From APENFT to AINFT: What Changed and What Did Not

APENFT Asia editorial team · Fact-checked against official sources

What is AINFT?

AINFT is what APENFT is called now. The project that began in 2021 as an art-on-chain foundation on TRON officially announced its transformation on October 9, 2025, describing it as a strategic shift “from NFT trading to building crypto AI infrastructure”. CoinMarketCap summarizes it as APENFT completing “its full upgrade to AINFT” in October 2025.

If you hold the token, the most important point is short: the AINFT coin is the same token you already had. It still uses the ticker NFT, it still lives on the TRON contract deployed in May 2021, and your balance did not need to be moved anywhere. Price sites updated the display name, exchanges renamed their markets over the following weeks, and that was it.

Many people still search for “APENFT” rather than “AINFT”, and we do the same on this site: you will often see us write “APENFT (now AINFT)”. Both names point to one project and one token. If you want the backstory, our full APENFT timeline covers everything from the 2021 launch to the rebrand.

Why APENFT rebranded to AINFT

The official framing names three problems the project wants to address. First, traditional NFTs are static: once an image is minted, it does not do anything. Second, AI has a “data black box” problem and distributes value unfairly between those who supply data and those who profit from models. Third, blockchains lack intelligent decision-making. The proposed answer is to move from an “on-chain art hall” to a “distributed AI industry foundation”.

The new white paper, version 2.0 and dated September 2025, describes the change as an “evolution from APENFT to AINFT”. It positions the project as an “AI infrastructure and innovation hub within the TRON ecosystem”, and TRON DAO’s own strategy report for the first half of 2026 presents AINFT as part of TRON’s AI push.

There is also a less official reading. By 2025 the NFT art market had cooled dramatically, and the APENFT Marketplace was seeing very little trading. Moving toward AI, the dominant narrative in crypto at the time, gave the project a fresh story. That does not make the pivot good or bad by itself, but it is useful context when you weigh announcements against delivered products.

What changed and what stayed the same

Project name

APENFT → AINFT

Ticker

NFT (unchanged)

TRON contract

TFczxzPhnThNSqr5by8tvxsdCFRRz6cPNq (unchanged)

Decimals

6 (unchanged)

Max supply

999.99 trillion NFT (unchanged)

Contract created

May 13, 2021

Official site

ainft.com

Marketplace

marketplace.ainft.com

Swap required

No

On Tronscan, the token now shows the name AINFT and the symbol NFT, with the same creation date and the same issuer address as before. CoinGecko kept its API id apenft but switched its display name to AINFT and its web address to the ainft slug.

Interestingly, if you query the contract directly through a TRON node, its built-in name() function still returns “APENFT”. That is not a bug or a sign of a fake token. It is proof that the contract was never redeployed: the rebrand happened in metadata, explorers and exchanges, not in the smart contract code. This also explains why some wallets still label your balance “APENFT” while others say “AINFT”.

The supply figures, the burned amount in the TRON black hole and the old allocation table all carry over unchanged. Our NFT tokenomics page breaks those numbers down.

Do you need to swap APENFT for AINFT?

No. This is the single most important answer on this page. There was no token swap, no migration and no claim window. The project kept the same TRC-20 contract, so every existing balance is automatically an AINFT balance.

Exchanges confirmed this in their own way:

• Bithumb renamed APENFT to AINFT effective December 24, 2025. Balances carried over automatically and no swap was needed.
• KuCoin announced support for the rebrand on January 13, 2026 and stated that “the token ticker will remain NFT”.
• Coinone was reported, second-hand, to describe it as a rebrand rather than a swap or migration. We could not verify that wording on Coinone’s own site.

If you keep NFT in a self-custody wallet such as TronLink or Trust Wallet, you do not need to do anything at all. If the token is not visible, it is a display issue, and adding the contract manually fixes it. Our TRON wallet guide shows how.

How the rebrand rolled out

A rebrand like this never happens on a single day everywhere. The project announced it, then explorers, price trackers and exchanges each updated on their own schedule. That staggered rollout is why you may have seen both names side by side for months.

If your exchange still shows “APENFT” in its asset list, that is not a problem. It only means the venue has not updated its labels yet. What matters is the network and the contract behind the balance, not the display name. When you withdraw, always choose the TRON network (TRC-20) unless you know exactly why you need another one. Our guide to selling and withdrawing NFT walks through that choice step by step.

What happened to the marketplace and NFT Pump

The rebrand did not shut down the old products. The original APENFT Marketplace now runs at marketplace.ainft.com under the name “AINFT Market”, and the NFT Pump launchpad at nftpump.meme serves the same app. NFT Pump, launched in September 2024, mixes the TRC-404 format with bonding-curve pricing, and Justin Sun said its trading fees would be used to buy back and burn NFT tokens.

In practice, the art side of the business has become a smaller part of the story. The collection still includes works by Picasso, Beeple, Pak and Cattelan according to the white paper, and you can explore them on our digital art collection page. But trading volumes are thin, and the project’s own messaging now leads with AI rather than art.

The new AINFT product lines

The white paper describes four product lines, plus a related finance layer:

Alongside these, Bank of AI was presented as an on-chain financial layer for AI agents, covering payments, identity and DeFi. Some outlets dated its launch to mid-February 2026, while Messari gives March 2, 2026. The old sunagent.ai domain now redirects to bankofai.io. The official AINFT website itself currently describes itself as an “AI Trading Agent Benchmark”.

Reality check: what has actually launched

Roadmaps are cheap; shipped products are what count. As of February 24, 2026, crypto news site Protos reported that Nova, Agent Framework, AgenTX and Grid had not launched, and that the marketplace was averaging about US$6 a day in trading volume. We have not found a reliable source confirming that any of the four launched after that date, so we treat their status as not officially confirmed.

That does not mean the project is inactive. The website, the foundation site and the marketplace are online, and Justin Sun regularly promotes AINFT on X. But if you are evaluating AINFT as a holder, it is fair to note the gap between the AI vision and delivered, measurable usage. For a neutral list of strengths and red flags, see our APENFT safety review.

Governance and the role of the NFT token

According to the white paper, AINFT “exclusively uses NFT as its official governance token”. It also says that staking NFT in the AINFT Foundation grants voting rights. We could not verify a live official staking product for that, so treat it as a stated intention rather than a working feature. Earlier campaigns that paid out NFT through SunSwap, JustLend and SUN.io are listed as concluded.

If you want to put idle NFT to work today, the practical options are third-party ones, such as supplying it on JustLend DAO’s jNFT market, with variable and often very low rates. Our APENFT staking overview compares the realistic choices and their risks.

How to check you hold the real AINFT token

On other chains the picture is messier: there are two BEP-20 and two ERC-20 contracts using the APENFT name, and which ones are canonical is not confirmed. Our multichain contract guide explains why we recommend sticking to TRON.

What the rebrand means for holders

The honest summary: the rebrand is a change of story, not a change of token. It does not dilute you and does not require you to do anything, but it also does not, on its own, add utility. Whether AINFT becomes more than a new label depends on products shipping and being used. Keep an eye on the live chart on our AINFT price page, and treat any rebrand-related “opportunity” that arrives in your DMs as a red flag.

Official AINFT links

These are the channels listed by Tronscan and CoinGecko:

• Website: ainft.com
• Marketplace: marketplace.ainft.com
• Foundation: foundation.ainft.com
• X: @OfficialAINFT and @AINFTcom
• Telegram: t.me/ainftEN
• GitHub: github.com/apenft

Anything outside this list that claims to be AINFT, especially one asking for a wallet connection, deserves a second look before you click.