NFT marketplace OpenSea has announced the upcoming integration of the Solana (SOL) blockchain into its platform, a welcome move that industry experts and numbers suggest could have mutual benefits for both ecosystems, as well as positive sentiment for the wider NFT space.
A start date in April is slated to not be disclosed yet. Solana will join the list of three networks: Ethereum, Polygon Tier 2, and Klaytn, and will appear in the All Chains dropdown on the All Chains tab of the rankings page.
Referring to the sheer volume of tweets and media coverage about the possibility of Solana launching, OpenSea hilariously called the announcement “Web3’s biggest secret.” Blockchain CEO Adam Montgomery also shared his take on the launch.
Their sixteen-second teaser was met with great fanfare, which was confirmed numerically, with the tweet racking up 615,500 views, 8,964 retweets, and 21,700 likes in the eighteen hours since release.
If you haven’t heard from me in a long time… here’s why. Huge effort to build this, very proud of the @opensea team https://t.co/sZQl2HITpU — Adam Montgomery (@montasaurus_rex) March 29, 2022
The arrival of the NFT marketplace LooksRare in January 2022 was the first real challenge to the leadership of OpenSea’s longstanding monopoly in the NFT space. This led to the adoption of a giveaway model that provided savvy investors with the opportunity to claim LOOKS governance tokens as incentives to use the platform.
Quantitative data from Dune Analytics shows that LooksRare has registered a total of 55,874 users since its inception on January 10, generating over $21.3 billion in trading volume. In comparison, OpenSea has registered 884,052 new users since the release of its competitor, yet these investors have traded just over $12 billion.
For this reason, LooksRare is currently leading the battle for market share based on trading volume with a percentage of 52.4% compared to OpenSea’s 47.6%.
Related: 5 NFT marketplaces that could topple OpenSea in 2022
In the case of the Solana ecosystem, DappRadar market data shows that Magic Eden currently leads the way with $41.05 million in trading volume over the last 30 days, followed by Solanart and Solsea with $4.39 million and $656,830 respectively. .
Following Magic Eden’s joint partnership with entertainment firm Overtime, Magic Eden co-founder Jack Lou told Cointelegraph that he believes NFTs will give “the next generation of sports fans [возможность] exercise to the fullest.” different than the previous generation of millennials who grew up passively watching sports on TV or in real life.”
