Remember the NFT frenzy, when ugly cartoon apes were everywhere on the internet? Well, it turns out those non-fungible tokens (NFTs), once hailed as the future of crypto and digital art, have hit rock bottom.

A report titled “Dead NFTs: The Evolving Landscape of the NFT Market” by finance and blockchain experts dappGambl delivers the lowdown. They took a look at a whopping 73,257 NFT collections and found that a mind-boggling 95 percent of these crypto collectibles are now worth zilch in Ether (ETH), the second-biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. In simpler terms, you couldn’t even fetch a measly cent for them today. Quite a fall from grace, considering they once traded at a whopping $17 billion during the 2021 crypto gold rush. To put it bluntly, around 23 million investors own NFTs that are as useful as a chocolate teapot.

And if that isn’t enough, there’s a massive surplus of NFTs out there. Only about 21 percent of the collections in the study actually have any buyers, leaving roughly four out of five collections gathering digital dust. The reason? Well, buyers have become pickier, preferring NFTs with real use cases, compelling stories, or some genuine artistic value.

Remember those headlines about NFTs selling for millions? Yeah, they’re rarer than a unicorn now. Less than one percent of NFTs today cost more than $6,000, with most falling between $5 and $100. Shockingly, almost one in five of the so-called “top” collections have a base price of zilch. So, it seems like NFT prices may have more to do with sellers’ wishful thinking than any real demand.

But there’s still a glimmer of hope for NFTs. The report suggests they might survive if they find a unique purpose, like granting access to special events or becoming virtual items in video games.

However, let’s not forget the elephant in the room: the environmental impact of NFTs. Creating NFTs takes a lot of energy, and the marketplaces where they’re bought and sold are powered by energy-guzzling computers. To make matters worse, some 200,000 NFT collections with no owners or market share have caused carbon emissions equal to the annual output of thousands of houses or cars.

So, while NFTs might make a comeback one day, they’ve definitely hit a rough patch. The days of those digital cartoon apes ruling the internet seem to be behind us.