What is left of the NFTs, virtual land parcels and “play-to-earn” games that drove the euphoria of 2021? A review published on October 10, 2026 by Journal du Coin follows the trajectory of several flagship products. The piece is signed by Club 25%, an investors’ club that manages its savings in stablecoins through decentralized finance (DeFi), and contains affiliate links: a committed point of view, worth keeping in mind. Bitcoin and Ethereum are deliberately left aside.

2021, a market where everything could be resold

On March 11, 2021, Christie’s sold an NFT artwork by Beeple for $69.3 million. Eleven days later, entrepreneur Sina Estavi paid $2.9 million for the NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, which he compared to the Mona Lisa. In May 2021, Nifty Gateway announced that it had passed $300 million in transaction volume.

On The Sandbox, the average floor price of a parcel reached 2.86 ETH over the year. At the end of 2021, Axie Infinity claimed nearly 3 million daily active players, half of them in the Philippines. For the author, in each of these markets, the prospect of reselling at a higher price was part of what people were buying.

NFTs and games: closures and pivots

In 2022, prices began to fall back. In March, the Ronin bridge, used by Axie Infinity, was hacked for about $620 million. In April, Sina Estavi put Jack Dorsey’s tweet back up for sale at $48 million; the best offer topped out at around $6,800 and no sale was concluded. In May, the collapse of Terra sharply accelerated the market’s decline. By April 2023, Axie had only about 250,000 daily players, compared with a peak of 2.7 million, even though Sky Mavis continues to develop the game.

Closures then followed one after another. On February 2, 2024, GameStop shut down its NFT marketplace. On January 23, 2026, Gemini switched Nifty Gateway to withdrawal-only mode, before closing it a month later. On May 20, 2026, it was Fantasy Top’s turn. Launched in 2024, this NFT card game featuring personalities from the social network X was at the time among the ten protocols generating the most fees. Its co-founder, Kipit, explains that the cards became financial assets as soon as they were released and attracted speculators before attracting players: every change to the rules directly affected their price on the secondary market.

Sorare illustrates a transformation rather than a disappearance. The French platform cut about 35% of its workforce at the end of 2025, launched a free-to-play mode in January 2026, then raised new funds in September 2026. According to the company, more than 100,000 managers bought cards in the first half of 2026, more than in 2021. For The Sandbox, on the other hand, the article provides no recent data: nothing can therefore be concluded about the fate of virtual land.

What is still running: lending, borrowing, holding stablecoins

The central hypothesis of the piece is that uses that meet a specific need hold up better when speculation recedes. The example chosen is Aave, a lending protocol funded by interest paid by borrowers, part of which is passed on to depositors. Outstanding loans on the platform plunged by nearly 85% in 2022, then exceeded their 2021 level by the end of 2024. As of September 24, 2026, they stood at $13 billion, according to DefiLlama data cited by the article.

Over the same period, the supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins grew from $162 billion at the end of 2021 to $311 billion. DeFi as a whole, however, has not returned to its peak: total value locked (TVL) stands at $94.9 billion, compared with about $163 billion at the 2021 peak.

Tokenization, a new narrative still to be measured

The current cycle has its own narrative: the tokenization of existing assets. As of September 24, 2026, $38.6 billion in tokenized assets are represented on public blockchains, compared with about $23 billion at the end of 2025. U.S. Treasury bills alone account for around $15 billion of that. Launched by BlackRock in March 2024, the tokenized money market fund BUIDL is worth about $2.8 billion; its shares can be transferred on the blockchain between authorized investors.

Tokenized real estate, long presented as a major use case, amounted to only about $457 million in the summer of 2026, with low trading volumes and long holding periods.

What is established, and what remains to be proven

The documented facts are clear: several NFT platforms have closed and, by April 2023, Axie Infinity had only about 250,000 daily players. Conversely, outstanding loans on Aave exceeded their 2021 level by the end of 2024, and both the supply of stablecoins and tokenized assets as a whole are rising, even though DeFi TVL remains below its 2021 peak. The proposed explanation, that use survives when speculation recedes, remains the author’s reading, based on a selection of cases rather than a systematic study of all the projects launched in 2021. As for whether tokenization will follow the trajectory of decentralized lending or that of NFTs, the available data do not yet make it possible to say.

Source: Journal du Coin, “Web3 : 5 ans après l’euphorie, qu’est-ce qui reste vraiment ?”, October 10, 2026