After three years in the NFT spotlight, marketplace X2Y2 has announced it will shut down operations on April 30 and pivot entirely to artificial intelligence. The platform’s team cited AI as “the biggest paradigm shift of our lifetimes” and said they're building a new project aimed at transforming crypto through permissionless AI-powered yield strategies.
While X2Y2 recorded a respectable $53.6 million in trading volume over the past year, it remained a distant fourth behind Blur, OpenSea, and Immutable. Still, the team is confident that their move toward AI represents a deeper opportunity beyond the fading hype cycle of NFTs.
Industry leaders, including Unique Network president Charu Sethi, say the shift doesn’t reflect a decline in the NFT space but rather a change in direction. She emphasized that the speculative phase is ending, and NFTs are now gaining momentum through real-world use cases like gaming, digital identity, and content authentication. Sethi pointed to growing interest in blockchain gaming, which hit 7.4 million daily active wallets in 2024, as proof that utility—not trading—is the future of NFTs.
Sethi and Rarible co-founder Alexander Salnikov agree: NFTs still have immense potential, but success will hinge on practical applications that foster community engagement. Platforms relying solely on marketplace traffic are unlikely to survive.
Though X2Y2 hasn’t revealed much about its upcoming AI venture, the team hinted it will help users earn across market cycles—suggesting a decentralized, AI-powered trading system. Despite recent volatility in AI-linked tokens, X2Y2 is betting on long-term value creation in crypto’s next big wave.