Major Web3 Events Canceled After Market Downturn
Organizers of NFT Paris and RWA Paris 2026 have called off both events, ending a four-year run that even survived the 2022-2023 bear market. The decision came after what the team described as severe pressure from the late-2025 crypto market crash.
‘The market collapse hit us hard,’ the organizers explained. ‘Despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, we couldn’t pull it off this year.’
Tickets will be refunded, but there’s some uncertainty about sponsor refunds. The event apparently progressed until funds ran out, which might complicate things for some backers.
The NFT Market’s Current State
This cancellation feels like a lagging indicator, honestly. The NFT market bottom was already established before these events got canceled. But it does bring more focus to the issue of failed collections and low activity.
NFTs remain near all-time lows in terms of activity and interest, which is surprising to me. In 2025, NFT creation actually continued, boosting the total number of collections. Yet trading activity slowed down significantly. It’s a strange contradiction—more stuff being made, but less of it moving around.
Volumes vary widely by chain. Ethereum still carries about $2.74 million in NFT activity, making it the most active network for legacy collections. Other chains include Solana, Polygon, Cardano, and Immutable. Bitcoin briefly held the leading position as the most active chain for collectibles in the past 30 days, which I find interesting.
Top Collections and Price Movements
Crypto Punks, Bored Apes, and Pudgy Penguins are still the top three NFT collections, but their values have taken hits. For CryptoPunks, the price floor has fallen close to its all-time lows from 2024, sitting around 29 ETH. Ape NFTs are down to an all-time low floor of 5.52 ETH, while Penguins had a slight recovery to 5.15 ETH.
NFTs on most Layer 2 or new Layer 1 chains are even less active, with practically negligible volumes. OpenSea continues to carry traffic for NFTs on Base, which relies on low transaction fees and low-cost activity.
The Future of NFTs
NFTs as an idea still exist, I think. They’re issued alongside tokens, as additions to games, or as community swag. But at the same time, NFTs no longer store value in the way they once did. They’re rarely resold in high-profile auctions anymore.
In the short term, NFTs still have price floor rallies or achieve high-value sales occasionally. Some NFTs remain part of treasuries and change hands at relatively high valuations. NFT building continues, but the market is extremely illiquid.
Despite some collections crashing to zero, NFTs might make a comeback in another form. Building on-chain transactions and activity are expanding for new collections, which suggests the space isn’t dead—just changing.
The cancellation of these conferences marks a turning point, perhaps. It shows how market sentiment shifted in 2025, affecting older narratives like NFTs deeply. Even RWA Paris was canceled, despite the rising popularity of real-world assets in crypto.
What happens next is anyone’s guess. The market has a way of surprising us when we least expect it.
