Solana (SOL) has seen a wild pump lately, more than doubling over the past month and hitting an 18-month high earlier this week. But it’s not just SOL that’s on the way up—the network’s top NFT project has also seen a rapid rise in value of late, registering a price climb of more than 100% in just the last seven days alone.
Mad Lads, a Solana profile picture (PFP) project launched earlier this year, has surged in price to become the top collection on the network by floor price—the price of the cheapest listed NFT on a secondary marketplace.
According to blockchain data compiled by SolanaFloor, the floor price of a Mad Lads NFT has jumped 122% over the past week to 100 SOL, or about $5,750 at present. That makes it the most valuable Solana collection by floor and also by market cap based on that floor price, which ultimately tops $57 million.
This week, Mad Lads's price jumped even higher, above $6,000 worth of Solana. Not only was this notable for the price of the assets themselves, but also because the Mad Lads floor briefly surpassed that of DeGods—once the reigning Solana project before it migrated to Ethereum earlier this year.
That news proved to be something of a temporary moral victory for some Solana backers who stuck around through a rough stretch for SOL and the ecosystem—and who may still resent the creators of DeGods bailing on the network. However, DeGods is back on top at a current floor price of 3.15 ETH, or about $6,200 at present, per NFT Price Floor.
Armani Ferrante, co-founder and CEO of Mad Lads creator Coral, told Decrypt that Solana’s NFT space needed a “new heartbeat” after DeGods left, and that he believed Mad Lads had filled that void following its buzzy launch.
LMFAOOO MAD LADS FLIPPED DEGODS FLOOR AND THOSE MFS LEFT FOR GREENER PASTURES AT THE BOTTOM 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/MVcg18q2hE
— L (@0xLawliette) November 15, 2023
Mad Lads has registered the third-most trading volume of any NFT project over the last week, per data from CryptoSlam, with about $6.9 million worth of trades. Only the Bored Ape Yacht Club ($10.2 million) and CryptoPunks ($8 million), both Ethereum projects, have higher trading volume tallies this week. DeGods racked up nearly $1.4 million worth during the span.
Why are Mad Lads on the rise? Beyond excitement over Solana’s recent momentum surge and demand from buyers to be part of its top NFT collection, Coral also offered exclusive early access to its upcoming Backpack exchange, which received a license to operate in Dubai.