Ethereum dominated conversations in the blockchain industry for quite some time, and to some extent, it still does. But this leading network struggles with scalability, energy consumption, transaction speed, and the ever-increasing gas fee. This compelled innovators to look for alternatives.
Enter Solana, the Ethereum Killer. It emerged as the ‘best alternative chain’ in 2021. The SOL token’s price soared to all-time highs, which also led to an excellent bull run for Solana NFTs. In particular, Solana-based PFP NFTs exploded that summer, so much so that we now call it the Solana Summer.
Solana’s tremendous success is due to its speed, scalability, security, and rapid transaction finality. It also requires minimal computational resources which lowers entry barriers. But there’s already been much discussion on these aspects. The question now is whether we will see another Solana Summer in 2022.
Opensea Welcomes Solana
OpenSea has become THE MARKETPLACE for NFTs. With soaring sale volumes, the platform’s valuation crossed $13 billion in early-2022. But at the same time, excessive dependence on Ethereum hampers its scalability significantly. At times, users even pay more in gas fees than the price of NFTs.
Introducing Lazy Minting was one of OpenSea’s many attempts to tackle the gas fee problem. Nothing really worked, though. And instead, the number of scams increased. So, in April 2022, OpenSea officially integrated Solana.
Solana is poised to boost the prospect and capabilities of the world’s leading NFT marketplace. It has all the speed to make this happen, that too at low costs. Moreover, Solana is a haven for blockchain gaming protocols, as it is for emerging metaverses. And both of these are breeding grounds for innovative NFTs. OpenSea can tap into this deep value pool, thanks to its collab with Solana.
The partnership will also help build robust content filters, better-defined niches, and advanced minting processes. OpenSea will benefit immensely from these, while Solana’s prolific community can now have seamless access to the topmost NFT marketplace.
Lights, Camera, Action – OkayBears’ Record Sales
April 2022. Solana-based OkayBears NFTs went from a mint price of 1.5 SOL to around 90 SOL per piece in about two days. That’s a jump from around $147 to $8,850 apiece. This collection of 10,000 bear avatars also set new records with over 1,87,000 SOL in secondary trading, worth $18.5 million. And all this happened within twenty-four hours of the collection’s launch.
OkayBears topped OpenSea’s charts for a considerable amount of time. Even Ethereum NFTs lagged behind, before reclaiming their crown with Otherside. Anyhow, one thing was clear—Solana NFTs have the potential to dominate OpenSea. OkayBears could very well be only the beginning of a steep upwards trajectory, promising excellent results from the OpenSea-Solana integration.
Another Solana Summer? It’s Totally Possible.
No one can accurately predict the future. But at least we can make plausible assumptions. More importantly, we can hope. The Solana community certainly can, given the recent performance of the platform’s NFTs.
It only takes one strong bull run to initiate another, and then another. That’s the thing about positive feedback loops. That is also how the last Solana Summer happened. And there are signs that it may happen again this year.
It’s true that Solana witnessed some undesirable state of affairs recently, including downtime and transparency concerns. But with collections like OkayBears breaking many barriers, the platform is bouncing back strongly. Plus, it now has OpenSea by its side, which it didn’t in 2021.
Most importantly, OkayBears’ stunning performance was despite the ongoing bearish market trends. Solana thus sent out strong and positive signals for change with this collection. And given the prolific nature of the network’s community, there’s no reason to think that this is the end.
Summer or no summer, it’s surely not winter and won’t be any time soon. We must wait and watch how things go from here. So, while you’re at it, keep following Airdrop Alert for all the latest updates and trends. Because if spring comes, can summer be far away?
