History of NFTs

Note: Data in this section last updated May 28th, 2022

NFTs have existed in some form since 2014, but they experienced most of their growth in two distinct periods: late 2017 and early 2021.

The first “NFT boom” occurred in late 2017, a year that saw the release of Cryptopunks, CryptoKitties and OpenSea. CryptoKitties, in particular, helped bring attention to the space by nearly shutting down the Ethereum network due to its popularity. For the next several years, the NFT market faded into the background as other applications, such as DeFi, gained popularity.

This all changed in early 2021, with the combination of three events – the sudden spike in the popularity of NBA Top Shot (which did >$200 million in February), Beeple’s sale of his digital work Everydays for $69 million and the launch of the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

These three events helped catalyze an unprecedented bull market that peaked at $38.6 billion in January 2022 – nearly 600x growth from the previous year.

Notable moments in NFT history include:

• May 2014: The first known NFT, “Quantum”, was created on the Namecoin blockchain

• September 2016: The first Rare Pepes are minted

• June 2017: Larva Labs launches a collection of 10,000 Cryptopunks. Punks are seen by many as the “OG” NFT asset and long held the title as the most valuable

• November 2017: CryptoKitties are first launched, causing the Ethereum network to reach all-time highs in the number of transactions and greatly increasing gas prices

• December 2017: OpenSea launches as one of the first decentralized marketplaces for NFTs

• March 2018: Axie Infinity, the most popular Play-to-Earn game and top selling NFT, is launched

• January 2020: Decentraland, one of the first “metaverses”, launches

• November 2020: Art Blocks launches, officially becoming the go-to source for generative art NFTs

• February 2021: NBA Top Shot records over $200 million in sales in February alone, arguably kicking of the 2021 NFT boom

• February 2021: The musician 3Lau sells a collection of NFTs for nearly $12 million

• March 2021: Kings of Leon becomes the first band to release an NFT album

• March 2021: Jack Dorsey sells his first tweet ever as an NFT for over $2.9 million

• March 2021: Beeple sells his Everydays: The First 5,000 Days NFT for$69.3 million

• April 2021: Yuga Lab introduces its collection of 10,000 Bored Apes, which would eventually become the most valuable NFT

• August 2021: Bored Ape Yacht Club holders are gifted with two Mutant Apes and one Bored Ape Kennel Club (a dog)

• November 2021: The Sandbox launches its alpha version, eventually becoming the second most valuable virtual world

• January 2022: Looksrare forks OpenSea’s code in a “vampire attack” and sells over $100M in its first day live

• January 2022: Azuki launches a collection of 10K NFTs, doing over $300M of transactions in their first month

• March 2022: Bored Ape Yacht Club launches ApeCoin, a token designed to power the platform’s upcoming metaverse known as “Otherside”

• April 2022: Proof.xyz launches Moonbirds, which shatters previous records with $364.8M of sales in its first five days

• May 2022: Bored Ape Yacht Club nets $561M in one night by selling land deeds for “Otherside”, which almost instantly becomes the most valuable virtual world (the sale also cost users over $100M in fees, creating a decent amount of backlash)

Despite this massive growth, the value of all NFTs still remains around 2% of the total market cap of cryptocurrencies.