Hic et Nunc Explained: What Happened and What Tezos NFT Fans Can Do

Hic et Nunc was an NFT marketplace built on the Tezos blockchain. It became one of the best-known places for Tezos digital art during the NFT boom of 2021, when many artists and collectors looked for alternatives to Ethereum because of high transaction costs.

The platform let creators mint tokens directly from their wallets and list them for open or fixed-price sales. Many of its early collections were experimental digital art, generative pieces and small editions, and the site built a strong community around discovery and direct artist support.

Its model was simple. Creators minted, collectors bought, and a community of frequent users shared work and feedback. That community is the main reason the name still comes up when people discuss Tezos NFTs, and it is also why any claim about the platform's user numbers draws attention.

When reading about Hic et Nunc today, keep two things separate. The original marketplace is a historical product. The community, the artists and the tokens are the parts that carried forward into other projects.

The team announced in 2022 that the marketplace would close. Once the front end stopped operating as a marketplace, users could no longer rely on it to list, buy or make offers on tokens in the usual way.

The closure did not remove the tokens. NFTs on Tezos are records on the blockchain, so a token minted through Hic et Nunc still exists at its contract address and still belongs to whoever holds it. What changed was the venue. Holders needed other ways to view, store and trade those tokens.

For collectors, the practical effects were these:

• Listings and offers on the original site stopped being available.
• Tokens remained in wallets, but discovery and pricing moved elsewhere.
• Some artists lost a direct sales channel and had to rebuild their audience.
• Historians and collectors began relying on block explorers and archives to trace provenance.

If you hold older tokens from the platform, the most important step is to confirm which wallet holds them and keep your recovery phrase safe. The marketplace closing does not change ownership.

Tezos is a proof-of-stake blockchain, and its transaction fees have generally been low compared with many networks where NFT trading became expensive. That made it easy for artists to mint small editions and for collectors to try purchases without large fees.

Tezos NFTs commonly follow the FA2 token standard, which supports single and multiple editions within a common contract design. Marketplaces built on Tezos can therefore read a wide range of collections using similar rules, which helped a number of platforms list works from different creators.

Low fees and easy minting do not guarantee long-term demand. Activity on any chain depends on artists, collectors, liquidity and trust. A cheap mint can attract experiments, but sustained growth needs people who keep coming back to buy, sell and create.

If you are comparing Tezos marketplaces, focus on how each one handles listings, royalties, offers and the clarity of its fee structure. Check current fee details on the platform itself, because fee schedules change and any number written in an article may be out of date by the time you read it.

After a marketplace closes, community members often build a successor. Some successors are community-run forks of the original code, while others are new platforms that aim to serve the same audience. Names and features differ, so check each project's own documentation rather than relying on summaries.

A successor usually promises some combination of the following:

• A way to list and buy tokens from the original community.
• Lower or clearer fees, or a governance model that gives users a voice.
• Better search, curation or tools for creators.
• A relaunch date and a roadmap for future features.

Each promise should be tested against evidence. A relaunch announcement is a statement of intent, not proof of adoption. Ask who runs the project, how it is funded, whether its code is public and how decisions are made. Projects that answer these questions openly are easier to evaluate.

One of the main Tezos marketplaces readers may encounter is Objkt, which is a non-custodial marketplace where creators mint, collectors trade and anyone can make offers. Whether any successor is right for you depends on your goals, the collections you care about and your tolerance for risk.

Active wallets are usually counted from on-chain data. A wallet, or address, is considered active in a period if it sends or receives a transaction, signs a contract interaction or performs a specific action such as buying an NFT. The exact rule changes from one dashboard to another, so the definition matters as much as the number.

Several choices can change the result:

• The time window, such as a day, week or month.
• Whether a wallet counts if it only received a token.
• Whether a single person with several wallets is counted more than once.
• Whether bots, contract addresses or marketplace operators are excluded.
• Which chain, contract or marketplace is included.

Because of these differences, two sources can report very different growth for the same platform. A small baseline can make percentage growth look dramatic even when the number of real users is modest. A large baseline can hide meaningful change.

When you see a claim about active wallets, treat it as a starting point for questions rather than a finding. The key question is what was measured, over which period and against which baseline.

You can test a growth claim without special tools. Public Tezos block explorers, such as TzKT, let you look at accounts, transactions and contract activity. The steps below give you a simple method.

1. Write down the exact claim, including the metric, the start and end dates, and the percentage or count reported.
2. Ask the source how it defined an active wallet and which contracts or marketplaces it included.
3. Check the platform's official channels for the same date range and see whether they describe the same metric.
4. Use a block explorer to look at transaction counts and unique addresses for the contracts involved. Compare the two periods yourself.
5. Note any spikes that come from a single event, such as a giveaway or a special drop, because they can distort a short window.
6. Decide whether the result is strong enough to change your behaviour. If not, keep the claim as one data point among others.

This method will not give you a perfect count of people, since one person can control many addresses. It does help you see whether the trend is supported by on-chain data and whether the claim is consistent with what the blockchain records show.

Holding NFTs means holding the keys to a wallet. Most losses in this space come from phishing, fake support accounts, malicious links and signed approvals that give a third party control of a token. Defensive habits matter more than any single platform's features.

Use these practical safeguards:

• Never share your seed phrase or private key with anyone, including people claiming to be support staff or project admins.
• Type marketplace and project addresses yourself, or use bookmarks you created, rather than following links from direct messages.
• Read what you are signing. Review contract approvals and revoke any you no longer need.
• Keep most valuable assets in a wallet you use only for storage, and use a separate wallet for trading.
• Write your recovery phrase on paper or metal and store it in more than one secure place. Do not photograph it or store it in cloud notes.
• Consider a hardware wallet for significant holdings, and confirm device firmware is current.

If you think a wallet has been compromised, move remaining assets to a new wallet as soon as possible, using a clean device. Then review open approvals and report the incident to the platforms involved. Speed matters, but so does avoiding panic-driven clicks on unfamiliar prompts.

If you want to buy, sell or view Tezos NFTs in 2026, compare platforms on the features that matter to your activity. The table below lists criteria rather than rankings, because platform details change and should be verified on each site.

Factor	What to check
Chain coverage	Does it support Tezos collections you care about?
Custody	Is it non-custodial, so you control your keys?
Fees	Are platform and network fees shown clearly before you sign?
Offers and listings	Can you make offers, list items and cancel listings easily?
Creator tools	Can artists mint, set royalties and manage editions?
Transparency	Are contract details, team information and terms easy to find?

Objkt is a Tezos marketplace where anyone can make offers on tokens, which suits collectors who want to bid on specific works. Other multi-chain marketplaces, such as OpenSea and Element Market, cover many networks, which can be useful if your collection is spread across chains. Choose based on the assets you hold rather than on popularity alone.

Whatever you choose, keep a record of each transaction, note the fees you paid and check that the item you bought matches the contract address listed on the block explorer.

NFT markets are volatile, and interest in a single network can rise and fall quickly. Buying a token because of a growth headline is a common mistake. A token's value depends on demand, liquidity and the reputation of its creator, and none of these are fixed by a platform's activity figures.

Risks to consider include:

• Liquidity risk: you may not find a buyer at a price you accept.
• Platform risk: a marketplace can close, change fees or stop supporting certain collections.
• Creator risk: an artist may stop developing a project or disappear.
• Counterparty risk: scams often appear when interest in a platform is high.
• Tax and reporting rules: gains from NFT sales may be taxable depending on where you live. Check local rules or speak with a qualified adviser.

If you are considering NFTs as a purchase, set a budget you can afford to lose and avoid borrowing to buy them. Keep records of your purchases, fees and sales. Treat any growth claim as one input among several, and make decisions based on your own research and your own risk tolerance.