The NFT and creator economy space continues to evolve through cycles of explosive creativity and harsh market realities. As platforms rise and adapt, valuable lessons emerge for builders, artists, and collectors alike. Today, we reflect on the inspiring journey of Rodeo.club app — from its vibrant launch to its recent closure — while examining Zora.co’s ambitious push into creator coins, their highs, current challenges, and how ASKNIGHTS is actively experimenting within this ecosystem through our ZATOPIA Initiative.
1. The Great Times of Rodeo: Social Collecting Redefined
Launched in March 2025 by the team behind the acclaimed digital art platform Foundation, Rodeo App (rodeo.club) burst onto the scene as a fresh, social-first NFT experience. Built with simplicity in mind — available via Apple’s iOS store and leveraging Base and Ethereum — it felt like Instagram meets on-chain ownership, minting cheap artworks directly from new artists. Users could scroll, post creative work, and “collect” posts, with each collection automatically minting as an NFT. Then, collectors can sell them on OpenSea. Even if Rodeo closed, the NFTs are still alive and can be traded on OpenSea.
What made Rodeo special was its creator-centric design: every collect rewarded the poster directly (e.g., ~0.00005 ETH per collect), turning engagement into real, immediate income. No complex wallets required for many users — you could even buy credits with a credit card. It emphasized discovery, community, and human connection over pure speculation. Artists and makers documented their progress, shared art, and built genuine followings while earning from passionate collectors.
In its peak months, Rodeo resonated deeply with a dedicated community. Creators reported thousands of dollars in rewards, referral systems amplified organic growth, and the platform stood out as a genuine attempt to bring cheap and mainstream social collecting on-chain. It was not just another marketplace — it was a creative journal where art, progress, and ownership collided in an expressive, accessible way.
2. Rodeo.app’s Closure: A Market-Driven Reality Check
Despite its strong product-market fit within its core audience, Rodeo announced its shutdown on January 27, 2026. The decision came amid a prolonged NFT market slump, declining trading volumes, and broader industry consolidation. CEO Kayvon Tehranian (@saturnial) noted that while the platform deeply connected with its community, it simply did not achieve the scale required for long-term sustainability.
The timeline was thoughtful and user-focused:
• January 27 – February 10, 2026: Full operations continued
• February 10 onward: Read-only mode
• March 10, 2026: Full shutdown
Users were encouraged to migrate assets and metadata via Arweave to preserve their collections permanently. Rodeo became the second major NFT platform to close that week (following Nifty Gateway), underscoring the tough economic pressures facing many Web3 creative tools.
Rodeo’s story is a bittersweet reminder: great ideas and loyal communities are not always enough in volatile markets. Yet its legacy — proving social + extremely affordable NFT collecting could feel fun and rewarding — continues to inspire the next wave of platforms.
3. Zora.co and the New Creator Coin Economy: From Peak Hype to Trench Warfare
While Rodeo focused on social NFT collecting, Zora.co (zora.co) took a more radical, protocol-level approach to the new creator economy. In 2025, Zora rolled out its groundbreaking Creator Coins and Content Coins system, transforming the entire platform into a tokenized attention market. Zora, in this way, may pave the way for fractionalising bluechip art valued at millions. Thus, the game will no longer be mainly for the rich and wealthy who can afford to pay millions for an artwork. With fractionalised ownership, anyone can buy a piece of bluechip art and celebrate when this investment opportunity proves to be successful over the years. Consequently, it is no longer for the rich but for anyone with the intention to buy, hold, and play the game.
Here is how Zora works: Every profile can create a Creator Coin pressing one button (a fungible token with 1 billion total supply, 50% automatically streamed/vested to the creator over five years). Every post becomes its own instantly tradable Content Coin. Posts no longer as NFTs but as fungible tokens. Interactions like likes, collects, and trades generate direct rewards — creators earn fees on every transaction of their coins, plus instant payouts from engagement. Built primarily on Base (with seamless Farcaster integration and UniSwap for smart contracts), it lowered barriers dramatically: low fees, fast minting, and the ability to trade cultural moments, memes, ideas, or art in real time.
The Peaks (Mid-2025 Explosion): Zora’s model caught fire. The $ZORA token launch in April 2025, combined with Base wallet integration, triggered massive growth. Daily coin creations skyrocketed, trading volumes hit hundreds of millions (one report cited $243M in just seven weeks), and some creator coins rocketed to $100k+ market caps in days or weeks. The $ZORA token itself saw explosive rallies — 50%, 270%, and more — as hype around “attention markets” and on-chain creator monetization swept the space. It felt like the future: every post a potential asset, every creator an investable brand. Zora team leveraged too much and because they did not expect a bear market, or not to be that impactful at least, the whole project went down, similar to the FTX collapse, it is just that FTX and SBF had much more capital under management, billions and not millions.
Now in the Trenches (2026 Reality): Fast-forward to today, and the creator coin sector is fighting for survival and sustainable growth. Total market cap for Zora creator coins hovers in the low millions (around $3M as of recent data). Many tokens proved extremely volatile (150%+ annualized in some cases), with hype-driven launches often followed by sharp 80%+ crashes — as seen in high-profile experiments where mainstream creators’ coins attracted traders more than genuine fans. ZORA token prices have cooled down to the bottom significantly from 2025 highs, on-chain activity has declined from peak levels, and the ecosystem faces competition, liquidity challenges, and ongoing debates about speculation versus real utility. People got too greedy and started panicking when seeing red candles and the sells and downfall has started this way. Pumpy-dumpy attitude, as seen with meme coins on pump.fun (on Solana) or even with Base posting from the new Base app. Most probably, Zora team should have been more focused on real utility and value such as tokenising real items and not fake tokenisation with fake oil barrels trading or similar things. At least, it has been a great experiment, experience, and we all did learn key lessons from what has occurred.
Nonetheless, Zora is actively iterating with better UX, full-page coin views, PnL tracking, and deeper media support — but it’s clear the model is still maturing. In a maturing (and at times skeptical) market, Zora is in the trenches: refining economics, trying in building long-term incentives, and proving that tokenized creativity can deliver lasting value beyond short-term pumps and dumps.
4. ASKNIGHTS’ Experiment: $TopNFTArt Coin in the ZATOPIA Initiative
https://zora.co/@topnftart –> 0x14a9a1516b0b02ac5e97ba82eb27137bbd9b0b77 (address of the coin)
DexScreener and GeckoTerminal listing
At ASKNIGHTS, we are not just observing — we are actively participating, including testing and experimenting, in the new markets of the new creative economy on-chain, together with Web3 and DeFi (Decentralised Finance) initiatives. As part of our ZATOPIA Initiative (our vision for immersive art, community, and Metaverse experiences), we launched $TopNFTArt as our founder’s Creator Coin on the Zora protocol. This experiment allows new people to join our community and directly back top-curated NFT art and the evolution of our Artiverse.
We entered this space eyes wide open — embracing both the thrilling peaks of creator coin momentum and the current bottom-line challenges. $TopNFTArt is our way of testing fractionalised ownership mechanism, learning, and contributing to the evolution of on-chain creativity. Even if Zora app shuts down or $Zora coin goes close to 0, our experiment can still survive and have a great success and growth. How? Zora Protocol uses, at the very infrastructure level, UniSwap’ smart contracts and we can still use their liquidity pools to do transactions. It can be done directly from crypto wallets or through connecting your wallet to UniSwap. Moreover, if we focus more on pairing the token with $ETH or $BTC instead of $Zora, then we can have a more stable growth. Whether the broader market is booming or consolidating, we remain committed to building real utility: rewarding artists and collectors, preserving provenance, and creating long-term value in the Fine Arts Multiverse.
The stories of Rodeo.club and Zora.co highlight a universal truth in Web3 creativity: innovation thrives on experimentation, but endurance comes from adaptability, community focus, and patience. As market conditions shift, the platforms (and coins) that survive will be those delivering genuine cultural and economic utility.
We are still early. The new creator economy is being rewritten in real time and ASKNIGHTS is proud to be part of the rewrite — one curated NFT artwork, one community coin, and one Metaverse exhibition at a time. Stay engaged with the conversation on our Discord server and join us in the ZATOPIA Initiative. The best chapters of crypto and digital art ownership are still ahead.
Where Art, Tech & Space collide
ZATOPIA x $TopNFTArt
For artists, collectors, or projects interested in collaborating on events or any relevant art endeavours, do not hesitate to reach out to us.
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