What's Driving Solana's Come Back?
Deep dive into Solana ecosystem, from blockchain art, to airdrops and even memecoins...
Hello friends 👋,
Solana is spiking in interest, with SOL value increasing by +900% over the past year and 1.1M daily active wallets (vs. 300k on Ethereum), according to Messari Crypto.
Kicking off our first deep dive of the year, we’ll go deep into the Solana ecosystem, focusing on the crypto art scene.
In today’s deep dive:
What is Solana?
What are the top Solana NFT marketplaces?
What are Solana’s artists and artworks to watch?
What’s the best Solana crypto wallet?
Why is Solana's interest and value rising?
🧱 What is Solana?
Solana is a blockchain that uses SOL as its cryptocurrency. It is unique for different reasons, like being blazing fast and highly cheap gas prices. To accomplish this, it uses a hybrid between Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH), the second being Solana's novel method.
Proof of Stake (PoS) is a blockchain consensus mechanism where users 'stake' their cryptocurrency as collateral to validate transactions. The more they stake, the higher their chances of being chosen to confirm transactions and earn rewards. It's energy-efficient and more scalable than older methods like Proof of Work.
Proof of History (PoH), on the other hand, is a unique approach. It creates a historical record of events, essentially a cryptographic timestamp, to establish the sequence and timing of transactions. This sequence ensures a consistent and verifiable order of events, significantly speeding up the transaction validation process on the blockchain.
🏪 Solana NFT marketplaces
The NFT scene on Solana has taken off at breakneck speed. But you'll notice it's mostly about profile pics and collectibles. That is why I've put a spotlight on generative, AI, and crypto art in this lineup of Solana NFT marketplaces. We're talking everything from 1/1 pieces to long-form, short-form, and multi-editions.
Exchange.art
Second to no one regarding artists’ release options (1/1s, multi-editions, and collections), exchange art is moving the needle in terms of the crypto art movement in Solana.
Code Canvas
Code Canvas powers long-form generative art using the curated model. So far, eight artists have released generative art collections. Stay tuned as I highlight some of this in a bit.
Magic Eden
This is the Opensea of Solana, indexing and supporting almost any NFT token minted in this blockchain. Magic Eden started in Solana but quickly expanded to other blockchains and now supports Bitcoin Ordinals, Ethereum, and Polygon. If you are looking for crypto art, this isn’t the place tho, as most of the collections are PFPs and collectibles.
Mallow.art
Mallow is unique because it offers 0% fees. This marketplace doesn’t charge anything for selling or collecting NFTs on Solana.
Other Marketplaces
Tensor looks more like the Solana version of Blur. It is also worth noting that Form Function, a popular NFT marketplace, was discontinued a few months ago.
Although there are plenty of options, the figures of galleries or memberships focusing on blockchain art haven’t matured or aren’t as popular. This could open the door for established digital galleries to expand their blockchain reach.
🖼 Solana’s Art and Artists
I've gotta say, I was pretty surprised to see how many artists are getting into minting on Solana. And it's not just a recent trend – some have been at it for over two years, so it's not just about jumping on the bandwagon.
As usual, I'm picking artists based on my tastes and criteria to spotlight a few who I think are pushing the art movement forward. Remember, this list has no definitive right or wrong, and I'm probably missing out on mentioning quite a few talented folks.
Long-Form Generative Art
Scenes from a Train Window by Studio Yorktown.
Fract by Leander Herzog.
Umbrae by Alessandro Fiore.
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Curated Generative Art
Crypto Art
1/1s by Lisanne Haack.
1/1s by John Le Studio.
1/1s by Degen Poet.
1/1s by Douglas McCurdy.
1/1s by Laura El.
1/1s by Joice Loo.
1/1s by Ege Subasi.
Photography
💵 Solana Crypto Wallets
Phantom
Phantom is the most popular option when it comes to Solana, as it offers an outstanding UI/UX and plenty of the features you are looking for. It recently integrated with Ethereum. You don’t need to look elsewhere, but an additional wallet caught my interest as they innovated in another area…
Backpack
Backpack is the first wallet for xNFTs… A novel innovation that some might call dynamic NFTs.
An xNFT can be a game, an NFT gallery, or a crypto price tracker - anything that can be written with executable code.
Besides common usages like transferring assets, it lets you message your friends in the app. Additionally, this wallet gained momentum as they released Mad Labs, one of Solana's hottest NFT projects (collectible side).
📈 Why is Solana's interest and value rising?
Towards the end of 2023, Solana has been in the spotlight, and the value of different assets has been trending up aggressively. An easy way to measure popularity is by looking at Google Trends. Solana search traffic passed Ethereum in December 2023.
To be fair, this example doesn’t count all the L2 chains that are part of the Ethereum ecosystem, such as Polygon, Base, Avalanche, Optimism, and others. It is hard for me to envision Solana being more popular in the long term, but we have to admit this looks intriguing…
Before we dig deeper, something is clear. The main reasons driving Solana's popularity aren’t purely related to blockchain or crypto art. Nevertheless, it is causing waves that extend to other places of the ecosystem, like artists and collectors becoming more interested in NFTs minted on Solana.