How NFT Marketplaces Adapted to Survive in 2025

In brief NFT marketplaces OpenSea and Magic Eden have both added fungible token trading to their platforms this year. A market researcher says this is likely due to NFT activity cooling down, and that the moves have helped the platforms stabilize. Magic Eden said token trading isn't a major focus, and that it's gunning to expand into what it calls "crypto entertainment." NFT mania is a distant memory in 2025. It was an era-back in 2021 and early 2022-when Beeple sold a jpeg for $69.3 million , CryptoPunks were going for tens of millions , and celebrities kept aping into the Bored Ape Yacht Club . The cumulative NFT market cap has dropped 99% from its 2023 all-time high of $184 billion to just $487 million, per CoinMarketCap . In what is now a comparatively barren wasteland, NFT marketplaces have been forced to adapt, with titans of the sector like OpenSea and Magic Eden expanding their offerings to include tokens that are fully fungible. “The move is largely a response to a structural slowdown in pure NFT activity and the need for marketplaces to defend relevance in a maturing digital asset ecosystem,” James Butterfill, head of research at asset manager CoinShares , told Decrypt . “In that environment, a marketplace that once thrived on high-velocity trading of profile picture collections now needs a broader economic base.” OS2 open beta is now live: • A fully reimagined product built entirely from the ground up, for collectors and pros • NFTs 🤝 tokens, brought together in one place • Brand new, beautiful ways to explore - beyond just the floor • 14 chains (welcome @flow_blockchain , ApeChain... pic.twitter.com/fTJT5eKsm2 - OpenSea (@opensea) February 13, 2025 As such, OpenSea announced a “complete rebuild of its platform” in February of this year to include cross-chain token trading via its own decentralized exchange , or DEX. Dubbed OS2, the new era for the platform enabled token trading across 19 blockchains with a new rewards system called “ Voyages ,” which many have speculated will play a role in its anticipated SEA token launch. “Adding tokens wasn’t about looking at the NFT market and pivoting,” Adam Hollander, CMO at OpenSea, told Decrypt . “It’s an evolution of the company and an understanding of where things are heading. Tokens, digital collectibles, tokenized real-world assets, perps, prediction markets-whatever people are valuing online, we want them to be able to trade it all on OpenSea.” In October, OpenSea generated a new high for its DEX volume by hitting $2.41 billion in monthly volume. That standout month proved to be an anomaly, however, with monthly volumes retracing 75% to $581.48 million in November, according to DefiLlama . These figures look puny compared to the big dogs of the DEX industry, with Uniswap generating nearly $80 billion in November monthly volume. The changes have allowed [both] platforms to stabilize, As for Magic Eden, the marketplace acquired meme coin trading app Slingshot in April-a move that saw Magic Eden move into the world...

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