Solana has a new punching bag in the NFT market and it is none other than…
Despite the gloomy NFT action in 2022, trends continue to emerge from this market for two main guests. First, Ethereum [ETH]the king of altcoins and Solana [SOL], the so-called ‘Ethereum killer’. But did this killer have the strength to beat the king on the NFT battlefield?
All hail the king
Was ETH really the king within the NFT market at press time? The press time statistics gave a different picture. Ethereum’s NFT volume measured in dollars fell by ~90% from January, with average sales below $1 billion per month in Q3. Simply put, sales averaged less than $1 billion per month in Q3 compared to $4.6 billion in Q2.
Additionally, the decline highlighted not only a slowing market for NFTs, but also a drop in ETH’s price which most NFTs use as their base currency.
Here’s another surprise for the ETH NFT clan – but this time a really good one. Azuki, unlike other digital collectibles, saw a significant spark in sales volume due to its latest release. After its release, sales volume increased by nearly 1,168% according to data on CryptoSlam, registering >$2 million in sales.
In fact, it was #1 on both CryptoSlam and OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplaces.
Source: CryptoSlam
What led to this increase?
The popular NFT project Azuki released PBT (Physical Backed Token) to tie real objects to the blockchain. PBT will use the BEAN chip, which can generate asymmetric key pairs, achieve decentralized authentication and track ownership of physical objects. The team behind this project took to Twitter to highlight this development.
Introducing the Physical Backed Token (PBT): an open source token standard that links a physical object to a digital token on the Ethereum blockchain. pic.twitter.com/iXavmJR5xv
— Azuki (@AzukiOfficial) 17 October 2022
Launching on January 12, 2022, Azuki is a collection of 10,000 avatars that provides exclusive member access to a corner of the internet where Web3 enthusiasts, builders and artists (collectively called The Garden) connect to create a decentralized future.
In addition to this, other successful projects, such as CryptoPunks and MAYC also made a comeback on the red carpet.
Meet the challenger
Solana and Ethereum continued to battle for NFT industry supremacy. Solana’s growing momentum stalled a bit, though it remained visible. Several volume peaks were recorded in September and October 2022, while Ethereum’s volume went south.
Source: CryptoSlam
Furthermore, NFT sales on the Solana blockchain exceeded $1 billion in total volume all-time this month for the first time, according to NFT sales tracker CryptoSlam. In doing so, it surpassed Ethereum by recording massive growth in terms of total NFT sales in the last month.
Here it also managed to grow by more than 100%, while Ethereum registered a negative growth of 18% in the last 30 days. Although individual projects at SOL had a somewhat mixed reception as tweeted by Messari here.
3/ While a @sudoswap fork gains market share on @solanasudoswap itself has lost steam, with volumes down 80% from their peak.
Sudoswap has managed to maintain its market share gains of around 5%. pic.twitter.com/4EHQFanYyx
— Messari (@MessariCrypto) 17 October 2022
But needless to say, Solana NFTs gained ground compared to ETHs. But could the former actually have the legs to surpass the king of altcoins?
Well, let’s wait and see.
