How NFT Marketplaces Adapted to Survive in 2025

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.”

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.

As for Magic Eden, the marketplace acquired meme coin trading app Slingshot in April—a move that saw Magic Eden move into the world of non-NFT trading. Magic Eden also offers multi-chain token trading on its site and through its Wallet app. However, Magic Eden told Decrypt that its expansion into token trading isn’t a big deal.

“Token trading is not a real focus nor a meaningful percentage of our business,” Chris Akhavan, Chief Business Officer at Magic Eden, told Decrypt. “That market is incredibly commoditized with plenty of wallets, trading apps, DEXs, and [centralized exchanges], etc. that serve the needs of users looking to trade tokens.”

Butterfill from CoinShares said that despite Magic Eden’s coyness, the platform has been “more aggressive” than OpenSea when it comes to its token trading integration—especially when engaging with Solana-based and gaming ecosystems. The analyst now sees Magic Eden as an “application layer” for digital culture, which expands its “strategic identity” so it is no longer solely focused on NFTs.

“The changes have allowed [both] platforms to stabilize engagement numbers and to diversify fee revenue in a year when traditional NFT volumes remained subdued,” Butterfill told Decrypt. “In that sense, the adaptations have worked.”

“For marketplaces to succeed long-term,” he continued, “they need to offer either structural differentiation or seamless integration between NFT and token rails that users cannot easily replicate elsewhere. That is still an open question.”

That’s entertainment

That said, Akhavan said Magic Eden is focusing on what it calls its “crypto entertainment” offerings—not token trading. The first of these offerings is its Packs platform, which allows users to open virtual packs with real-world assets inside of them, currently Pokémon cards. There are also other packs for NFTs.

“We’ve already cleared tens of millions in volume on Packs, and have a big roadmap ahead for this product,” Akhavan told Decrypt. “Packs are just the beginning of a much broader crypto entertainment ecosystem we’re building.” 

Part of this broader push includes the launch of Dicey, a crypto casino and sportsbook, for which Akhavan kept the details minimal but told Decrypt that it will be a “major new product.” He added that Magic Eden aims to become the “biggest crypto entertainment brand in the world.”

“In the wider digital asset landscape, both platforms are moving toward the role of cultural liquidity hubs, sitting between creators, collectors, and token communities,” Butterfill explained. “Their success will depend on whether these cultural economies continue to expand and whether users view them as essential infrastructure rather than optional front ends.”