The Spring of 2022 feels like an eternity ago, especially in the NFT space. But those of you back then remember how glorious the hype around Solana NFTs was. On Twitter and Reddit, you could regularly see posts mentioning how they were set to take a big chunk of Ethereum’s volume for themselves. Due to their smaller market caps, there were more than a few cheap mints that instantly made 3-10x after launch, rewarding early holders for venturing into uncharted territory on a foreign blockchain.
Although the “Solana Summer” didn’t have any note-worthy events that would justify that name, it seems that some of that early hype is now being brought back as Solana NFTs are again trending in the top 10 section on OpenSea.
In the past few days, DeGods led the way with almost 1000k SOL in all-time trading volume, followed by ABC (abracadabra), a newly minted project on Solana with no roadmap. It quickly gained some traction and is currently sitting in 4th place with a 48 SOL floor. There is also Satori, an anime-styled PFP collection that also made its way into the top 10 in the past few hours, with a floor price just shy of 5 SOL.
But the biggest NFT launch since Okay Bears is y00ts – a sister project created by DeGods that launched on the 5th of September 2022 and is now taking the NFT space by storm. The community behind it is very bullish on its membership and utility aspect, and it looks like they want to hold it to be a part of their ecosystem, not intending to flip for higher profits down the line. These are precisely the circumstances needed for steady growth and long-term sustainability. The y00ts collection is now number one on OpenSea by trading volume, after reaching almost 200k SOL (around $6 mil) in sales in less than a single day. The floor skyrocketed to more than 150 SOL (around $4.5k) and is still climbing as their NFTs fly off the shelf every minute.
Those with the whitelist (or scholarship as they call it) could mint one of 15.000 y00ts NFTs for around $1000 with 375 $DUST – DeGods native utility token that was trading around $2.7 at that time.
Although Solana is known for some issues, most notably its frequent mainnet outages, where the whole chain shuts down for a few minutes, sometimes hours, and, of course, there was that massive exploit with Phantom wallets where attackers took more than $5 million worth of assets from more than 8000 compromised wallets.
But Solana has two attributes that are still unrivaled by any other blockchain: fast transaction speed and almost non-existent fees. These make Solana the perfect breeding ground that attracts investors who love volatility, fast-paced action, or developers that want to create NFT-related games with in-game transactions on-chain.
Recent events indicate that Solana is here to stay, regardless of how many slip-ups there are. After all, they managed to solidify their importance and mainstream recognition in the NFT space by making it to OpenSea before any other Layer 1 blockchain.
