The creator-focused Layer 2 network RARI Chain has unexpectedly announced it will gradually cease operations, urging users to withdraw their assets to Ethereum by June 15, or face the consequences.
Once the king, CryptoPunks, hailed as the 'digital gold', has seen its sale price drop below $53,000, a staggering decline of over 80% from its peak.
Bored Apes (BAYC) are in a dire state, with the floor price struggling below $15,000.
The newly minted blue-chip Pudgy Penguins hasn't escaped the downturn either, hovering around $7,300, teetering on the edge.
The total market cap of NFTs is now inching closer to historical lows.
Is the shutdown of RARI Chain just the beginning?
The shutdown of RARI Chain is a highly symbolic event. It announces the end of the narrative of 'NFT-specific L2s' that were once highly anticipated during the bull market.
What's the business model behind specialized chains like RARI Chain? They are akin to exclusive highways built for a specific gold rush town. When the town is bustling and gold is everywhere (NFT trading is active), the toll fees (transaction fees) roll in, and they can even offer big bonuses (creator subsidies, trading incentives) to attract more prospectors.
When the gold (market liquidity) runs out, and the prospectors (speculators) have left, and the town becomes desolate, the fate of this exclusive highway is sealed.
This reflects a cold business reality: in an environment where the overall trading volume in the NFT market has shrunk to freezing point, any 'specialized facilities' relying on transaction fees and ecological incentives to maintain operations will lose their commercial value. They are products of a bull market but cannot survive in a bear market.
RARI Chain will definitely not be the last one. We can foresee that those specialized L2s or application chains that also tout 'serving NFTs' and 'empowering creators,' but lack self-sustaining capabilities and rely entirely on external funding, will face the same existential questions.
When punks go unnoticed.
We need to understand the totemic status of CryptoPunks in the NFT world. It's not just an ordinary JPG; it once symbolized the identity of top OGs, the 'Holy Grail' of consensus in the circle, and is seen by many as the last 'store of value' in the NFT space. When the market is down, people will dump altcoins and new projects, but they will choose to hold onto 'punks' because it's considered 'hard currency.'
53k USD, a price that's already been slashed to two-thirds from its peak, yet still fails to spark buying interest in the market.
Once, a 'punk' avatar represented identity, community, and a ticket to a new world. Now, it feels more like an unclaimed lottery ticket, quietly sitting in your wallet, reminding you of that crazy summer and the harsh truth of 'value returning' — any digital collectible that doesn't bring cash flow or actual utility, when the hype tide goes out, its value might just be a string of code.