to reward users with tokens for activity. In practice, it depended on constant inflows of new players to support token prices. Once growth slowed, the model began to break down. Rewards turned into emissions, emissions turned into sell pressure, and in-game economies collapsed under their own weight.
The recent migration is toward what many describe as Play-to-Own – a model that treats NFTs less as yield-generating assets and more as ownership layers within a game.
Anton Efimenko, co-founder at 8Blocks, sees this as a necessary correction in how value is structured.
“The core issue with Play-to-Earn was that it tried to financialize gameplay too early. When rewards are driven by token emissions rather than real demand, the system becomes inherently unstable.”
Instead of promising returns, newer models focus on utility and persistence. Assets are meant to retain relevance inside the game environment, rather than function as extractive instruments.
“Play-to-Own shifts the focus from extracting value to owning something that has utility within a functioning ecosystem. That reduces sell pressure and aligns players more closely with the long-term health of the game.”
This does not eliminate speculation, but it changes where it sits. Value is no longer tied to how quickly rewards can be realized, but to whether the underlying game can sustain engagement without relying on constant token incentives.
Gaming has become one of the clearest testing grounds for this transition. If NFT-based ownership can hold value without emissions-driven rewards, it may offer a path forward. If not, the same issues are likely to resurface under a different name.
Tokenizing IP: Liquidity vs. Loyalty
As projects search for new ways to unlock value, one emerging direction is the tokenization of NFT IP itself.
In theory, that can broaden access, increase liquidity, and give communities a more direct stake in the commercial upside of a brand. But it also raises harder questions about governance, alignment, and loyalty.
Efimenko says the structure can create opportunities, but it also changes the incentives around ownership.
“The moment NFT IP becomes more liquid, you invite a different class of participant. Some will care about the brand, but many will care mainly about price exposure and short-term upside.”
Of course, communities built around identity and culture do not function like ordinary token markets. The more tradable the asset becomes, the more likely decision-making is to shift toward actors with weaker long-term attachment to the project.
“Liquidity can help expand participation, but it can also fragment governance. If too much influence moves to holders who are financially motivated but not operationally aligned, brand direction becomes harder to manage.”
This leaves NFT projects in a difficult position. Broader financial access may strengthen the balance sheet, but it can also dilute the kind of committed holder base that many successful brands rely on.
Ultimately, a highly liquid community asset may be easier to trade, yet harder to build around over time.
Fixing Crypto-Native Gaming
Our analysis so far leaves one more question hanging: whether blockchain mechanics can restore trust in crypto-native gaming and gambling after years of broken incentives, opaque systems, and user fatigue.
This is potentially where blockchain still offers a real advantage. Game logic, reward flows, and outcomes can be made transparent in ways that traditional platforms often cannot match. Provably fair mechanics give users a way to verify that systems are functioning as claimed, rather than simply trusting the operator.
But transparency alone is not enough to rebuild confidence.
As Lillo Aranda puts it:
“The market learned the hard way that being ‘on-chain’ doesn’t make something valuable – it just makes it verifiable. And verification without demand is irrelevant.”
The same logic applies to gaming. Verifiable mechanics can help solve the trust problem, especially in areas like crypto gambling or reward distribution, but they do not solve the product problem. If the game is weak, the economy is extractive, or the user experience feels designed around monetization rather than entertainment, transparency will not save it.
The sector’s next phase may well be a test of whether crypto products can combine fair mechanics with actual player retention. In that sense, blockchain may help restore trust, but only if the game itself is worth trusting.
Final Thoughts
The NFT market is being forced into a more selective phase, where value has to come from something more durable than hype alone.
Variola’s comments point to the limits of the current pivot. Many projects are trying to move from scarcity-led speculation into real-world branding without a clear business model or product-market fit.
Lillo Aranda furthers the argument, suggesting that only the collections capable of operating as actual IP businesses are likely to retain relevance over time.
Efimenko, meanwhile, highlights the challenge underneath both views: ownership design, token incentives, and governance all shape whether a project can remain stable as it grows.
NFTs are not disappearing, but they are becoming harder to justify as pure collectibles. The projects that endure are more likely to be the ones that can build beyond the chain, sustain user demand, and give digital ownership a function that lasts longer than a speculative cycle.
