OpenSea is closing in on support for Solana NFTs in April, substantially widening the NFT community.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped below $45,000 during early Asian trading hours on Friday, causing cryptocurrency markets to fall 3.5 percent in the previous 24 hours.
Cardano's ADA and Avalanche's AVAX fell 5%, while Polkadot's DOT, Shiba Inu's SHIB, and Dogecoin's DOGE fell more than 7% in the last 24 hours. Solana's SOL continued to outperform, holding flat on Friday after leading advances on Thursday; BNB Chain's BNB also excelled, dropping 3%.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were broadly flat on Thursday, holding onto gains from a recent rise as risk sentiment in broader markets froze and investors followed developments in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Over $400 million in crypto-tracked futures liquidations occurred in the last 24 hours. Liquidations are forced closings of a trader's leveraged crypto trading position by an exchange owing to a partial or entire loss of the trader's initial margin.
Bitcoin futures had the most future losses, totaling more than $120 million, followed by ether (ETH) futures, which had $63 million in losses. However, because of turbulent trading, some less popular futures lost more than other prominent cryptos on Friday.
Solana (SOL 9.57 percent) soared into double digits in early trade on Thursday, following a massive increase on Wednesday. The cryptocurrency had gained 4.1 percent in the previous 24 hours and had reached a high of 6.2 percent.
Solana is up 25.1 percent in the previous week, indicating a strong run, and its value is rising today as the value of other cryptocurrencies falls. Volatility remains the norm for cryptocurrencies, and at times like these, it benefits Solana investors. However, keep in mind that the gain in prices might be reversed just as fast as it began.
As corporations begin to take Solana more seriously, investors continue to pour into it. Coinbase Global just began trading for several Solana-based tokens, and OpenSea announced yesterday that it will begin holding about 50 Solana non-fungible coins. Many investors who trade exclusively in Bitcoin or Ethereum may be unaware of what is being built atop Solana. Therefore, these movements provide exposure to the ecosystem. As genuine businesses are formed on the blockchain, this should lead to even more investment and increased prices for Solana and its tokens.
While the cryptocurrency industry as a whole appears to have regained its feet in recent weeks, the price of Solana has truly shone. According to CoinMarketCap, Sol has the best performance of any Top 30 cryptocurrency, with a 31 percent gain in the previous seven days. has made some huge movements in the previous several days. Solana's price movement is probably definitely a reaction to NFT marketplace OpenSea's plans to include Solana on the platform in April.
OpenSea, a nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, has announced the upcoming integration of the Solana (SOL) blockchain within its platform, a long-awaited move that industry experts and numerical data indicate could have reciprocal benefits across both ecosystems, as well as positive sentiments for the wider NFT market. Solana is quickly becoming a big player in the NFT market, with high-grossing titles such as Solana Monkey Business and Degenerate Ape Academy. Both NFT collections have produced over $100 million in lifetime volume, while Aurory's play-to-earn collection has topped the $75 million level. The market will undoubtedly be influenced by OpenSea's backing. For starters, the floor price of Solana-based NFTs and transaction volumes might skyrocket. Solana is also home to DeFi technologies and Web3 programs.
However, there is a danger that Solana NFT markets such as Magic Eden and SolanArt will lose a significant portion of their market share to Solana. Over the previous week, Magic Eden accounted for more than 90% of Solana NFT sales. The change was initially disclosed in January, when tech journalist Jane Manchun Wong declared on Twitter that "OpenSea is working on Solana integration, as well as Phantom wallet compatibility."
Solana will join the list of three networks: Ethereum, layer-2 Polygon, and Klaytn, and will be viewable via the drop-down "all chains" option on the rankings page. OpenSea joyfully referred to the announcement as the "best-kept secret in Web3," referring to the large number of tweets and media stories on the possibility of a Solana launch. Adam Montgomery, the company's head of blockchain, also expressed his thoughts on the launch.
The launch of NFT marketplace LooksRare in January 2022 was the first true leadership threat to OpenSea's multi-year monopoly in the NFT field. It witnessed the implementation of an airdropping scheme, which allowed seasoned investors to claim governance Looks tokens as rewards for using the site.
According to Dune Analytics, LooksRare has registered a total of 55,874 users since its debut on January 10, facilitating almost $21.3 billion in transaction activity. In comparison, since the launch of its competitor, OpenSea has registered 884,052 new members. Nevertheless, these investors have only traded a little more than $12 billion in volume.
Solana is already present in a number of NFT markets, including Magic Eden, Solanart, and Solsea. Based on both user adoption and actual volume counts, Magic Eden holds a rather dominant dominance in Solana's NFT market. The table below breaks out Solana NFT activity during the previous 30 days by the top three markets. In the case of Solana's ecosystem, DappRadar marketplace data shows that Magic Eden now leads the field with a $41.05 million trade volume over the last 30 days, followed by Solanart and Solsea with $4.39 million and 656,830, respectively.
Following Magic Eden's collaboration with Overtime, co-founder Jack Lu told Cointelegraph that NFTs will allow the next generation of sports enthusiasts to enjoy sports in a fundamentally different way than the previous generation of millennials, who grew up passively watching sports on TV or in person.
OpenSea's growth might pose competition to Magic Eden, the primary marketplace for Solana NFTs. The 2% transaction fee charged by Magic Eden is 50 basis points lower than that charged by OpenSea, providing buyers and sellers a modest advantage. It remains to be seen whether this is enough to beat the market leader.
The amount of NFT activity on Solana has recently increased. According to CryptoSlam, 4 of the top 20 NFT collections by 24-hour sales volume are on Solana as of the article's writing. To put things in perspective, Solana hasn't had a single collection in the top 20 in the previous 30 days. As a result, there is a noticeable increase in interest in Solana NFT projects. While a 24-hour sample size is insignificant, NFT sales on Solana exceeded $11 million for the second day in a row on March 30th. The two-day period of March 29–30 was the strongest for NFT sales on Solana since early October. It should also be noted that the number of unique purchasers surpassed 8,600 over that two-day period. It's worth noting that daily unique purchasers have held up rather well in recent months, even when sales have been low. But, once again, the sample size is limited. I believe we can draw some conclusions from the trend in average NFT sale price over the last few months.
While it is no secret that Solana wants to be a lower-cost layer 1 alternative to Ethereum, it appears that Solana is certainly appealing to lower-cost NFT buyers and sellers in the early stages. The average retail price of a Solana-based NFT in August was well over $2,500. As March comes to a conclusion, the average price of Solana NFTs has dropped below $500. When average NFT sales data is compared to ETH and fellow Avalanche, it gives an intriguing perspective.
Avalanche has seen a 44 percent increase in average NFT price since November, when most coin values peaked, but Ethereum and Solana NFTs are still significantly below their highs. While NFT average price drops have been rather severe, especially since August in the instance of Solana, the number of unique NFT purchasers on Solana has been growing.
Solana's average NFT pricing drop has not been due to a lack of interest in the network. It's more of a sign that Solana does, in fact, decrease the barrier to entry for NFT buyers and sellers. While Avalanche has a strong overall trend, Solana has seen significantly greater acceptance as a network for feasible NFT applications than Avalanche or Polygon.
Nonetheless, prudence is advised. Despite the increase in NFT activity on Solana and the significant increase in the price of SOL over the last week or two, the token value is likely still well beyond what would be acceptable based on other measures. After all, NFTs are only a subset of the activity on layer 1 blockchains. Even if I view the NFT action on Solana as generally good, it's critical to examine all on-chain activities when determining whether the performance in SOL is warranted.
When it comes to minting non-fungible tokens, Solana is one of the most popular networks among artists. In recent months, the protocol has emerged as a serious contender to the market leader, Ethereum. Despite its sales volume disadvantage, Solana has certain benefits over its competitor. It employs a Proof-of-History consensus technique, allowing it to execute transactions at a high throughput of more than 60,000 transactions per second (TPS). In comparison, Ethereum presently has a processing capacity of up to 15 TPS.
It is also less expensive to mint NFTs on the Solana network. Because the gas expenses are lower than those of Ethereum, the blockchain technology is more eco-friendly.
In a recent tweet, OpenSea revealed the Solana integration date.
