APENFT: Anchored in physical artworks to build a comprehensive NFT ecosystem
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APENFT: Anchored in physical artworks to build a comprehensive NFT ecosystem
As the NFT industry as a whole recovers, APENFT, a core platform in the TRON ecosystem, has become a market focal point due to its innovative ecosystem strategy.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsDriven by repeated record highs in Bitcoin and Ethereum prices, the crypto asset market has seen a comprehensive upswing. Recently, the NFT sector has also shown significant signs of recovery. Blue-chip NFT projects such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Moonbirds have experienced substantial increases in both floor prices and trading volumes. According to data from NFT analytics platform Cryptoslam, the NFT market surpassed $178 million in trading volume over the past week, with the number of buyers surging 190% to 215,000. In July, global NFT market trading volume reached $574 million, a more than 50% increase month-on-month, signaling a notable rebound in market activity.
As the overall NFT industry recovers, APENFT, a core platform within the TRON ecosystem, has emerged as a focal point for market attention.
According to Nansen's latest "TRON Ecosystem Q2 2025 Report," despite volatility in the broader crypto market, NFT transaction volume on the TRON blockchain grew逆势 by 78% in Q2, demonstrating strong ecosystem vitality and underlying demand.
Since the beginning of 2025, APENFT has consistently announced positive developments, with its native token NFT successively listed on top global centralized exchanges (CEX). In February, the NFT token was listed on compliant exchange HashKey; in March, Kraken, a leading global compliant exchange, announced support for NFT spot trading; in July, the NFT token became the first TRON ecosystem asset launched on Binance Alpha; recently, Binance Alpha enabled market orders for NFT, and Binance Wallet completed deep integration with APENFT, allowing users seamless access to the APENFT platform through the Binance ecosystem, achieving full interoperability and synergy between assets, applications, and Binance’s ecosystem. The support from multiple top-tier exchanges reflects direct market confidence in APENFT's future prospects.
In terms of ecosystem development and technological expansion, APENFT continues to push boundaries. Last year, APENFT partnered with SunPump to launch NFT Pump, the first fair NFT issuance platform, enabling any user to issue NFT assets with "zero门槛 one-click minting," greatly simplifying the NFT creation and collection process. Earlier this year, NFT Pump introduced the new TRC404 standard, supporting fractionalized NFT trading, further enhancing NFT liquidity and user experience. Through the synergistic operation of NFT Pump and the TRC-404 protocol, APENFT has created a fairer and more efficient environment for NFT issuance and trading, effectively addressing NFT liquidity challenges and making NFTs truly inclusive digital assets accessible to the masses.
Today, APENFT has evolved beyond a simple NFT trading platform into a comprehensive ecosystem covering diverse scenarios including NFT trading, GameFi hub, TRONscription (TRON-based inscriptions market), and the NFT fair issuance platform (NFT Pump).
More notably, APENFT has recently signaled on X its strategic moves toward integrating NFT with AI, exploring how AI technologies can deeply empower NFT creation, interaction, and user experience—such as using AI-generated content (AIGC) to boost NFT creation efficiency or leveraging AI algorithms to optimize NFT interactions.
From elite art collecting to innovative crypto art ecosystems: APENFT builds a differentiated NFT value hub
APENFT is far more than just a central hub for showcasing, circulating, and trading digitized artworks. It is an innovative crypto art ecosystem integrating physical art curation, digital asset ownership verification, and project incubation.
APENFT launched its NFT marketplace, APENFT Marketplace, in April 2022. The platform leverages BTFS technology for decentralized storage and adopts a multi-chain deployment strategy across popular public chains including TRON, Ethereum, and BSC, utilizing BitTorrent for cross-chain asset transfers to deliver a convenient and efficient NFT trading experience. Since launch, the APENFT marketplace has facilitated free circulation of over 2 million on-chain NFT assets, with cumulative trading volume exceeding tens of millions of dollars, establishing itself as a major force in the NFT space.
Currently, APENFT Marketplace has become the most active go-to NFT trading platform on the TRON chain, hosting over 2 million NFT assets and supporting multi-chain, multi-currency transactions—an essential digital asset hub combining diversity and dynamism within the ecosystem.
Behind these achievements lies the meticulous planning and relentless efforts of the APENFT Foundation since its establishment in March 2021. Committed to advancing the blockchain and NFT transformation of art and cultural works, the foundation actively supports the growth of native crypto artists, aiming to accelerate the creator economy through blockchain technology. From inception, it received strong backing from TRON founder Justin Sun, who has repeatedly donated high-value museum-grade masterpieces to the foundation—including Picasso’s *Reclining Nude with Necklace*, Andy Warhol’s *Triple Self-Portrait*, Beeple’s *Ocean’s Front*, and Alberto Giacometti’s *The Nose*. These precious art collections not only enrich the foundation's cultural depth but also lay a solid artistic asset foundation for the APENFT platform. These top-tier artworks establish APENFT’s cultural credibility and provide unique artistic backing.
Leveraging this core advantage, APENFT rapidly rose to become the world’s first cross-border platform bridging the crypto space and traditional elite art collecting, building a crucial bridge for traditional artists entering the NFT realm and gaining profound influence in both traditional art and crypto domains. Its cross-sector collaborations have yielded remarkable results: in June 2021, APENFT partnered with Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Binance NFT to tokenize and auction masterpieces like Andy Warhol’s *Triple Self-Portrait* for $2.8 million, igniting the “traditional art NFTization” wave; in October 2021, APENFT and TRON jointly established the $100 million “Art Dream Fund” to support hundreds of emerging artists and quality NFT projects; in October 2023, APENFT collaborated with TRON, the Giacometti Foundation, Dior, and LVMH to co-host *The Nose* art exhibition in Paris.
Meanwhile, Justin Sun’s personal art acquisitions continue to inject rare resources into the APENFT Foundation. Last year, he purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s controversial installation artwork *Comedian* (a banana taped to a wall) for $6.24 million at Sotheby’s, sparking dual sensations in both the art and crypto worlds. This piece is now part of the APENFT Foundation’s collection.
By August, the APENFT Foundation had built a world-class collection system encompassing both traditional masterpieces and avant-garde digital art. Valued by authoritative institutions like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, its holdings exceed $100 million, featuring iconic works by Picasso, Andy Warhol, Beeple, and Giacometti.
Renowned crypto influencer @Multi recently remarked on X: “APENFT is far more than a marketplace—it’s a museum-grade NFT curatorial vault backed by top-tier artworks.”
APENFT’s integrated ecosystem of traditional and digital art has become an irreplaceable value hub connecting physical art with the crypto world, carving out a distinctive path in the NFT industry. While mainstream platforms like OpenSea and Blur remain focused on NFT issuance and sales, APENFT uses physical art as its anchor, innovatively merging tangible collections with on-chain art through NFTization. It transcends basic transactional functions, enabling users to engage with art’s deeper values while experiencing the new dimensions born from the fusion of physical and digital realms, thus expanding the convergence space between art and crypto.
At a time when NFT marketplaces are mired in homogenized competition and fee wars, APENFT has successfully established a hard-to-replicate competitive edge through its unique physical-art-first strategy, continuously leading innovation in the industry.
From NFT marketplace to comprehensive digital asset ecosystem: a transformative leap
While maintaining steady growth in its core NFT business, APENFT has consistently explored and expanded into new domains. Through continuous product iteration and business extension, APENFT has evolved from a single NFT trading platform into a comprehensive digital asset ecosystem covering diverse use cases including NFT trading, GameFi, inscription asset deployment and trading, fair NFT issuance, and fractionalized liquidity. This evolution reflects not only its precise grasp of crypto market trends but also its determination to reshape the NFT value ecosystem.
As a key application scenario for NFTs, gaming assets have been a priority since the launch of the APENFT Marketplace in 2022. That year, APENFT funded a $500,000 GameFi hackathon, attracting over 40 teams. Subsequent TRON ecosystem hackathons continued to include dedicated GameFi awards, forming a long-term support mechanism. Within this fertile ecosystem, star GameFi projects such as Win NFT Horse emerged, driving NFT adoption from static collecting into dynamic gaming environments.
In 2023, the Bitcoin inscription boom spread across multiple public chains, triggering an industry-wide craze for inscription minting. APENFT swiftly responded by launching TRONscription, a TRON-based inscription marketplace. Focused on the full lifecycle of inscriptions, TRONscription offers end-to-end services including deployment, minting, and trading, creating a one-stop professional platform for TRON-based inscription enthusiasts and further expanding the application scope of NFTs into increasingly diverse on-chain asset forms.
Last year, the rise of one-click meme coin launch platforms sparked a new market wave. APENFT partnered with SunPump, TRON’s meme issuance platform, to launch NFT Pump—the first fair NFT issuance platform. Inheriting SunPump’s fair launch mechanism, NFT Pump allows users to mint NFTs as easily and quickly as launching meme coins, truly enabling “one-click NFT issuance,” drastically lowering barriers to NFT creation and trading, and empowering ordinary users to participate effortlessly in NFT creation.
In February this year, NFT Pump upgraded to version 2.0, innovatively introducing the TRC-404 standard that enables splitting a single NFT into multiple tradable units, with ownership represented via corresponding tokens. Through a dynamic binding mechanism, TRC-404 achieves seamless conversion between NFTs and tokens, solving the problem of poor NFT liquidity. For example, while traditional TRC-721 NFTs must be bought or sold whole, TRC-404 allows a single NFT to be divided into smaller units with corresponding tokens issued. Users can then own fractions of an NFT by purchasing these tokens. Additionally, NFT Pump enables one-click creation and issuance of TRC-404 standard NFTs, with qualifying tokens automatically listed on SunSwap.
Through the synergistic operation of NFT Pump and the TRC-404 standard, APENFT effectively balances incentives among creators, holders, and secondary market participants, significantly boosting on-chain NFT liquidity. From NFT Pump 1.0 to 2.0, the platform has continuously optimized NFT creation, trading, and user experience on the TRON network, driving the NFT ecosystem toward greater openness and efficiency—transforming NFTs from an exclusive game for whales into inclusive assets accessible to everyone.
Today, APENFT integrates multiple product lines including APENFT Marketplace (NFT trading), GameFi Center (gaming asset trading), TRONscription (TRON inscriptions market), and NFT Pump (fair issuance and liquidity platform), forming a comprehensive ecosystem spanning NFT trading, creation, gaming, and inscriptions—a one-stop cultural and entertainment hub within the TRON ecosystem.
Behind this suite of products lies APENFT’s deep insight and foresight into crypto and NFT market trends. Its ability to quickly identify and act on emerging trends—launching TRONscription to seize the inscription wave early, deploying NFT Pump and TRC-404 to solve liquidity issues—consistently targets industry pain points, delivering ever more convenient and secure trading experiences for users.
From being a physically-backed “NFT museum” to a diversified digital asset ecosystem, APENFT has always centered on the mission of “connecting the physical and crypto worlds.” Through continuous product innovation and ecosystem expansion, it keeps broadening the application frontiers of NFTs and forging a unique path of value enhancement in the NFT space. This not only highlights its exceptional strength in ecosystem building but also demonstrates a forward-looking vision in exploring more open and inclusive development models for the industry.
NFT token enters deflationary era, successively listed on Kraken, HashKey, Binance Alpha top exchanges
Amid APENFT’s ongoing product innovation, its native token NFT achieved several milestone accomplishments this year by listing on top global exchanges including HashKey, Kraken, and Binance Alpha. These listings represent high recognition of APENFT’s sustained innovation and ecosystem development, as well as broad market consensus on its promising future.
NFT serves as the sole official governance token within the APENFT ecosystem. Token holders can stake NFT to obtain voting rights and participate in key governance decisions—from selecting artworks in the ecosystem to planning various levels of events—and unlock tiered benefits based on their holdings.
The NFT token completed its full issuance in May 2023, meaning its total supply is now fixed and no new tokens will enter circulation. In September last year, TRON founder Justin Sun announced a “100% fee buyback and burn” policy, under which all transaction fees generated on the APENFT platform are used directly to buy back and burn NFT tokens. This move has pushed the NFT token into a deflationary phase, further enhancing its market value. As of August 20, the cumulative amount of NFT tokens burned surpassed 9.8 trillion.
Since the start of 2025, the NFT token has gained recognition and partnerships with top global exchanges including HashKey, Kraken, and Binance Alpha.
In February, Hong Kong-based compliant exchange HashKey Global became the first to list the NFT token, launching a deposit and trading campaign with a total prize pool of 20,000 USDT, followed by an NFT trading competition.
In March, U.S.-based compliant exchange Kraken listed NFT, opening NFT/USD and NFT/EUR spot trading pairs, and initiated the “Reef Program” airdrop worth $90,000 in NFT tokens. Listing on Kraken marked a significant milestone for APENFT and represented TRON ecosystem’s first major breakthrough into the U.S. compliant exchange market, accelerating its global expansion.
In July, Binance Alpha featured NFT as the inaugural TRON ecosystem asset in its dedicated zone, launching NFT/USDT and NFT/USDC trading pairs, along with a $4 million exclusive trading competition. This achievement was highly significant—leveraging targeted traffic from the Binance ecosystem, NFT’s trading volume and liquidity saw immediate improvement. This not only reflects Binance’s confidence in APENFT’s potential but also opens a gateway to global markets.
In August, Binance Alpha deepened cooperation by enabling market orders for NFT, and APENFT completed deep integration with Binance Wallet. Users can now directly access the APENFT official website and NFT Pump platform via the Binance ecosystem, seamlessly minting, trading, and collecting NFTs. This marks efficient two-way flow of traffic and resources between APENFT and top-tier CEXs, with Binance’s user base seamlessly channeled into APENFT to accelerate ecosystem growth.
As of August 20, the NFT token has been listed on approximately 40 major global exchanges, including HTX, OKX, Bithumb, and Kraken, with a market cap exceeding $463 million and over 2.15 million unique holder addresses. On August 8, the NFT token officially launched on Indian exchange CoinDCX, further expanding its footprint in emerging markets.
Through innovations in tokenomics, intensive listings on top global exchanges, and ongoing compliance breakthroughs, APENFT is building a new value paradigm in the NFT space. As more platforms integrate and the burn mechanism continues, the NFT token is poised to further solidify its benchmark status in decentralized governance and digital assets.
Launching a new chapter in "AI + NFT" integration, continuously leading NFT industry innovation
APENFT’s current achievements stem not only from constant innovation in its product suite but also from comprehensive support provided by the underlying TRON ecosystem. Over the past six months, TRON’s global influence has steadily grown, achieving several key milestones: maintaining its position as the world’s largest stablecoin network, surpassing 320 million on-chain addresses, forming a strategic partnership with Binance Alpha and achieving ecosystem integration with Binance Wallet, successfully displaying on NASDAQ, and founder Justin Sun completing his first space exploration mission. These milestones have placed TRON at the center of the global stage and provided robust technical resources, traffic channels, and brand momentum to support APENFT’s ecosystem expansion.
On the infrastructure level, TRON’s comprehensive DeFi application matrix provides critical support for APENFT’s协同发展. From the all-in-one DEX hub Sun.io and lending platform JustLend DAO to core components like SunPump and the stablecoin USDD, the seamless integration of these infrastructure elements enables NFT assets to quickly plug into staking, trading, and lending activities, facilitating value discovery and deeper ecosystem penetration.
Substantial progress has already been made in the synergy between APENFT and other TRON ECO applications: product-wise, the collaboration with SunPump to launch NFT Pump enables traffic sharing, while TRC404 assets can be rapidly deployed to SunSwap, accelerating NFT circulation; in user experience, users can rent energy via JustLend to reduce gas costs on APENFT transactions; in terms of industry impact, APENFT has repeatedly joined forces with core projects like SunPump, JustLend DAO, BitTorrent, and WinkLink to host online and offline events—such as collectively appearing at the 2025 Istanbul Blockchain Summit in June—and co-organizing token trading competitions and community events, continuously expanding its ecosystem influence.
Recently, APENFT has repeatedly signaled on X its strategic focus on integrating NFT with AI, exploring how AI technologies can deeply empower NFT creation, interaction, and user experience—such as using AI-generated content (AIGC) to improve NFT creation efficiency or applying AI algorithms to enhance NFT interactivity.
If APENFT’s current achievements can be defined as the “practical integration of art and NFT”—revolutionizing the storage, display, and ownership models of traditional art through tokenization—then the next phase will usher in a new era of “triple convergence: art, blockchain, and AI.”
With continued empowerment from the TRON ecosystem and deeper integration of AI technology, creators will soon be able to mint, list, and bid on NFTs through conversational commands, and leverage AI agents to develop personalized NFT issuance and trading strategies. This forward-looking initiative is expected to vastly expand the application scenarios and value potential of digital assets, continuing to lead innovation waves across the TRON ecosystem and the global NFT industry.
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