6 NFT Predictions for 2026
If 2021 was about hype and the 2022–2024 period was about survival, then 2025 was about reorientation for NFTs. From art to virtual infra, the tech reasserted itself in quieter but more structural ways.
Against that backdrop, here are six NFT predictions for 2026 that pick up where last year's trends left off. 👇
1️⃣ Ethereum Foundation NFT Collection
MoMA now holds CryptoPunks + Chromie Squiggles, highlighting Ethereum's major artistic potential. Following the renewed attention here, and thanks to the Ethereum Foundation's fresh focus on community/culture, I predict the EF will similarly accept and formalize its first major crypto art donations into a permanent collection in 2026.
2️⃣ Coinbase Acquires NFT IP
Coinbase went on an acquisition spree in 2025, picking up platforms like Deribit, Echo, and Vector. The exchange even acquired an NFT for 25M USDC to revive Cobie’s UpOnly podcast, showing it's willing to buy cultural assets, too. In 2026, I think Coinbase will take this a step further by acquiring the IP of an entire NFT collection. Not because NFTs will become a core product focus again, but because the company identifies a brand it has synergies with and decides that owning that cultural surface area is strategically useful.
3️⃣ The NFTs as Software Trend Continues
2025 may have been a down year for static PFP NFTs, though it was an up year for NFTs as software. For example:
- Liquity embraced NFTs for tokenizing its V2 borrow positions.
- The ERC-8004 team introduced NFT-based identity for AI agents.
- Material Protocol Arts released Cycles, a runtime art NFT collection whose visuals are generated continuously atop Ethereum.
Expect this shift to accelerate in 2026 as onchain builders continue moving away from treating NFTs as tokenized media uploads and toward using them as active, programmable primitives.
4️⃣ Games Drive 33%+ of x402 Transactions
x402 is an onchain payments standard for AI, and it gained real momentum last year. As that momentum carries into this year, expect a wave of NFT-friendly crypto games—spanning ephemeral and persistent titles—to adopt agent micropayments via x402 as a core gameplay pillar. By the end of 2026, gaming may account for more than one-third of all x402 transactions.
5️⃣ An NFT Chain Becomes a Top 10 L2
I'm being tongue-in-cheek here, but when I say "NFT chain," I mean Polymarket's upcoming L2. A lesser-known fact about Polymarket is that its prediction markets are underpinned by conditional ERC-1155 tokens, i.e. NFTs. Now that the platform has its own rollup (or validium, optimium, etc.) in the works, that chain might launch in 2026, and if it does, I predict the network will promptly become a top 10 L2 by total value secured (TVS).
6️⃣ Bitcoin's NFT Schism Leads to a Soft Fork
Ordinals, a.k.a. Bitcoin NFTs, proved that Bitcoin blockspace can nimbly host culture as well as capital, but these assets have loud, zealous critics. After Bitcoin Core’s v30 release made data-heavy transactions easier, we saw renewed "soft fork" chatter from the Bitcoin Knots camp. By the end of 2026, I expect those tensions to coalesce into a formal, Knots-backed soft fork proposal aimed at tightening constraints on non-monetary data. Whether the proposal ultimately passes or not, the showdown itself now seems unavoidable.