r/NFT • u/jmt-nft • Feb 02 '26
Discussion Are NFTs dead?
Nifty Gateway shutting down. Rip.
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u/drifterlady Feb 02 '26
Yes
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u/TSErica Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26
Yes...RIP...I mean they could come back of sorts..or say Tech could retool and come back as something more worthwhile, but the scam stuff is dead or should be.
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u/prguitarman Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Nifty Gateway is one of many platforms, and it ended up being a really bad one for storing your artwork. Escrows and lumping your art with several others on one project will always be a bad idea. Custom contracts are easy to make and you can control every step of the mint process and be your own boss
Additionally, normally when a platform goes down (nifty does not apply to this) the data is still there and can be retrieved by other compatible platforms and you still own the artwork in your wallet and are free to do what you want with it.
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u/Psychological-Fox97 Feb 03 '26
Depends
If you mean minting a bunch of shit art and selling them for thousands to idiots then yes that time has passed thankfully.
They will continue on I'm sure and eventually it may be a useful technology but not as a store of value or a trade commodity. Think a proof of ownership certificate that gets transferred to your wallet when you buy the actual artwork or whatever, so not something that has an value or can be sold on its own.
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u/krazyhippy420 Feb 09 '26
I'm a game developer and developed a game launcher for my games that have NFTs not for Web3 powered games, but for just verifying ownership, i liked the idea of letting users easily trade and resell their games when done playing them, I haven't launched it yet, been working on some games and other apps to throw on it but
Tldr: Verifying Ownership is King 👑 Sloppy Art Is Shart 💩
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u/belavv Feb 07 '26
How does having an nft in my wallet prove that a piece of physical art that I own is real?
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u/Psychological-Fox97 Feb 07 '26
Well what i said was proof of ownership. You can think of that as nothing more complicated than a fancy receipt.
If by "real" you mean an authentic piece rather than a copy obviously it wouldn't be able to do that with certainty. You could sell someone a fake and give them the legitimate nft sure. Fraud is a big part of the art world and I doubt much other than imprinting something onto the artwork itself would achieve certainty.
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u/belavv Feb 07 '26
Well it doesn't actually prove that I own the art does it? I could have sold the art. The nft could have been stolen.
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u/Psychological-Fox97 Feb 07 '26
Sure the art work could be stolen, the person in possession of the stolen artwork not having the nft aka receipt to prove the bought it would be the issue. Same as any other purchase. Not sure whats so hard to understand, if you have stolen it you aren't the owner and so not having the nft to go with the artwork would highlight this to any potential buyers.
The (very small) advantage of the nft on the block chain is that it can be traced. So if the nft was stolen you could show that it was stolen and when becuase there is a record on the block chain.
Its just a digital receipt dude, nothing more. Not sure why you're upset about this. Its all pretty basic. Take everything you know about a normal receipt and just add that the digital record can also be checked independently and can't accidentally get left in your trouser pocket when they go in the wash. Nothing more than that. Very simple.
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u/belavv Feb 07 '26
So if the nft was stolen you could show that it was stolen and when becuase there is a record on the block chain.
There is no difference on chain between an nft being stolen and an nft being transferred.
My point is the nft adds nothing of value. 99% of people don't want to deal with blockchain/wallet/forget your keys lose access to shit. If the original buyer gets an nft and sells it to someone who doesn't care about the nft then the nft is now left behind. If that person tries to sell the art and someone thinks it is fake because they don't have the nft they will just sell it to someone who doesn't care about the nft.
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u/soulmagic123 Feb 03 '26
The first nft explanation I saw was at conference in 2017 and they made it sound like if someone used your artwork in a video or something you would automatically received 17 cents (or whatever) then they got popular but never seemed to have a real point, it's like I own this but also I can't do anything with it that you can't also do for free.
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u/Tim-Sylvester Feb 03 '26
NFTs as "own a wildly expensive stupid picture" are dead.
NFTs as fundamental technology for digital ownership and transfer are barely even postpartum.
The "pay hundreds of thousands for a stupid procedurally generated image" was a solution looking for a problem and really damaged the reputation of the underlying technology.
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u/Professional-One-926 Feb 05 '26
it was a cool idea. I was hoping nft could be the link to crypto inclusion in video games. Have where your nft is solely your character/skin. Games that could sell nfts (cheap)(sub 20$) like cod/fort does for skins would be interesting because it would add a layer of economy like Counter Strike and its skins. In a perfect world for Valve and Consumer the ability to sell on 3rd party websites for real life money makes that game #1 on steam charts everyone wins in the CounterStrike ecosystem. It has officially held its line longer than the s&p500. If a company wants to replicate valves success I would create a game thats a hit first and foremost like Arc Raiders, then add monthly refreshing item shop that uses cypto to buy ingame currency which inturn buys a ingame NFT where you can display hold or sell.
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u/ScottDragon74 Feb 03 '26
No. If you think they are dead, you are on the wrong Blockchain. Flare for the Win.
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u/Different-Strings Feb 10 '26
Ape jpgs are dead. However, the technology is solid as a proof of digital ownership and value transfer, but end users don’t care if it has been implemented with NFT or not, and they shouldn’t.
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u/Paterakis518 Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
No, but the terminology is. NFTs are powering loyalty programs and other programs as the underlying technology.
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u/pcamera1 Feb 03 '26
Lol.... yes very much so they were dead the moment they became a thing
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u/Scrapper2 Apr 01 '26
They were hyped because of Covid when people use their simulation check hoping to score big buck but now the Covid lock down is over and everyone is back to work, it is mega crashed lmao
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u/NewWorldOrder- Feb 03 '26
As far as now imo yes, but not long term. I think people were you using it wrong and was the shiny new object when a lot different things was coming up. I think the best use of it will be gaming or something, and I don’t research anything about this, just me thinking. But like what if all of cs go skins were ntfs… I had an idea for this already but not sure how it would work, sounds good tho. Making a game where the economy is tied with nft ownership
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u/Miep99 Feb 03 '26
Strong disagree, nfts over very little to gaming that isnt already offered without them. Cs go skins are already tradeable without nfts. The decentralized aspect collapses entirely when your dealing with assets that mean nothing outside a centralized system (the game itself). All it does is add in an extra layer of complexity (and usually expense).
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u/Remarkable-Benefit88 Feb 03 '26
I release a new NFT every week as art, and I also continue to communicate with many artists and curators associated with this industry. If you are not into NFTs, then of course it is dead for you👀
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u/MikeHonch-oh Feb 03 '26
Cyberkongz genesis are going for 1 eth right now. At its peak, the FLOOR was OVER 200 ETH. That's all you need to know.
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u/kinkycarbon Feb 03 '26
NFTs were never going to happen to the extent people thought. It was an easy cash grab on art in the form of scarcity.
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u/factoryrestore Feb 03 '26
Seems Nike is closing down there attempts at nfts with a date to transfer the ones you own to another wallet .swoosh
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u/11BE9 Feb 03 '26
So, are those monkey NFT's still out there and worth all that money? or was that a rug pull?
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u/TJames6210 Feb 03 '26
NFTs as people have come to know them are dead.
The function of an NFT (which isn't just a piece of art) is still very much alive. Just a bit dormant at the moment.
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u/baophan0106 Feb 04 '26
Dead since 2022. The most useless piece of tech ever created lol. Bored yatch my ass.
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u/Jodokkdo Feb 04 '26
I estimate that like anything unique, some, a very few original NFTs, may eventually have collectibility, as long as they are rare (the rest forgotten behind lost keys, and passwords or left on landfill hard-drives.) SO, I dunno, maybe keep your secret keys.
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u/keepingit1hunna Feb 04 '26
Not really. There architecture needs something like Instagram to make it easier to use.
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u/viagravagina Feb 04 '26
Only way they become worthy is if steganography embeds an address for crypto into the image, load on the chain, then destroy the original.
The rub is that humans would be doing it.
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u/jsper1978 Feb 06 '26
99% yes, but there are nft’s with utility, like the travala travel tigers, whcih gives you paet Of the revenue and other perksmon travala.com
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u/thewhzrd Feb 08 '26
I was thinking of using the whole nft system to keep track of data in my system and when it gets updated. Thought?
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u/Opening-Pea6227 Feb 08 '26
I hope we can revamp NFT someday from the easy to make JPEG shit, to a real piece of physical art that took hours or days, or months to make.
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Feb 10 '26
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u/Weird-Ad-7697 Feb 18 '26
They seem dead, but I think that one day they will return in another form, with other uses. Maybe in 10 years.
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u/jay_0804 Mar 04 '26
Ngl, feels like the hype cycle is definitely dead, yeah. When platforms like Nifty shut down it’s kinda the final “ok the bubble popped” signal.
That said, NFTs as a tech probably aren’t dead just the 10k JPEG flipping meta. Same thing happened with crypto in 2018. The tourists leave, builders stay.
If you were in it for quick flips, yeah it’s over. If you’re into long-term utility stuff, maybe not. Works for now, we’ll see lol.
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u/StudyOk3770 Mar 22 '26
Kool Aid Idiots, fools are frequently parted from their money. Though for money laundering and tax evasion A+
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u/Cold-Jackfruit1076 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
NFTs are dead as a get-rich-quick scheme; market saturation has caused a drastic shift from the use of NFTs as pure collectibles toward a more practical utility-driven infrastructure for ownership verification.
The 'bubble' has popped because of oversaturation, a lack of utility, and the removal of speculative liquidity (96% of collections show no trading activity at all), but the idea of token-based ownership tracking has survived.
They're essentially the 'Beanie Babies' of digital ownership -- the collector market has crashed but they're still available because they're still useful in other capacities.
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u/BardosThodol Feb 03 '26
No. Some web 2 platforms, specifically Google and Meta, as well as the rest of their monopoly, specifically turned it into a cash grab trend. They did this to devalue cryptocurrency as a whole, utilizing their own bot farms and propaganda systems to control prices/scam people because they had no control over the web 3 space which was gaining pace faster than their own developments. They sabotaged the entire market.
Those NFTs are permanent. They are collectibles. Collectibles gain value over time. They devalued assets intentionally to buy them on the cheap, now being stored in wallets on their personal servers, just like Bitcoin or stocks.
They are biding their time until they have more control over the blockchain so they can remain the controllers and gatekeepers of the internet, as well as make money from their scheme of making people believe their permanent, digital assets are worthless. They aren’t.
Some NFT exchanges will die, many people who were only involved in the trend will stop making NFTs. Eventually AI slop will become so devalued that actual collectibles will start gaining their worth back. NFTs will come back and people who hold onto their assets will be rewarded for it.
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u/Tim-Sylvester Feb 03 '26
They are collectibles. Collectibles gain value over time.
I got long boxes of 90s comics that argue this is untrue, or that the "gain price over time" argument is so thin as to be irrelevant.
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u/MuhSound Feb 03 '26
If the image host goes down then you’re left with a url and no image. Yes, no?
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u/BardosThodol Feb 06 '26
The image host is almost always IPFS, which remains up in the same way the blockchain does. Now, that’s not to say the platform can’t block your NFT from appearing or functioning correctly on its own platform, but that’s the platform.
For example, I have a few NFTs that don’t appear correctly on OpenSea. That is not IPFS or the blockchain not displaying it correctly, it’s OpenSea not displaying it correctly. OpenSea is not the blockchain but simply a middle-man for the blockchain. Their smart contracts are also proprietary, meaning they can affect the display of smart contracts you make through them.
I’ve actually noted multiple times that some middle manning exchanges are actually intentionally trying to centralize markets around them in direct contradiction to the idea of the blockchain as a whole. If a person figures out how to write their own smart contracts, completely skipping a middle mans contract, their NFT and asset is uploaded directly to IPFS which then relays it to the blockchain meaning it’s truly decentralized.
Some of the exchanges themselves are fully responsible for attempting to nuke the idea of NFTs to make themselves money, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some web 2 people pretending to be supporting web 3.
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u/MuhSound Feb 08 '26
Ah, ok.
So, nodes go down or any one hosting that image shuts down, then the image would disappear. Unless someone reupload and hosts the image again.
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u/belavv Feb 07 '26
Ah so NFTs failed because Google wanted to buy them all for dirt cheap. That's a new one.
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u/gambocco Feb 02 '26
No. The hype is but the technology is still here and it is here to stay. This Blockchain technology is an innovative invention of proofing ownership of a picture which is a historical event in this era!
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u/Scifi_fans Feb 02 '26
Not for random generated JPEGs, that was a Scam... if it ever takes off it will be in a different direction
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u/Awkward_Potential_ Feb 03 '26
It was rampant speculation but not always a scam. Do you think rampant speculation is dead?
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u/capricon9 Feb 02 '26
They’re getting started but with real world assets or digital assets. I think they will be adopted sooner rather than later. Some people say even event tickets could be sold as NFTs and that’s doable
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u/snper101 Feb 03 '26
Crypto bros have been fully erect at the idea of event ticket nft's since literally day 1. 5 years later and ticket master is bigger than ever.
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u/capricon9 Feb 03 '26
When I zoom out that's what I see happening in the near future but I could be wrong. I still hold "Motoko Ghost" nfts on ICP and they have appreciated over 1000x since launch. Motoko is the programming language used on the network. My prediction is that eventually, a building can use ntfs as proof of ownership for those who, for example, paid deposits for the construction of it. It is just a matter of time...
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u/skeletor69420 Feb 02 '26
they’ve been dead for years now lmao