Solana is gunning for Ethereum’s crown as the battle for supremacy among smart contract platforms rages on. Even though Ethereum continues to lead the pack in this regard, it has not discouraged others who have been rapidly growing to steal market share from it. Solana has no doubt been the most powerful of these contenders, especially with the growth of its NFTs space.
These NFTs have been doing quite well on the network, attracting millions of new users to the Solana blockchain. Ethereum remains ahead in terms of volume but it seems this may not be for much longer as some Solana NFT projects have been breaking records.
Okay Bears Are In
The Okay Bears NFT was like any other NFT launch on the Solana network. It had a whitelist which allowed those who got whitelisted to easily mint the NFTs on the mint day. However, this unassuming project would prove to be a game-changer for the Solana network as it has rapidly grown in popularity and returned one of the highest NFT volumes on record.
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Launching a collection of 10,000 unique profile picture NFTs, Okay Bears had seen a mint price of $145 apiece. However, once these NFTs had hit the secondary market, it would completely change the way NFTs are seen on the Solana blockchain.
Interest in the Okay Bears had grown and in a matter of 24 hours, had recorded more than $18.4 million in trading volume. With this, the NFT collection broke records set by incredibly popular collections on the Ethereum network.
SOL trending at $96 | Source: SOLUSD on TradingView.com
It set the record for the highest sales on Solana in the space of a day. This volume meant that it had beat out Vee Friends, an NFT collection on the blockchain network, which had seen a volume of $13.1 million, and the popular Meebits at $11.9 million.
Solana has now announced that it plans to introduce an exclusive marketplace for the Okay Bears entitled Bear Market. There will also be member-only NFTs drops and other benefits to owners of Okay Bears. Very similar to the perks enjoyed by members of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC).
Solana Running With Ethereum
The real volume on various smart contract platforms continues to grow. Ethereum remains the natural leader in this regard. However, other smart contract platforms like Solana are still making a play. These networks which are significantly younger than Ethereum have been chipping at the market share for a while.
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Solana’s real volume has put it ahead of other top competitors such as Cardano. It is now the third-largest smart contract network by real volume with $310 million. Only following behind Ethereum and Terra at $2.46 billion and $506 million respectively.
On the market cap front, it remains a top contender. Solana presently sits at 6th place on the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap list with a market cap of $32.66 billion. The digital asset is currently trading at $97.84 at the time of this writing.
Featured image from CoinGeek, chart from TradingView.com