When it comes to the sixth biggest blockchain by market cap, there’s usually some news – whether it’s to do with the alt coin’s price, a new NFT making waves, or connections to another blockchain itself.
In short, Solana has made itself attractive to both crypto artists as well as more mainstream finance companies like Grayscale Investments. Its recent NFT milestones and related initiatives are further signs of the same.
Not monkeying around
Solana recently retweeted a post showing that its NFT market cap had reached $1 billion. A large part of this was made up by the “Solana Monkey Business” collection. This NFT series consists of 5000 cheerful monkey art pieces stored on the blockchain.
NFT's on @solana hit $1 Billion market cap. 1 community. We Keep Making it. SOLANA.@SolanaMBS @DegenApeAcademy @galacticgeckosg @AuroryProject @staratlas @thugbirdz @Austin_Federa #solanaszn #WAGMI pic.twitter.com/s9KYNYFwgx
— solanalysis (@solanalysis) October 1, 2021
One monkey from the series – #1355, the rarest of all – with a skeleton face and a rainbow jewel studded crown, sold for 13027 SOL or around $2 million on 1 October.
? SMB #1355 SOLD for 13027.00 S◎L
? https://t.co/DOpZD6LFSV pic.twitter.com/Z7ukL4Cgco
— SMB Sales Bot (@SMB_SalesBot) October 1, 2021
It’s worth noting that Solana’s famous “Degenerate Ape Academy” NFT collection featuring comical gorillas, also generated a great deal of attention and press in the past.
Climbing ahead
One could argue that Solana is also using the explosion of interest in NFTs to drive its own growth as an interoperable blockchain platform.
One example of this is the ETH<>SOL token bridge. Connected by Wormhole, the bridge recently went live and had more than $200 million in total value locked (TVL) at the start of October. Solana also retweeted an announcement claiming that more than 100 NFTs had moved across the bridge in just two weeks after it went live.
2 weeks in. $200M+ TVL, 100+ NFTs moved over the bridge.
Serum, Raydium markets not live yet, Terra migration next week, BSC the week after. Cross chain everything is here https://t.co/GRPrr5gJm8
— Kanav Kariya (@KariyaKanav) October 2, 2021
Meanwhile, Allbridge’s data for September showed that more than $480 million had been transferred to Solana from other blockchains.
#Allbridge users love @solana as we can see from many transfers to this #blockchain. Here are the stats about #Solana transfers throughout the entire September. And it's quite a significant share of our transaction total!#interoperability #crosschain $SOL $ABR pic.twitter.com/ejS1ckswtJ
— Allbridge (@Allbridge_io) October 1, 2021
Going to the market
Solana’s growth and its October milestones didn’t come out of nowhere. There were signs in September, when derivatives crypto exchange FTX’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s tweet hinted at an NFT marketplace. Bankman-Fried also announced that NFTs would be cross-chain for Ethereum and Solana. FTX US’ President Brett Harrison also announced that NFTs minted on FTX could be listed in SOL, ETH, and USD.
It’s worth noting here that many crypto artists might view SOLSEA as another sign of Solana’s rising dominance in the NFT space and possibly over Ethereum itself.
At the same time, Solana also marked a milestone in the more traditional finance space. Grayscale added SOL to its large cap crypto fund for the very first time, in October. At press time, the price of one SOL was $165.03.
