Opinion by: Charu Sethi, president of the unique network
Some maintain that the NFTs are dead. Others hold the boom of speculative art to return with the next market cycle. The two hypotheses lack reality. NFTs are neither obsolete nor ready for another speculative media wave wave. What takes place instead is probably the most important phase of their evolution: where NFT transit towards the basic digital infrastructure that underlies games, AI and machine-oriented applications.
The market has evolved
There are clear signs that the NFT utility replaces speculation and that the trend holds. According to Dappradar, in the first quarter of 2025, NFT’s negotiation volume fell 24%, but sales decreased by 10%, indicating a drop in average prices rather than the user’s release. AI and Social DAPPs – with the potential to take advantage of NFT for the identity of agents, assets, identification information and access – increased sharply in the first quarter, and utility categories such as real assets (RWAS), domain NFT and metarate assets have shown a sustained traction.
In games, platforms as mythical and the sandbox continue to grow, where the active active ingredients offer real functional value. Although there is always an interoperable vision and request for NFT, there are also examples where they are delivered for developers and end users.
NFTS in the AI AI
The NFTs were originally designed to allow digital property, identity and verifiable programmable rights – not speculative trading. It was intended to give people the property of their digital life. Whether it was their identity, their health files, their social media content or their creative work – the NFT offered a means of proving the property. This vision was fundamental to the wider web3 movement.
This fundamental vision was obscured by the rise in power of mecoins and the short -term beating, distorting the perception of the public of NFT and web3. This central utility resurfaces as the era of agentic AI emerges, where the code responds to cognition. Autonomous AI agents now require self-souveraine identity, memory and access control to operate effectively on onchain.
With IA frames that ripen, NFTs are integrated as an infrastructure. They operate as identity anchors, verifiable data containers and access identification information for agents acting in decentralized environments. An agent linked to the NFT can access the services independently, sign transactions and trigger the logic of the contract – its authority validated by the NFT. This transforms the NFT into operational components that persist through the contexts.
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This utility is already in production. The reinforced subnet of Bittensor NFTS emissions as proof of the solidity audits completed, allowing the examination of the quantified validator and the decentralized reward mechanisms. Likewise, NFTs are used to certify the input-supply processes on IA pipelines. In parallel, projects like PEAQ use “NFT machines” to give devices such as vehicles and identity drones and autonomy to be transformed. While AI agents are more integrated into web 3 systems, NFT will underestimate work flows ranging from personal IA portfolios to non-funsable autonomous agents.
UX -based portfolios and general public entrance
Another engine is growth of social portfolios. Instead of managing complex keys, users on board by e-mail or social connection, and their profile photos, memberships and identification information (NFTS in silence) are displayed as part of their web identity. More than 50% of users aged 18 to 34 already regularly use social portfolios, especially in game and community applications.
These portfolios prioritize the user experience and easily integrate NFT into familiar interfaces. In social game platforms, for example, players may not even realize that their avatars, emotes or achievements are NFT. However, these assets are portable, negotiable and interoperable – acting like the connective tissue on all platforms. There are important lessons that have been learned about how real property and large UX are essential for Socialfi applications to succeed.
NFTS as an invisible infrastructure
The NFTs do not disappear – they become basic infrastructure, operating as the underlying layer for possession of assets, transactional logic and the behavior of autonomous agents in decentralized systems. They support savings belonging to players in games, serve as identity and identification containers for AI agents and allow payments and access rights in machine machine networks. This reflects a broader architectural passage of front -end collectibles with rear components integrated into wallets, SDKs and protocols. NFTS Food access control, from data and interoperability, redefining their role of assets visible to primitives of the essential system.
Waiting for the return of the speculative boom of the NFT as a measure of success is wrong – real progress takes place on the infrastructure layer, where the NFT becomes discreetly essential.
Opinion of: Charu Sethi, president of the unique network.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and must not be considered as legal or investment advice. The points of view, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are the only of the author and do not reflect or do not necessarily represent the opinions and opinions of Cointellegraph.
