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Company

NFT

Filtered to Leadership & Hiring ×
439 articles accelerating

Coverage peaked at 83 articles in 2022Q1 as NFT marketplaces, social platforms and major brands raced to build around digital collectibles, then shifted toward contraction and closures.

Who they are

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, appear in this coverage as blockchain-based digital assets and the foundation for marketplaces, collectible brands, games and social-media features. Stories repeatedly connect the category to OpenSea, Ethereum and Solana, as well as Bored Ape Yacht Club and its owner Yuga Labs, while platforms including Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Coinbase and GameStop explored NFT-related products.

The recent arc

More recent reporting is sparse and markedly more defensive. DappRadar data cited in June 2025 put NFT-lending volume down 97% from its January 2024 peak, while Bybit closed its NFT marketplace after X2Y2 made a similar move. OpenSea’s October 2025 story reframed it as a broader crypto-trading aggregator, and January 2026 coverage focused on Nifty Gateway entering withdrawal-only mode ahead of a planned shutdown.

The tension

The central tension is between NFTs’ earlier promise as a mass-market layer for crypto, media and social platforms and the difficulty of sustaining dedicated trading venues and financial products. OpenSea, Coinbase and GameStop represented the marketplace buildout; Yuga Labs and Bored Ape Yacht Club represented branded digital-property bets; Ethereum and Solana supplied the underlying rails but also surfaced security and transaction-cost risks. The later closures and lending decline show the category’s infrastructure being tested more harshly than its early growth narratives suggested.

Why it matters

If the current trajectory continues, NFTs may matter less as a standalone consumer-market category and more as a feature folded into broader crypto, wallet and platform products, as OpenSea’s aggregator shift suggests. That outcome is not assured: major social-platform experiments and politically branded products show the format can still be used for identity, distribution and licensing, but the coverage indicates that durable demand and safer, lower-friction market infrastructure remain unresolved.

NFTs exploded into tech news conversation with 435 articles concentrated in 2021-2022, peaking at 84 articles in Q1 2022 during peak speculative mania before collapsing to 1-4 articles per quarter by 2025. This trajectory—sharper than any entity in this batch—reflects NFTs' transformation from cultural phenomenon to niche tooling. The corpus reveals three phases: explosive hype and celebrity adoption (2021), OpenSea dominance and Ethereum gas wars (Q1-Q2 2022), and post-crash utility exploration (2023-present). Related entities OpenSea, Twitter, Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin frame NFTs within crypto infrastructure rather than standalone category. Recent coverage stabilizes at 3-4 articles per quarter, focusing on gaming integration, legal battles, and occasional cultural artifacts rather than investment narrative. NFTs' coverage arc is complete boom-bust cycle compressed into 24 months, now relegated to occasional mentions when brands experiment or lawsuits surface.

NFT has appeared in 439 articles since 2021-02. Coverage peaked in 2023Q1 with 27 articles. Frequently mentioned alongside OpenSea, Twitter, Ethereum, Solana.

Articles
439
mentions
Velocity
+200.0%
growth rate
Acceleration
+2.750
velocity change
Sources
75
publications

Coverage Timeline

2024-12-03
The Block 20 related

RTFKT, the digital wearables NFT startup Nike acquired in 2021, is shutting down by the end of January 2025; DefiLlama: RTFKT brought in nearly $50M in earnings

an early Web3 fashion success story — is folding Jason Newey / NFT News Today : Nike-Owned RTFKT to Shut Down Operations by January 2025 Brayden Lindrea / Cointelegraph : Nike-owned NFT wearables RTFK...

2023-11-05
Decrypt 10 related

OpenSea lays off ~50% of staff and is moving to “OpenSea 2.0”; after laying off 20% of its workforce in July 2022, the NFT marketplace said 230 staff remained

including the underlying technology, reliability, speed, quality, [and] experience” and to achieve this upgrade they are laying off half the employees at the company.  OpenSea was valued at $13.3 bill...

2023-11-04
Decrypt 14 related

OpenSea lays off ~50% of staff and is moving to “OpenSea 2.0”; after laying off 20% of its workforce in July 2022, the NFT marketplace said 230 staff remained

A company representative told Decrypt that approximately 50% of employees were impacted across the company.

2023-10-08
Decrypt 8 related

Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club and other prominent NFTs, restructures, lays off some US staff, and is still evaluating its international teams

Yuga Labs is announcing a restructuring that will better focus our team on our core priorities. James Cirrone / Blockworks : Crypto hiring: Major layoffs at Yuga Labs, Ledger and Chainalysis this week...

2023-10-07
Decrypt 13 related

Yuga Labs, the creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club and other prominent NFTs, restructures, lays off some US staff, and is still evaluating its international teams

Yuga Labs is announcing a restructuring that will better focus our team on our core priorities. James Cirrone / Blockworks : Crypto hiring: Major layoffs at Yuga Labs, Ledger and Chainalysis this week...

2023-07-15
TechCrunch 1 related

Creator monetization platform Fanhouse agrees to sell to rival Passes, which only launched in December 2022, but some creators are apprehensive about the merger

if you do, it will be a secure transfer - Fanhouse will continue to run until the transition and will continue to run for some time after Lucy Guo / @lucy_guo : For those worried about their livelihoo...

2023-03-22
The Information

Sources: Meta rehires veteran manager Nick Grudin, who left to join NFT startup Dapper Labs in August 2022, to oversee media and creator relationships

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg' effort to cut back on middle managers isn't stopping the company hiring more middle managers. Tweets: @sylviavarnham See also Mediagazer Tweets: Sylvia Varnham O'Re...

2023-03-14
The Block 26 related

Meta plans to wind down its work on NFTs “for now” to focus on other ways of supporting creators and will continue working on Meta Pay

- Meta is ditching its NFT efforts, for now, according to executive Stephane Kasriel.  —  Meta is ditching its pursuit of NFTs as the company looks …

2023-03-06
The Block 1 related

Current and former Dapper Labs staff say CEO Roham Gharegozlou's bullying and extravagant spending hurt the NFT startup amid layoffs and a prolonged bear market

2023-03-05
The Block

Current and former Dapper Labs staff say bullying and lavish spending by CEO Roham Gharegozlou has hurt the NFT startup amid layoffs and a prolonged bear market

- Dapper Labs CEO and co-founder Roham Gharegozlou's extravagant spending and habit of bullying employees … Tweets: @fintechfrank , @nftethics , @aaronbronsteter , and @evan_van_ness Tweets: Frank Cha...

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Quarterly Coverage

Top Sources

Narrative

NFT has appeared in 354 tech news articles since February 2021. The biggest stories include Sources: GameStop has hired more than 20 people to run a new division developing an NFT... and Reddit launches an NFT-based avatar marketplace with 90 profile pictures available for.... Frequently covered alongside OpenSea, Ethereum, Solana, ETH, and Twitter. Coverage has shifted toward enterprise, developer themes and away from consumer, funding.

Key Moments

2024Q2enterprise -25pts; safety +33pts; developer +8pts
2024Q3safety -33pts; funding +67pts
2025Q2enterprise +40pts; developer -33pts; consumer -13pts

Relationships

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