NFT Collapse 2022: What Happened and Why It Still Matters

When the NFT collapse 2022, the sudden and dramatic fall in value and interest for non-fungible tokens after their 2021 peak. Also known as the NFT market crash, it wasn't just a price drop—it was a full system failure for hundreds of projects built on hype, not utility. By mid-2022, the floor price of most Bored Ape clones had dropped over 90%. Trading volumes vanished. Platforms like OpenSea saw daily sales plunge from $1 billion to under $100 million. People who bought NFTs as investments realized they owned digital art with no resale market, no community, and no real purpose beyond a JPEG on a screen.

The collapse didn’t happen because the tech broke. It happened because the NFT projects, digital asset collections marketed as investments with promised utility or community perks were mostly empty promises. Many had no roadmap, no team, no code, and no plan beyond selling JPEGs. Some even stole art from artists without permission. Others promised access to games, events, or tokens that never materialized. When the crypto bull market ended and money stopped flowing in, these projects had nothing left to offer. The crypto winter, a prolonged period of declining prices, low trading volume, and reduced investor interest in digital assets exposed them all. Meanwhile, real use cases—like ticketing, loyalty programs, and verified ownership of physical goods—were buried under the noise of monkey pictures and pump-and-dump schemes.

What’s left after the crash? A few strong projects survived because they built something people actually used. Others became digital graves. The ones that still have value today aren’t the ones with the fanciest art—they’re the ones with active communities, real utility, and teams that kept working even when no one was watching. The NFT collapse of 2022 wasn’t the end of NFTs. It was a cleanup. And what’s left is sharper, leaner, and harder to fool.

Below, you’ll find deep dives into the projects that died, the scams that got exposed, and the few that actually delivered. No fluff. No hype. Just what happened, who got burned, and what to watch for next time.