Despite the bear market and the closure of many projects, the NFT industry has not only survived, but has continued to grow. For most of the year, it seemed that the NFT market was dying.

• Meta winds down support for NFTs on Instagram and Facebook,

• Decommissioning NFTs on Behance,

• The NFT Crash: Blue Chip NFT Floor Prices Down 83%

but there were some points:

• NFT in Simpsons,

• Entertainment giant Disney will launch an NFT collectibles platform with Dapper Labs called Disney Pinnacle,

• Animoca Brands to amplify Ubisoft's Strategic Innovation Lab's Web3 initiatives through Mocaverse,

• Google Updates to Cryptocurrencies and related products policy. Advertisers offering NFT games that do not promote gambling-related content may advertise those products and services.

In this article, let's try to take a look at the big picture and behind the scenes of the NFT industry.

1. Bitcoin NFTs ascendancy and Inscriptions

We have yet to assess the scale of the inscription's impact on the development of not only bitcoin, but the crypto market as a whole, but it was impossible not to notice it in 2023. Trade volume on Ethereum steadily declined throughout the year and bitcoin eventually took the lead. And even Solana successfully competes with Ethereum in the fourth quarter.

• Magic Eden Launches Bitcoin Marketplace for NFTs and later Rolls Out Bitcoin Ordinals NFT Creator Launchpad,

• DeGod's are the latest to embark on inscribing their NFTs on Bitcoin,

• Standardising Ordinals Based NFTs,

• Ordinals will now allow users to migrate their Ethereum ERC-721-based nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to the Bitcoin blockchain with the launch of the BRC-721E standard,

• Ordinals Launches Open Ordinals Institute to Fairly Compensate Bitcoin NFT Devs,

• Bitcoin Stamps Explained,

• Bitcoin Inscriptions & Ordinals: A Maturing Ecosystem. There are several companies actively working to build and improve upon Ordinals infrastructure in stealth. The following is a timeline synthesizing the many market milestones in the Ordinals space over the past 9 months:

New Developments with Ordinals:

• Recursion allows users to link an inscription to another inscription using the format: /content/. With recursion, users can inscribe JavaScript and CSS libraries for anyone to create rich HTML files directly on Bitcoin.

• Reinscription allows users to inscribe multiple pieces of data onto the same satoshi (the smallest unit of a bitcoin).

• Envelopes help an indexer analyze the witness data on Bitcoin and determine if an inscription exists in the witness data and what data constitutes that inscription. Envelopes open the design space for data storage on Bitcoin.

• Parent child inscriptions are a way to strengthen provenance guarantees for inscriptions.

At the end of the year, other blockchains took over the inscription baton.

• What exactly Ethscriptions are and how they work,

• Metaplex introduced Metaplex Inscriptions and Engravings, a new standard for fully on-chain and immutable digital assets on Solana.

2. The rising of NFT2.0

NFT 2.0 is not an established or standardized term in the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) space, and there is no universally accepted definition of what it encompasses. However, it generally refers to new and innovative developments in the NFT ecosystem aimed at improving the technology and user experience.

• The first "INSIDE NFT2.0" online intensive took place on March 01, 2023 on the event platform https://getpass.is/,

• Metaplex announces that creators are now able to mint new programmable NFTs,

• NFT 2.0: the Era of Programmable Assets,

• Underdog API allows you to seamlessly integrate dynamic NFTs into your product and turn the blockchain into the shared data layer.

• Tamperproof is a new protocol to encrypt, embed and seal a secret into a Solana NFT,

• RMRK EIP are now ERC. You can now use the most advanced NFTs in the world as official standards: ERC-5773, the ability for a single NFT to have multiple outputs, solving the age-old problem of cross-game skins among other things; ERC-6059 where each NFT can also contain other NFTs, solving the age-old problem of airdrop spam, inefficient minting, disjointed experiences, and scattered POAPs/reputation.

• xNFTs are a new type of NFT that can run code natively inside them,

• ERC-6551 + ERC-721C + UGC: A new gold mine for projects and content creators,

• Dynamic NFTs and Their Potential,

• What Is NFT 2.0? New NFT Token Standards on the Horizon,

• NFT2.0 dApps & Cases Review,

• Lens V2 reintroduces the power of composability by providing out-of-the-box support between profiles and the ERC-6551 token standard.

• Dynamic, upgradable, multi-faceted non-fungible tokens dyNFT on MultiverseX,

• NFT Perpetual Futures,

• Non-Fungible Tokens Based on ERC-4519 for the Rental of Smart Homes,

• DAO Envelop has just released a brand-new book about NFT2.0.

• Exploring the Design Space for Dynamic NFTs,

• Envelop Presents NFT2.0 Aggregator.

• Hyperliquid is debuting an NFT index perp called NFTI,

• A NFT-Game Proof of Concept by PRJKTNEON. NFT tokens on the Tezos' fxhash is a marketplace of tokens with embedded Java Script code. It turned out that it was possible to build a full-fledged game into an NFT,

• Encrypted File Token EFT Protocol for private NFT using encryption,

• Polygon is working with Alethea AI to launch CharacterGPT, an artificial-intelligence-powered non-fungible token (NFT) project that describes itself as "the world's first multimodal AI system." Users will be able to type in text to generate responsive characters with "unique personalities, identities, traits, voices, and bodies." Users can mint the NFTs at mycharacter.ai.

• ERC-6551: Non-fungible Token Bound Accounts

3. Opensea age is over

Opensea did a lot in 2023, but it still wasn't enough to maintain its lead and by the end of the year it was surpassed in both sales and users.

• OpenSea Pro,

• Opensea Introducing Deals,

• OpenSea's open standard and roadmap for redeemable NFTs,

• Opensea is moving to optional creator fees in an effort to better reflect the principles of choice and ownership that drive this decentralized ecosystem,

• OpenSea's new no-code hub for minting and storytelling,

• One of OpenSea's biggest investors has marked down by 90% its stake in the struggling non-fungible-token marketplace

Here's what the competitors were doing:

• Blur just made a game-changing move to bypass OpenSea's blocklist control,

• Understanding the Impact of Airdrops on NFT Marketplace Performance,

• Magic Eden announced NFT AMM,

• Magic Eden introduced the Magic Eden Solana Aggregator.

• HELIO x MAGIC EDEN delivered the FIRST EVER multi-chain presale platform for creators,

• Blur v2 with two BIG updates: 1) Trades now use 50% less gas; 2) Trait bidding. Blur v2 lets you bid on mids, rares, or any trait you want! Trait bidding is supported on all collections, but only select collections earn TRAIT BIDDING POINTS.

• Magic Eden is releasing support for cNFTs. cNFTs are a new wave of NFT creation only possible on Solana. The "c" stands for compressed which allows them to be produced at a fraction of the cost of traditional NFTs.

• Magic Eden Launches Cross-Chain NFT and Crypto Wallet for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon

and here is the result

4. NFT tickets

Since the introduction of NFT pictures, many have tried to find a greater utility for the technology. While many may categorize NFT tickets as NFT2.0, I am setting them apart as a separate category with the potential to become a huge standalone sector of the entertainment industry.

• Ticketmaster announced that the Ethereum NFT token-gating feature is live for artists,

• Sports Illustrated is launching a non-fungible token ticketing platform built on the Polygon network,

• Get Pass to MyShCh：A new word in web3 event design

5. Omni-NFTs & Cross-chain NFTs

The first phase of inter-blockchain communication involved the exchange of ERC-20 tokens. But it seems that in 2023 we see an evolution of this trend to NFTs.

• ZetaChain partners with zkMe to enable easy, anonymous verification of user credentials across chain ecosystems AKA the first Omnichain Soulbound Tokens (Omni SBTs),

• Cosmos Integrates ICS-721 Standard to Enable Cross-Chain NFT Tracking and Transfers,

• Squid introduced Squid NFT checkout, a brand new tool for buying NFTs on any chain using any tokens you have in your wallet.

6. Dedicated NFT blockchains

L2 networks were hoped to solve scalability problems, but like L1 networks, they also fall down when there is an overflow of users. The market is trying to find new solutions in blockchains dedicated to one area or application. This is how NFT blockchains came into being.

• Enjin, the leading blockchain ecosystem for NFTs and digital items, releases the Enjin Blockchain, a revolutionary blockchain engineered for NFTs and other digital assets at the protocol level,

• Zora launched a gas efficient scalable L2 network,

• Gala Games announced that it would be relocating its unsold and reserved NFT game items from the Ethereum network to its newly launched proprietary blockchain, GalaChain,

• Frame is an Ethereum rollup specifically designed with NFTs in mind,

• RARI Foundation, focused on NFT infrastructure, announced that it has used Arbitrum Orbit technology to create a new layer-3 chain, RARI Chain, and has just unveiled the test network.