With this announcement, Solana becomes the fourth blockchain to be supported by OpenSea.
The OpenSea NFT Marketplace has announced plans to begin supporting Solana NFTs in April. Along with amassing billions of dollars in trading volume each month, the announcement is the market’s latest move to increase its market dominance. Earlier this year, it raised $300 million to reach a market valuation of $13 billion. Later in February, the market launched a venture capital program to support startups and NFT projects.
Now, it’s revealed an intended integration with the Solana chain. The $13 billion firm revealed this via a video promo uploaded on its Twitter platform. The video tagged ‘wen Solana’ featured several Solana NFTs including Solana Monkey Business and Aurory. Boryoku Dragonz, Catalina Whale Mixer, and Degenerate Ape Academy were also featured. OpenSea called it ‘the best kept secret in web3’.
Ahead of the announcement, famed tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong remark signs of an upcoming integration after discovering Solana and Phantom wallet mentions on the site in January. More recently, she also discovered signs that a Solana launch was imminent. Others also noted that they can now connect Phantom wallets to OpenSea although Solana NFTs are not yet available in the market.
The Solana NFTs Ecosystem
The Solana NFTs Ecosystem is an interesting one. The NFTs collection grew rapidly with the rise of Solana Monkey Business, Degenerate Ape Academy, and Aurory among others. After Ethereum, Solana has the biggest NFT ecosystem with a market capitalization of $1.5 billion. It also boasts the second-highest all-time NFT sales.
However, Solana users could only trade their Solana NFTs on other marketplaces like Magic Eden, Solanart, and SolSea. Of these, Magic Eden tops the list with around 90% market share in the last week alone according to Dune Analytics.
With this announcement, Solana becomes the fourth blockchain to be supported by OpenSea. There were previous integrations with Ethereum, Klatyn, and Polygon.
Being able to trade their NFTs on OpenSea will provide traders with put options. However, how this will affect Magic Eden’s market dominance remains to be seen. One thing that can help Magic Eden is its 2% transaction fee, which is 50 basis points below OpenSea.
