Is the summer of NFT back again? Come and see what new moves the old projects have.

Dreaming back to 2021, can JPEG also enter this bull run?

Written by: BUBBLE, Cookie

After a 4-year hiatus, the "Punk Sweep" has appeared again, with a single address spending 8 million dollars to sweep up 46 Crypto Punks, completely igniting the enthusiasm of the NFT community.

Not just Crypto Punks, the overall trading volume of the NFT market has warmed up again in the past few days, even surpassing the high point of February this year. According to data from the Coingecko platform, the total market cap of the NFT sector has increased by 29% in the last 24 hours, breaking through a market cap of 6.7 billion dollars. The trading volume has surged by 372%, reaching 45 million dollars.

Cryptocurrency seems to have abandoned the NFT sector for a long time, but the "notorious" MoonBird has recently taken action, seemingly preparing to follow the IP path of "Pudgy Penguins." With the overall NFT market warming up and Opensea, which has not issued tokens for a long time after the official announcement, being mentioned multiple times recently, can we ask the question, "Is NFT Summer back?"

After 4 years, big players sweep CryptoPunks

Four years ago, in July 2021, "0x65d" spent approximately $7 million to sweep 104 CryptoPunks in one go, which is the legendary "Punk Sweep." In March 2022, these 104 CryptoPunks were valued as a whole at $20-30 million for auction at Sotheby's, but twenty minutes after the auction began, "0x65d" canceled the auction.

In 4 years, in July 2025, "0x1bb" spent about 8 million dollars in one go to sweep 46 Crypto Punks. Seeing the "Punk Sweep 2.0" as ETH gradually approaches its historical high feels like a destined cycle of the times.

The address "0x1bb351C5410b2f6BaE36a74aA6B38a9800AE72D6" was funded for purchasing NFTs a day ago from Coinbase Prime. In addition to 46 CryptoPunks, this address also purchased 11 generative art pieces, Chromie Squiggle. According to on-chain data, part of the funds used to purchase the NFTs was also transferred from the address "0xF1CDC3De7819f93fB93D0c52001d4Fa495Ab471D", which also had its funds transferred from Coinbase Prime a day ago and purchased 19 Chromie Squiggle.

In other words, "0x1bb" purchased a total of 46 CryptoPunks and 30 Chromie Squiggles, spending approximately 8.6 million dollars.

Currently, the identity of "0x1bb" remains a mystery, and no one knows which whale or institution is behind this address. After the copyright of CryptoPunks was acquired by Infinite Node Foundation for about 20 million dollars in May this year, the official Twitter of Infinite Node Foundation has not updated any tweets since then, so this is a "mysterious rise"—no one knows who "0x1bb" is, nor do we know why he suddenly made such a large purchase.

But the large-scale purchase of "0x1bb" clearly ignited the sentiment in the NFT market:

Ethereum NFTs rising across the board (well... except for Milady)

Solana NFT on the rise across the board

The Bitcoin NFT that is rising across the board

Are Moonbirds going the old route of the penguins?

The rise of Moonbirds is particularly remarkable among all these projects. In the past week, the floor price of Moonbirds has increased by nearly 3 times. If we extend the timeline to the past 3 months, the floor price of Moonbirds has already risen by nearly 11 times.

On May 31st of this year, Moonbirds was acquired by Orange Cap Games from Yuga Labs, and the news caused the floor price to increase by nearly 3 times. After a period of adjustment, Moonbirds began to explode.

Moonbirds is currently conveying an image of "Pudgy Penguins CTO 2.0". In 2022, after Luca Netz took over Pudgy Penguins, the team quickly got to work, revitalizing the entire IP, which has now become a top IP in the NFT space.

Orange Cap Games, which acquired Moonbirds, is also known for creating the card game "Vibes TCG" using the Pudgy Penguins IP. By the end of 2024, Orange Cap Games completed a $2 million angel round of financing, and it was with the help of this round of financing that "Vibes TCG" came to be. On June 10 of this year, they announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx and Yuga Labs.

In 2023, Pudgy Penguins raised $9 million in seed funding, which was also led by 1kx.

Spencer Gordon-Sand, the CEO of Orange Cap Games, is a well-known figure in the industry. He founded the NFT-focused fund Spencer Ventures in 2022. After Orange Cap Games acquired Moonbirds, the new team quickly delivered some visible changes to the community, much like Pudgy Penguins did in the past:

"Spencer: In the 51 days since acquiring the full series of Moonbirds, we have been the daily trading volume leader for ETH NFTs for 5 days, confirmed an airdrop from the social application Towns, confirmed free Pokémon cards, had OpenSea's official Twitter change to our avatar, established a Telegram announcement channel with 25,000 people, put $1.4 million into a lottery for buying our Telegram stickers, secured $350 in funding led by 1kx, hired new team members, and will soon announce."

It can be said that Moonbirds has been liberated from the larger trend of strategic contraction by Yuga Labs, becoming an IP that is being vigorously developed by a new company, reminiscent of the Pudgy Penguins from years ago as prices rise. These changes have significantly altered the fundamentals of Moonbirds.

What other projects experienced fluctuations today?

Although benefiting from the recent surge of ETH, the main force driving the outflow of funds into NFTs today remains Ethereum. However, both Solana and the Bitcoin ecosystem have several projects that have also jumped on this bandwagon.

Solana ecosystem

Solana's official account today directly released the images of four NFT projects along with the caption "We're so back." In fact, these four Solana NFT projects have developed in different directions within their respective fields.

Among them, the Solana Monkey Business (SMB), as one of the earliest NFT projects deeply rooted in the Solana ecosystem, still ranks first in terms of growth, with a 24-hour increase of 36%, a floor price reaching 25SOL, and a trading volume exceeding 650,000 USD.

This NFT project operated by MonkeDAO is known for its community orientation, including innovative initiatives such as running Solana validation nodes, and its core founding team members Nom and SolportTom are also members of the founding team of the successful launch platform LetsBonk/BONK, which is currently fighting against Pumpfun.

In addition, SolportTom mentioned another project by his "DeRUG" (AKA CTO) – Taiyo Robotics, which has also seen significant growth, with the floor price increasing by 40% within 24 hours to reach 60 SOL, and the trading volume exceeding 260,000 USD, having risen 10 times in the past month. According to Tom, this is the first CTO project to appear in the Solana ecosystem where the "CTO concept" is currently popular.

Tom also shared his experience of being a "forced CTO" at that time. When he first entered the industry, he was just a developer working for clients without any reputation. We had a small BD team that would go to their Discord to send messages whenever a new project was MINTed, saying that we could provide some services, such as deploying Candy Machine.

Later, Taiyo found the team and said he wanted to create a market where users could purchase custom assets and replace the components on their Bots. He brought TOM's team into Discord and assigned them roles, but after that, they basically "vanished without a trace."

The community members believe they are part of the team as well, but TOM himself is also confused. "Not wanting my reputation to be tarnished because of this, I decided to take over the project myself, using it as a backing for community credibility and to gain some goodwill."

Unlike SMB's deep cultivation of the Solana community, Claynosaurz's path is more akin to the "American" Azuki. This project is led by a team of experienced animators, focusing on high-quality content creation. In the past 24 hours, the trading volume reached $120,000. Claynosaurz recently won the Collision Awards Gold Award for its excellence in animation. Meanwhile, team members were invited guests at one of the most renowned animation exhibitions, COMIC CON, held in San Diego, making it one of the most standout animated NFTs in the Solana project.

The floor price of the former Solana leader Mad Lads has risen by 20% in 24 hours, bringing the floor price back to 40SOL. The veteran NFT project Galactic Geckos is also experiencing an amazing surge, with the floor price nearly doubling in 24 hours, currently quoted at 6.5SOL.

Ordinals ecosystem

The Ordinals ecosystem has been quiet for a long time, but it has stirred a bit recently. Apart from NodeMonkes, which saw a 30% increase in floor price in a single day (though still far from its ATH), the current leader in the Ordinals ecosystem is Taproot Wizard. Aside from several "FOMO" purchases of Bitcoin by wizards shortly after the launch, Taproot Wizard is now just 6 orders away from reaching its ATH again. At the current increasingly expensive Bitcoin prices, the floor price has already reached $25,000. Not to mention that purchasing an NFT still costs "digital gold" Bitcoin, making it hard not to think that Taproot Wizard's next plans could far exceed just a "community."

With the increasing number of NFT projects and the revival of the old OGs, does this NFT craze represent a recognition of the NFT space by the capital market, becoming an outlet for the overflow of funds from the bull run, or is it ultimately just another fleeting moment after countless attempts at revival?

We cannot know, just like we do not know how long "is coming" means for OpenSea.