Social NFT marketplace Rodeo became second NFT platform this week to announce its closure amid a tough market environment for non-fungible tokens.
Rodeo launched in March last year via Apple’s iOS store and was designed to target social media NFT aggregator platform, with a focus on rewarding creators for posting rather than purely buying and selling NFTs.
It used complex crypto and blockchain features to make it simple for regular users.
However, Rodeo CEO and co-founder Kayvon Tehranian said in an X-post on Tuesday that the platform was struggling to scale enough to become sustainable.
“We believed that collecting could be playful and communal, not just transactional. That belief guided every product decision we made,” adding:
“Ultimately, Rodeo failed to achieve its core purpose. While the product resonated deeply with a committed community, it did not grow to the scale necessary to make the platform sustainable in the long term. Therefore, it is not possible to continue operating Rodeo.”
Source: Kayvon Tehranian
Looking ahead, Rodeo has outlined a plan that will allow users to move their assets and data to other platforms. First, users can transfer media and metadata to the blockchain data storage platform Arweave.
Rodeo will also offer an asset migration assistant, which guides users through transferring assets from the platform’s smart contract.
Between January 27 and February 10, Rodeo will continue to function normally, but from February 10 the platform will switch to read-only mode. On March 10, Rodeo will be completely eliminated.
This isn’t the only organizational change Tehranian has made this week, with Tuesday revealing that ownership of the NFT artist platform and gallery Foundation is transferring to digital art platform Blackdove.
Tehranian said the project started as an experiment to see if artists could be fairly compensated for their work online, and has overseen $230 million in primary sales since launch.
The founder said the platform will continue as normal, but under leadership that is committed to its long-term future.
The NFT The market has been in free fall since the big crash in 2022, with only brief price spikes and no sustainable market rebound. At its market peak around January 2022, Ethereum hosted nearly $5 billion in assets NFT trading volume, according to data from CryptoSlam.
However, by January 2026, Ethereum had only seen $159.2 million in value NFT trading volume.
Nifty Gateway updates phase-out plan
Meanwhile, Nifty Gateway, one of the largest marketplaces, came into existence as part of the beginning NFT market boom in early 2021, has provided an update on the wind-down process following recent community feedback.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Nifty Gateway also said it will use Arweave for users to transfer media and metadata. Additionally, the platform is extending the deadline for moving assets to a 90-day period, ending on April 23 instead of February 23.
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“We are working on a bulk withdrawal tool for our customers who have multiple NFTs on our platform and will roll it out soon, with enough time to use the tool before the April 23 deadline,” Nifty Gateway said.
The platform initially announced plans to close on Friday, but did not explicitly indicate why.
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