X2Y2 Shuts Down NFT Marketplace After Three-Year Operation
X2Y2, a once-giant NFT marketplace, has announced it will shut down its NFT activities on April 30, 2025, after three years of operation. The platform’s pseudonymous founder, TP, explained that the decision comes amid a broader NFT market decline. He said the market’s trading volume has significantly dropped since its 2021 peak.
Launched in early 2022, X2Y2 quickly gained popularity and briefly became one of the largest NFT marketplaces. Throughout its three years of operation, X2Y2 facilitated a high volume of transactions. It once ranked as the second-largest NFT marketplace by trading volume ranking. It trailed OpenSea with a volume of $5.6 billion. However, user engagement and trading activity declined as the NFT market cooled down.
Although X2Y2’s NFT marketplace is shutting down, its founder emphasized that the underlying smart contracts keeping the platform running will remain functional. This will enable users to pull out their assets at their individual pace.
Highlighting what the team’s next endeavor is, TP wrote:
“Over the last 12 months, we’ve been diving deep into AI—hands down the biggest paradigm shift we’ll see in our lifetimes—and how it can transform crypto. We’re building something new, something that takes everything we’ve learned and aims higher.”
X2Y2 is not the first to sunset its NFT platform. Other big brands have shut down their NFT marketplaces. For instance, crypto exchange Bybit recently revealed its plan to sunset its NFT ecosystem, including its inscription market and IDO products, by April 8th.
Last month, electronics giant LG halted its NFT platform, dubbed the LG Art Lab. Kraken, another crypto exchange, waved goodbye to its NFT marketplace amid the NFT market’s decline in late February. In December, Nike revealed plans to shut down its NFT fashion studio, RTFKT, in January 2025.
Despite the ongoing trend of mainstream companies abandoning their NFT businesses, there is a glimmer of hope. The continuous integration of NFTs into art, gaming, real-world asset tokenization, and much more shows that the non-fungible ecosystem still has much to offer.
