Analysts and investors have largely pronounced NFTs dead, with the market plunging to a three-year low in January. But NFT holders and creators aren’t ready to consign them to the graveyard just yet.
That much was clear as crypto entrepreneurs, degens, and investors alike paraded around NFT Paris 2025 last week.
Image: NFT Paris
The two-day conference, which bills itself as Europe’s largest Web3 fair, brought an estimated 20,000 attendees to La Grande Villette, an imposing fortress-like structure at the edge of Paris’ sprawling La Villette park.
The former slaughterhouse was a fitting stomping ground for a celebration of an industry that is, quite frankly, on life support. But ensconced within the venue’s glass and cast-iron walls, NFT enthusiasts could tune out naysayers’ noise.
The conference’s main stage hosted a mostly steady stream of panels, fireside chats, and speeches Thursday and Friday, despite a few scheduling hiccups. The presentations spanned a wide range of topics—the power of IP ownership, developments in on-chain gaming, and the latest and greatest (and mostly underwhelming) digital jewelry and artwork on offer.
Image: Liz Napolitano
Right-click and saving NFTs
Many of the event’s speakers offered up ideas to shepherd a much-needed revival of the market for non-fungible tokens—the one-time Web3 darlings whose fall from grace has served as fodder for countless Crypto Twitter postmortems.
Two years ago, NFT trading fell off a cliff. NFT sales volume nosedived from $23 million to $8 million from 2022 to 2023, remaining flat between 2024 and the year prior, on-chain data provider CryptoSlam’s data shows. The same data shows sales are on track to fall further still in 2025.
Meanwhile, CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club and Pudgy Penguins—the three largest NFT collections by market capitalization—are down 37%, 40% and 52% within the past year, according to CoinGecko data.
In an apparent acknowledgement of the NFT market rout, the conference’s organizers also hosted two tech-focused summits at this year’s event: The AI-focused XYZ Paris and the more institutional-leaning RWA Summit, focused on tokenizing real-world assets. But while both stages drew sizable crowds, the heart and soul of the conference remained on-chain art.
Vibes in Paris
In fact, NFT Paris 2025 maintained all the trappings of an event whose primary audience is Crypto Twitter anons and PFP hoarders. A towering ApeChain gorilla greeted guests at the entrance of the conference venue, joined by a dubious cat-like mascot my colleagues later informed me was actually the GRIND token hamster.
Image: NFT Paris
Further inside, attendees milled around the conference floor, sporting the kind of garb most fitting for an event catered to the terminally online: jeans, baseball caps, t-shirts, and shades designed to protect from doxxers as much as the sun. Hardly any suits were in sight.
Image: NFT Paris
Guests powered through the conference by crushing cans of Rekt energy drinks in between panels and demos, and by venturing outside to rip vapes and drag on cigarettes in crummy 30-degree weather. (That’s sub-zero degrees Celsius for our non-American readers.)
Image: NFT Paris
At the end of each day, herds of conference-goers braved the bitter cold and scattered showers to throw back eclectically-named drinks at bars and rooftops throughout the City of Lights. Several side events hosted local DJs who played mostly bland or indiscernible tracks to which few people danced.
Some events seemed to have little to do with NFTs or the conference itself, while others were obviously organized by overzealous community leaders very committed to the bit—a magic-themed Taproot Wizards party at the American Church of Paris comes to mind.
One for the books.
See you in 2026!🕯️ pic.twitter.com/9OTMVBbsiz
— NFT Paris (@nft_paris) February 17, 2025
Other side event events tried to thread the needle between the conference and the kind of boozy after-hours activities that appeal to magic-internet-money gamblers. Hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger hosted a swanky rooftop shindig at its office in the 3rd arrondissement, adoring the walls with digital art pieces that live on-chain. However, many of those displays appeared to prove more useful as backdrops for drunken selfies than conversation starters.
Fortunately (or not), nobody seemed to mind.
Image: Liz Napolitano
Whether you found yourself at church slinging back dubious-looking potions with a couple of wizards or taking in views of the Eiffel Towel from Ledger’s stately rooftop terrace, you would be hard-pressed to find a single grimacing guest.
Everyone’s bags were shrinking, but that wasn’t the point, as one NFT developer put it to Decrypt.
“The Bitcoin community is all about investments,” they said. “This is about having fun.”
Edited by Stephen Graves
