Altcoins
NFT

Solana NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have finally gone live on Opensea, the leading NFT marketplace.

Despite being the home ground of Ethereum-based NFTs, OpenSea’s users have long requested integration of the Solana network.

Launching in beta with 165 NFT collections and partners, OpenSea plans to “improve the Solana experience” over time and add more collections every day.

OpenSea said: “Solana has emerged as one of the fastest growing NFT ecosystems in the world, and is among the most requested chains by the OpenSea community. We believe the future of web3 is multi-chain, and we’re excited to welcome Solana to OpenSea.”

Whilst Solana is known for its lower fees and faster transactions compared to Ethereum, the network has thus far failed to overtake the DeFi top dog in terms of market cap.

A victim of a broader lull in the current NFT markets, the integration of Solana did not stimulate sales. On April 7, a day after release, total NFT sales across Solana’s network were down 21%.

Although this lull has partly recovered, it is endemic of the fact that Ethereum sales will continue to dictate the NFT market’s prospects for the foreseeable future. As it stands, Ethereum’s daily trading volume is nearly six times that of Solana’s, according to CryptoSlam data.

The Solana integration marked an important milestone for OpenSea following the company raising $300 million at a $13 billion valuation in January.

After hitting record levels at the start of 2022, trading volume in the NFT industry has petered out further into Q1 as initial hype fades away.