This week’s featured collector is Dinotomic
Dinotomic has been a full time artist for 16 years and has close to 1,000,000 followers on Instagram. View artwork at lazy.com/dinotomic
Last week’s poll drew a pretty clear roadmap for what you’d need to see before giving NFT art real attention again in 2026. The top two answers tied: Real cultural validation (30%) and New onchain mechanics (30%). Right behind them was Better distribution (20%), while Better market structure (10%) and Stronger art (10%) trailed far back.
The interesting part is what didn’t win. Only 10% chose “better market structure,” even though market plumbing (launches, liquidity, manipulation) dominated the last cycle. That suggests a lot of you have moved past expecting “fixes” to make the scene feel alive again. Instead, you want either a genuine cultural upgrade (criticism, museums, books, canon) or a genuine technical upgrade (mechanics that make onchain art feel new, not repetitive). And the fact that distribution landed at 20% is a reminder that discovery might be the real bottleneck: better screens, better platforms, and better ways to encounter work could matter more than another marketplace tweak.
Overall, the vibe is: the next wave won’t be powered by hype—it’ll be powered by meaning (validation) and novelty (mechanics), with better distribution as the bridge between the two.
NFT Paris 2026 is canceled — and it’s a loud signal for where NFTs are (and aren’t) right now
One of the biggest annual crypto events built around NFTs just disappeared from the calendar. NFT Paris 2026 has been canceled with roughly a month’s notice, and the team’s message on X was blunt: “After four editions bringing together the global Web3 community in Paris, we have to face reality: NFT Paris 2026 will not happen… The market collapse hit us hard. Despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, we couldn’t pull it off this year.”
If you’ve been through multiple cycles, this is the kind of headline that lands as more than “one event got canceled.” NFT Paris wasn’t a small meetup—it was one of the few recurring, internationally visible gatherings that tried to bridge creators, collectors, marketplaces, brands, and builders in one place. When a tentpole can’t make the economics work, it’s a signal about where the NFT market is in 2026: thinner budgets, less certainty, and fewer “default” institutions holding everything together.
The timing also highlights the decoupling we’ve been watching since 2023. There were spikes of NFT trading activity in 2025, but the category still hasn’t returned to its pandemic-era peak, even as fungible tokens rebounded. Reportedly, NFT marketplace volumes are down around 95% from 2021 highs, and once-premium collections like BAYC and CryptoPunks have seen major valuation drawdowns. That gap—crypto feeling alive again while NFTs struggle to regain cultural and financial momentum—has become the backdrop for almost every strategic decision in the space.
It’s also telling that OpenSea, one of the earliest and most active NFT venues, is reportedly pivoting toward becoming a general crypto aggregation platform. Whether you view that as a smart evolution or a quiet retreat, it’s another indicator that “NFTs as a standalone center of gravity” isn’t as secure as it once seemed. When the biggest marketplace starts broadening beyond NFTs, conferences built around NFTs alone face the same pressure.
What makes the NFT Paris cancellation more puzzling is that, publicly at least, the event didn’t look like it was bracing for a shutdown. Previously published promotional material suggested organizers expected around 20,000 attendees, alongside hundreds of presenters and side events. The February 5–6 dates at the Grande Halle de la Villette were also framed as a hub for parallel summits like RWA Paris (real-world assets), Ordinals Paris (Bitcoin-based collectibles), and XYZ Paris (AI, DePIN, and other web3 themes). In other words, it wasn’t “NFTs only”—it was trying to broaden the tent into narratives that still have momentum. The fact that even that umbrella couldn’t carry the event this year suggests the issue may not be interest alone, but the hard math of production costs, sponsorship, and risk appetite in a down market.
On refunds, the organizers said all tickets will be refunded within 15 days, and reporting cited ticket prices of roughly $231 for general admission and $1,161 for VIP. That’s the clean part. The less clean part is sponsorship. Some would-be sponsors say they likely won’t see reimbursement. Serc, the artist behind the Silhouettes generative art collection, claimed to have received an email saying NFT Paris is “unfortunately unable to offer a refund” due to budget constraints, citing an agreement clause about non-refundable costs exceeding sponsorship contributions. If that’s accurate, it’s a reminder that in a tighter cycle, counterparty risk shows up in places people don’t always model—events, deposits, production, and marketing spend.
For NFT collectors, the broader implication is that the ecosystem is consolidating. When major events falter, the “conference circuit” that once gave the space constant momentum gets quieter, and attention concentrates around fewer, stronger cultural moments. That doesn’t mean NFT art disappears, but it can change how discovery happens, which voices get amplified, and where new narratives form.
For creators and builders, it’s a practical warning: the cost of visibility has a different risk profile now. Sponsorships, booths, travel, and production are harder to justify when market liquidity is thin—and if refunds aren’t guaranteed, the downside becomes real. It also suggests a likely shift in how the space gathers: fewer massive conventions, more targeted weekends, smaller salons, gallery-first programming, and hybrid events that aren’t dependent on one category or one cycle to survive.
NFT Paris canceling isn’t a verdict on whether NFTs “matter.” But it is a sharp snapshot of the current era: in 2026, infrastructure has to justify itself, not just ride the momentum of a bull market. And right now, even one of the most recognizable NFT banners in Europe couldn’t make the numbers work.
Read more at The Block.
Poll: If you could “time capsule” one thing onchain for 100 years, what would you choose?
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