MakersPlace, a digital art platform specializing in non-fungible tokens, is shutting down amid a sharp drop in the NFT market. The company, launched in 2018, announced its closure on Jan. 15 after six years of operations.
“Ongoing market challenges and funding difficulties have made it impossible to sustain operations while fulfilling our mission,” MakersPlace’s content manager, Brady Evan Walker, said in the announcement.
MakersPlace’s shutdown is another indication of an ongoing slump in the NFT industry, which plummeted to its worst performance levels since 2020 in 2024.
Users can offload NFTs from MakersPlace until June 2025
While minting and new MakersPlace accounts were disabled immediately, users can still purchase NFTs on the platform until it shuts down completely.
According to the announcement, MakersPlace will launch a transfer tool in February and will allow users to offload their NFTs from the platform until June.
“All NFTs minted on Ethereum remain accessible via secondary marketplaces,” the firm said.
MakersPlace raised funds from Pantera, Coinbase Ventures and more in 2021
Launched in 2018, MakersPlace secured $30 million in funding from major industry companies, including Bessemer Venture Partners, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Sony Music Entertainment, Dragon Digital Assets and more in 2021.
According to co-founder and CEO Dannie Chu, MakersPlace aimed to play a “central role in sparking the global conversation about NFTs.”
In the announcement, MakersPlace said that unused funds would be returned to investors, and promised fair severances to employees.
Other NFT marketplaces that shut down amid market decline
MakersPlace’s $30 million raise came amid the NFT market booming in 2021 alongside the iconic rise of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection and the growing popularity of digital artists such as Mike Winkelmann, known as Beeple.
After hitting all-time highs in terms of trading volumes in April 2022, the NFT hype gradually faded, according to NFT trade records from DefiLlama.
The NFT market downturn triggered numerous marketplaces to shut down operations in recent years.
In August 2023, NFT startup Recur announced the shutdown of its Web3 platform, citing the challenges of the crypto winter.
Another NFT platform, Voice, also said it was winding down operations in September 2023, citing regulatory uncertainty around NFTs.
Other major market players like GameStop exited NFTs in 2024, citing uncertainty surrounding cryptocurrencies. Amid the declining NFT trend, many platforms, including the Kraken NFT marketplace, closed operations last year.
Still, despite the market downturn, some industry figures are confident that NFTs are poised to make a massive comeback.
According to Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu, NFTs will make a comeback and will perform even better than they did during their peak in 2021 and 2022.
