Did OpenSea just save Solana’s sinking NFT boat?

Solana has evidently been able to fare better than other top L1 networks like Ethereum and BNB Chain, even though we’re in a bear market. Despite being able to put its best foot forward on the on-chain front, its NFT market stats hadn’t been that impressive over the past month.

Per data from CryptoSlam, over the past 30 days, the NFT sale figures on Solana had taken a bad hit [down by more than 50%] when compared to its peers. On networks like Ethereum, Flow, and Polygon, the numbers were down by only 33%-46% each. On BNB, in fact, this metric noted an incline of more than 31%.

However, over the past 24 hours, the tables have been turned. Solana NFT sales have risen by more than 10%. The same on networks like Ethereum and Polygon have dipped by roughly 2% each.

Identifying the catalyst that saved Solana’s bacon

On Monday, OpenSea announced the launch of the Solana Launchpad on its platform. To get the boat sailing, any creator can now launch a Solana collection and the same will appear on OpenSea automatically. As soon as minting begins on the blockchain, creators can find and share collection links with the community. The NFT marketplace’s blog post noted,

“… creators can now host a new mint from beginning to end on OpenSea. We will help creators navigate all pre-mint activity, allow list minting for their community and supporters, as well as all post-mint and secondary sales.”

Now, with the launchpad put to sea already, the marketplace’s goal remains to build “the best Solana experience” in the NFT ecosystem. Unlike other NFT marketplaces, OpenSea asserted that it will never hold or “escrow” NFTs. Until and unless they’re sold or transferred, collectors/minters will always retain their custody.

Here it is interesting to note that alongside the 10% sales rise over the past day, the number of NFT transactions executed on Solana [64.8k] remains to be higher than that of Ethereum [40.7k]. This means that the platform continues to cater to a non-concentrated user base.

Perhaps, the OpenSea launchpad catalyst has the potential to be the long-term game-changer for Solana. Resultantly, it could also assist the platform to continue giving neck-to-neck competition to its counterparts.

Read More: Solana steps up; Outperforms Ethereum and BNB Chain