Rodeo is the second NFT marketplace to close this week
Social NFT marketplace Rodeo has become the second NFT platform to announce its closure this week.
Rodeo launched on Apple's iOS Store in March last year and is designed to be a social media-focused NFT crowdfunding platform, with an emphasis on creators being rewarded for buying and selling NFTs.
It has used complex crypto and blockchain features to make it easy for end users.
However, Rodeo CEO and founder Kaivon Tehranian told The X-Post on Tuesday that the platform has struggled to scale enough to be sustainable.
“We believe that gathering can be playful and collaborative — not just marketing. That belief guides every product decision we make,” he wrote.
“Ultimately, the rodeo did not achieve its primary purpose. While the product resonated deeply with a dedicated community, the platform did not grow to the extent necessary to be sustainable. As a result, the rodeo cannot continue to operate.”
Going forward, Rodeo plans to move users of their assets and data to other platforms. First, users can transfer media and metadata to blockchain data storage platform Arweave.
Rodeo also offers an Asset Migration Assistant that guides users on how to migrate assets from the platform's smart contracts.
From January 27th to February 10th, Rodeo will continue to work as usual, but starting February 10th, the platform will switch to read-only mode. On March 10, the rodeo will be completely gone.
It's not the only corporate change Tehran has made this week, announcing on Tuesday that ownership of the NFT artist platform and gallery foundation is moving to digital art platform Blackdove.
Teheran says the project started as an experiment to see if artists could be fairly compensated for their work online, and has managed $230 million in initial sales since its launch.
The founder said the platform will continue as usual, but with leadership committed to the long-term future.
In the year The NFT market has been in free fall since the 2022 major crash, with short price increases and no sustained market recovery. At its market peak around January 2022, Ethereum reached nearly $5 billion in NFT trading volume, according to CryptoSlam data.
In January 2026, however, Ethereum saw only $159.2 million in NFT trading volume.
Nifty Gateway updates the wind down scheme
Meanwhile, Nifty Gateway, one of the largest marketplaces to emerge during the early 2021 NFT market boom, has revised its downward trend following recent community feedback.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Nifty Gateway said it uses Arweave to enable users to transfer media and metadata. In addition, the platform is extending the deadline for transferring assets to a 90-day window, ending on April 23 instead of February 23.
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“We are working on a bulk withdrawal tool for our customers who have a lot of NFTs on our platform and we will provide them with plenty of time to use the tool before the April 23 deadline,” Nifty Gateway said.
The platform first announced plans to close on Friday, but did not clearly state the reason.
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