Context Creator: The Platform Collapse Edition
What happens to NFTs when marketplaces die?
Context Creator is a monthly newsletter that gathers recent developments in digital art and highlights affinities with other projects.
Anyone who thought NFTs died in 2022 must have been shocked recently to hear there were yet more signs of death. On January 24, Nifty Gateway—which helped launch the markets for work by Beeple, Refik Anadol, and Pak—announced that it would shut down. Three days later, Foundation, the invite-only tastemaker that made NFTs feel cool and curated, was acquired by Blackdove after a long period of drift. They joined the ranks of others—MakersPlace, KnownOrigin, Async Art—that wound down over the past two years. Matt Medved, the journalist and founder of NFT Now, posted a thorough rundown on X of the demise of these and other platforms.
The above line about the death of NFTs was tongue-in-cheek, of course. The format existed before any platform and will likely outlast them all. Artist Andrew Benson was one of many who noted that the announcements from Nifty Gateway and Foundation could be seen as steps toward realizing the NFT’s promise of decentralization; On X, he wrote: “the slow dissolve of all NFT art platforms is actually proof of the initial premise.” In the wake of these contractions, we’re seeing a more fragmented ecosystem. Artists work directly with collectors. Brokers and agents negotiate primary and secondary sales. Traditional galleries tentatively adapt to digital formats, while digital-first galleries experiment with new models. In 2021, the marketplaces served the purpose of promoting and popularizing NFTs. Some would say that for a market that appeared in a flash, platforms served as ad hoc institutions: big organizations that provided some points of orientation for scattered networks of artists, collectors, and observers.
But platforms are not institutions, as critic Mike Pepi loves to say. Readers of his 2018 essay “Heavy Machinery,” or his 2025 book Against Platforms, could see how closely the trajectory of marketplaces in the NFT space has followed the arc described in his theory of platforms. To summarize briefly, institutions preserve things like beliefs, books, laws, and artworks because some expert consensus has determined that those things are valuable. Platforms elevate the means of storage and transmission above the content. Consensus is ephemeral, determined by likes rather than by expertise. While institutions prioritize quality, platforms subjugate it to the demands of efficiency.
Actors in the NFT space mistook platforms for institutions. Or, in their fervent rejection of “trad” institutions, they eagerly accepted marketplaces as arbiters of importance. Visibility, floor price, and sales volume became talking points for the significance of an artist’s work in an environment where criticism was scarce or nonexistent. If a work sold for a high price, it must matter. If it appeared on marketplace’s front page, it must be canonical. The marketplace logic of trends assumed the position of institutional judgment because there was no alternative.
That mindset still persists to some degree, even as platforms wane. It can be seen in certain attempts to historicize the field. Roger Dickerman’s Digital Art Pantheon, released on February 5, is an ambitious project, with a stylish, responsive website. Images expand into descriptions with metadata, and there’s room for Dickerman and others to add commentary as the pantheon evolves. But the scope of the choices can feel somewhat limited. The list of 100 works privileges minting events, blockchain “firsts,” and major sales. Early tokenized art like Jonathan Monaghan’s Mothership (2013) and Kevin and Jennifer McCoy’s Quantum (2014) appear alongside Trevor Jones’s Bitcoin Bull and Coldie’s Lost Vitalik (both 2020), which explicitly reference crypto culture. Platforms and sale prices are carefully noted. Edition size becomes a quasi-genre; Dickerman calls it a “type” of work.
As the marketplaces recede, there will have to be a reckoning about what matters. Crypto art is so bound up in marketplace logic that some platform values are sure to persist as the work is historicized. But other attempts to make sense of the landscape are proliferating. Artist Sabato Visconti put together a list of his own, and it has an artist’s attunement to form, labeling works in terms of genre—3D art, AI art, glitch, and so on—rather than edition size. Not everything included is strictly an NFT; some works relate to blockchain in looser ways. While Sabato takes market performance and media hype into account to some degree, he ultimately puts the emphasis on aesthetic affinities and formal innovation. For years, a collector who goes by CSA2D7 online has been publishing his monthly and annual rankings of NFT releases that mix high-profile drops with idiosyncratic picks. Efforts like Sabato’s and CSA’s are uneven and personal, but they look more like criticism or connoisseurship than they do like a leaderboard.
Meanwhile, collectors are experimenting with new forms of patronage. Recently, the collector known as Batsoupyum pledged to spend $100,000 a year on digital art acquisitions, and others pledged money to add to his fund, which now has more than $600,000. It’s a modest gesture compared to the volume of money that changed hands in 2021, but it suggests a shift, albeit tentative, from speculation to stewardship.
One new platform, VVV.SO, has declared their determination not to reproduce the flaws of the platforms that preceded them. In a manifesto posted to X, the team wrote: “We’re not trying to rebuild the 2021 market. We don’t want that market back. What we want is something that makes sense for artists who are serious about their work and collectors who actually care about what they’re holding. The tech is just the part that makes it possible. The harder question is what kind of culture you build around it, what behaviors you reward, what you make easy and what you make impossible.”
If the first wave of NFT marketplaces blurred art with crypto spectacle, the next phase will be marked by institutional plurality. Digital art won’t be served by a single catchall platform that hosts everything from trading-card derivatives to complex generative systems. It will need spaces with clear commitments. That might mean celebrating crypto culture. It could also mean investing in particular genres, like generative art or games. What’s happening the wake of the marketplace collapse clarifies a distinction that was long obscured. Platforms optimize transmission. Institutions safeguard value—however contested that value might be.
MORE LINKS
Le Random, an invaluable resource for information and criticism about generative art, compiled a timeline of the major artworks and events of 2025. [Le Random]
Elizabeth Goodspeed reflects on the trend of simulated analogue textures in contemporary digital design. [It’s Nice That]
HEK, an institution for digital art in Basel, is featuring generative art by Leander Herzog on its homepage. [HEK]
A talk that Mitchell F. Chan gave in Marfa last fall about five great artworks and why he loves them is now online. [YouTube]
Casey Reas and Lauren Lee McCarthy have launched a Substack to share updates on their research, advocacy, and support for software art. [Social Software]
Outland director Brian Droitcour interviewed Ayoung Kim for Bomb about how rediscovering her youthful love of science fiction led to a pivot in her artistic practice. [Bomb]