A small group of collections have left crypto-native speculation behind and into consumer-oriented brands. Pudgy Penguins has continued to present itself as a broader IP company recent CoinDesk research it details over $13 million in retail sales and over 2 million copies sold, while Doodles now sees itself less as a pure collection and more as a creative platform built around content, AI and brand extension.
Indeed, the $NFT sector has become more selective, with utility-led and gaming-related activities holding up better than the broad speculative frenzy that defined the earlier cycle.
While a handful of projects are trying to build lasting intellectual property, the long line of profile photo collections continues to fade.
BeInCrypto asked three industry experts how the $NFT market is restructuring, and what will determine which projects survive.
Brand value versus scarcity in the chain
The gorge is now in the middle of the $NFT Market recovery: whether value can be maintained through brand equity in the real world, or whether it still depends on scarcity in the chain.
Federico Variola, CEO of Phemexis skeptical about whether most projects can successfully make that transition.
“There are still some challenges in linking the value of NFTs to brand equity in the physical world when there is no clear revenue or distribution funnel.”
According to him, the core problem is that there are many $NFT brands have yet to prove they are driving meaningful business results outside of crypto.
“That’s why I think the real value of NFTs is always rooted in scarcity on the chain.”
As market sentiment around scarcity weakened, projects began looking 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 move from supply chain scarcity to real-world positioning without product market fit.”
That helps explain why a large portion of collections remain significantly below their peak valuation.
Fernando Lillo Aranda, Marketing Director at Zoomextakes the opposite position. For him, the market has already surpassed scarcity as the main driver of value.
“Most NFTs won’t recover – and they probably shouldn’t. Scarcity alone was never a sustainable value proposition.”
He states that verification in the chain does not in itself create demand.
“The market has 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 remaining projects as ones that build real businesses around their IP.
“The only NFTs that have a real future are the ones that develop into real companies and IP engines.”
“If your project cannot live outside of crypto, in retail, media, gaming or culture, then it is not an asset, but a speculation artifact from the last cycle.”
The disagreement concerns the execution. The movement towards IP-driven value is already underway.
The open question is how much $NFT projects can operate like real businesses rather than speculative assets.
The reset of gaming: from playing to earn to playing to own
Failing early $NFT Game 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 relied on a constant influx of new players to support token prices. Once growth slowed, the model began to fall apart. Rewards turned into emissions, emissions turned into selling 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 return-generating assets and more as layers of ownership within a game.
Anton Efimenko, co-founder of 8 Blockssees this as a necessary correction in the way value is structured.
“The core problem with Play-to-Earn was that it tried to fund gameplay too early. When rewards are determined 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 intended to maintain relevance within the game environment, rather than function as extractive tools.
“Play-to-Own shifts the focus from extracting value to owning something that is useful within a functioning ecosystem. That reduces sales pressure and better aligns players with the long-term health of the game.”
This doesn’t eliminate speculation, but it changes where it is. Value is no longer tied to how quickly rewards can be realized, but to whether the underlying game can maintain engagement without relying on constant symbolic incentives.
Gaming has become one of the clearest testing grounds for this transition. If $NFTOwnership can preserve value without emissions-based rewards, but it can provide a path forward. If not, the same problems will likely resurface under a different name.
Tokenizing IP: liquidity versus loyalty
As projects look for new ways to unlock value, an emerging direction is the tokenization by $NFT IP itself.
In theory, this could increase access, increase liquidity and give communities a more direct stake in a brand’s commercial benefits. But it also raises more difficult questions about governance, coordination and loyalty.
Efimenko says the structure can create opportunities, but it also changes the incentives around ownership.
“The moment $NFT IP becomes more fluid, you invite a different class of participants. Some will be concerned about the brand, but many will be primarily interested in the price exposure and the positive impact in the short term.”
Of course, communities built around identity and culture don’t function like regular token markets. The more tradable the asset becomes, the more likely it is that decision-making will shift to actors with a weaker long-term relationship with the project.
“Liquidity can help increase participation, but it can also fragment governance. If too much influence shifts to holders who are financially motivated but not operationally aligned, brand direction becomes more difficult to manage.”
This leaves $NFT projects in a difficult position. Wider financial access can strengthen the balance sheet, but it can also dilute the kind of dedicated holder base that many successful brands rely on.
Ultimately, a highly liquid community asset can be easier to trade but harder to build over time.
Fixing crypto-native gaming
Our analysis so far leaves one question open: whether blockchain mechanisms 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 can’t match. Demonstrably honest Mechanics provide users with a way to verify that systems are functioning as claimed, rather than simply trusting the operator.
But transparency alone is not enough to restore trust.
As Lillo Aranda puts it:
“The market has 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 mechanisms can help solve the trust problem, especially in areas like crypto gambling or reward distribution, but they don’t solve the product problem. If the game is weak, the economics are extractive, or the user experience feels like it’s about monetization rather than entertainment, transparency won’t cut it.
The next phase of the industry could be a test of whether crypto products can combine fair mechanics with actual player retention. In this sense, blockchain can help restore trust, but only if the game itself is worth trusting.
Final thoughts
The $NFT The market is being forced into a more selective phase, where value must come from something that is more sustainable than just hype.
Variola’s comments point to the limits of the current pivot. Many projects attempt to move from scarcity-driven speculation to real-world branding without a clear business model or product-market fit.
Lillo Aranda continues this argument, suggesting that only those collections that can function as actual IP companies are likely to remain relevant over time.
Efimenko, meanwhile, highlights the challenge behind both visions: ownership design, token incentives and governance all determine whether a project can remain stable while growing.
NFTs aren’t going away, but they’re becoming increasingly difficult to justify as pure collectibles. It’s more likely that the projects that survive will be those that can build off-chain, support user demand, and give digital ownership a function that lasts longer than a speculative cycle.