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- Solana NFTs recorded a volume of $ 295 million in April
- Integration with OpenSea has strengthened the entire ecosystem
- Almost zero gas fees and low barriers to entry mean that new NFT traders are increasingly flocking to Solana
- Not Okay Bears Derivative on Ethereum Shows How Far Solana has Come
NFTs literally exploded on the scene in 2021, generating $17 billion in revenue over the course of the year. This year shows this Chainalysis reports that the volume in the NFT range is stabilizing with consistently red values despite the extreme risk reduction.
Since all long-term indicators point to a long service life in this area, I thought that it would be interesting to study where these sales are taking place and whether Ethereum is still the king.
One trend began to emerge quite quickly – the growth of Solana.
OpenSea
In the short history of NFTs, the vast majority of the volume has occurred on Ethereum, mainly on OpenSea, the marketplace originally built for Ethereum. However, this is beginning to change. OpenSea has recently been integrated with Solana, a turning point for Solana’s NFT collections, which until now were limited to marketplaces exclusively for Solana collections such as Magic Eden and Solanart.
In another poignant moment, a derivative collection called Not Okay Bears was removed from OpenSea yesterday after Okay Bears collectors complained. Traditionally, it’s been the other way around – fake collections launching on Solana, but a high-profile imitation on Ethereum feels like a groundbreaking moment for Solana.
Okay Bears are currently the hottest collection on Solana and are trading at a minimum price of 222 SOL ($ 11,500) and with a stately volume of 1.5 million SOL ($ 77 million) last month – and that alone at Magic Eden. On OpenSea, they made almost the same amount of volume last month, taking the seventh place on the ranking – with only six collections of Ethereum above them.
Okay Bears-Floor price and volume (in SOL) were in an uptrend throughout the month
Bored Ape Solana Club
To stay in the field of derivatives, another poignant case is the Bored Ape Solana Club (BASC) – the Solana version of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) on Ethereum. This differs from the not-okay-bears situation in that the derived collection here is more of a tribute than a fake. BASC was even verified on OpenSea, shortly after which the volume and minimum price increased.
Last month, after the chaos of the Otherside launch of Yuga Labs, the creator of BAYC, I wrote here about how exclusive the NFT world of Ethereum has become. It felt like a Bored Ape 1% club, as sky-high prices and pesky gas fees kept ordinary investors from getting involved.
The concentration of wealth in the NFT space became worryingly high, while the centralization of the space posed a real problem – Yuga Labs have the three largest collections on OpenSea and also own the IP rights to CryptoPunks, not to mention their tweets last month that they want to launch their own blockchain.
Solana gives the ordinary investor access to the world of NFTs by removing the barriers to entry with its low gas fees and user-friendly interface. For fun, I even bought the ape from BASC, pictured below, to overcome my dissatisfaction with the fallout from Yuga Lab. The fees I paid were only a fraction of a cent, and the whole process couldn’t have been more different from the ultra-exclusive BAYC counterparts on Ethereum.
Instagram and Coinbase
This week also brought the news that Meta-owned Instagram will be testing a feature that will allow users to view NFTs as their profile pictures. Meta confirmed that while the initial test launch is limited to Ethereum and Polygon, Solana will be added at a later date. Coinbase also announced its intention to expand to Solana once its Ethereum NFT ecosystem is up and running.
Growth
This access for the ordinary citizen, which Solana offers, is beginning to prevail. More and more new investors are choosing Solana and not Ethereum when they first get into NFTs, for the same reasons that I bought my aforementioned ape on Solana. This According to the report, there were 9.2 million transactions on Magic Eden last month compared to 1.67 million on OpenSea.
However, it should be noted that this gap in transactions is largely due to bot activity. However, the growth trends are clear – Solana is expanding at a rapid pace, with the minimum prices of the main collections rising over the past month, unlike what is happening with Ethereum.
Perhaps more accurate than the number of transactions is the volume, and according to DappRadar, the Solana NFT market increased by 91% in April with a volume of $ 295 million. Looking back over the past 30 days, the meltdown has reduced the dollar volume, but the SOL volume has increased significantly. Considering the retreat in the broader market, the fact that the volume in the last 30 days on the 14 major marketplaces was $ 274 million (at the current SOL price of $ 52) is an extremely optimistic sign.
The graph below shows that the majority of this volume took place on Magic Eden and OpenSea.
Conclusion
In summary, it was a massively bullish time for Solana NFTs. While the crypto market experienced a bloodbath – and the Solana token was not spared – the long-term trajectory for the ecosystem remains upward.
Ethereum simply cannot compete with the almost free entry opportunities that Solana offers for NFT investors. Flipping NFTs, playing around with different collections and buying on a whim is possible on Solana, with fees being only a fraction of a cent per transaction. This is simply not possible on ETH, which is aggravated by the dominance of the top collections, which, in addition to the annoying gas fees, also charge huge prices.
On the other hand, Ethereum is not viable unless you spend a lot on a very expensive NFT, as you lose so much gas – which means it will continue to solidify as a blockchain for the elites, at least when it comes to NFTs. For the ordinary investor who wants to invest amounts that move very much in the non-life-changing numbers, Solana is simply more sensible.
The market is beginning to realize this.
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