The Solana ecosystem is exploding with 8 million new NFTs every day

• Solana’s NFT ecosystem saw explosive growth in daily new NFTs during the third quarter, according to Messari.
• So far in the fourth quarter, the Solana ecosystem has been set back by a price crash of over 59 percent.

The growth of Solana’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) ecosystem could point to a possible return to bullishness for SOL. The Solana NFT ecosystem has exploded in activity during 2022 despite a price drop in the cross-crypto market.

Crypto market intelligence platform Messari points out in its “State of Solana Q3 2022” report that the total number of daily new NFTs in the Solana ecosystem increased to over 8 million. This represented a growth of 19.3 per cent from the 2nd quarter which itself saw an increase of 46.5 per cent.

Solana NFT space activity in the third quarter saw an increase of approximately 8.5 times from the NFT mining figures recorded a year ago, the report noted. Messari wrote in a recent chirping;

The Solana NFT ecosystem continued to grow in Q3. The total number of daily new NFTs increased to over 8 million, representing a growth of 19.3% QoQ. For perspective, this growth continued after increasing 46.4% in Q2 and is ~8.5 times the level seen a year ago,

Interestingly, while the total number of daily new NFTs on Solana grew in Q3, secondary sales volume on the network fell by 62 percent. Messari highlighted in the report that this may have been due to macro forces that could have stalled the secondary market as unique sellers outnumbered buyers.

The Solana ecosystem also made significant progress in other metrics. First, the assessment noted that the Solana ecosystem saw a sharp increase in overall user activity, achieving a 70 percent quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) increase in non-voting transactions in the third quarter.

SOL ready for a price increase in Q4?

While the Solana ecosystem recorded steady progress in NFT market growth, the price of its native token, SOL, has been a pain point as it crashed heavily during the fourth quarter.

At the time of writing, SOL was trading at around $13.46, down 6.07 percent in the last 24 hours. This represents a drop in value of 59.4 per cent since the beginning of October and a drop in price of 92.1 per cent so far this year.

The price drop has been attributed to market movements that have created FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) for the asset, such as investor concerns over Solana’s connection to the collapsed Sam Bankman-Fried-founded trading firm Alameda Research.

According to Solana tokenonic data on Solana Compass, a Solana blockchain explorer, Alameda remains one of the largest holders of SOL as it owns 48.6 million SOL or about 8.75 percent of the circulating supply of the token.

Investors have continued to be concerned about the impact a possible liquidation of tokens by the bankrupt firm would have on the price of SOL. Analysts have noted, however, that with Alameda and FTX undergoing bankruptcy proceedings that are taking time, the assets may not be liquidated anytime soon. Likewise, tokens are also earned and scheduled to be unlocked gradually.