Solana Saga Owners Got a Free NFT—Now They’re Selling for Over $1,000

Solana Saga smartphone owners continue to pull in the perks, including immensely valuable airdrops that are worth more than the cost of the phone itself—that is, before the initial run of the Android phones sold out. And the latest is an NFT that’s now selling for more than $1,000.

Saga Monkes launched on January 6 with a look that's reminiscent of the hot Node Monkes project on Bitcoin Ordinals, even though the projects are unrelated and the art is distinct. There's only so many ways you can pixelate a monkey, after all.

It was released via an exclusive airdrop to holders of the Solana Saga Genesis NFT that’s minted during initial phone setup. A total of 8,505 Saga Monkes NFTs were airdropped for free to eligible wallets as of a snapshot taken on January 2.

Quickly, demand for Saga Monkes accelerated. Late Tuesday, the Solana NFTs were listed on secondary marketplaces at a starting price of about $1,250 worth of SOL. That’s more than double the price of the Saga smartphone, which last sold for $599 before the phones sold out in December.

So far on Wednesday, the average sale price for a Saga Monkes NFT is $1,069, per data from CryptoSlam. It’s the top-selling NFT project on any network over the last 24 hours, according to the site, with over $2.1 million worth of sales in that span. That’s a 368% day-over-day jump.

Prices have cooled slightly into Wednesday, with the floor price—or price of the cheapest-listed NFT on a marketplace—falling to 7.58 SOL as of this writing, or about $740 worth. Even so, that’s a sizable perk for people who bought Solana Labs’ crypto-friendly handset.

It’s one of many such perks that Solana developers and community members have offered up to owners of the approximately 20,000 smartphones produced in the initial batch.

Owners have also been able to claim an airdrop of the BONK meme coin that was worth more than $1,000 at peak value in December, and helped drive the sellout of the devices. Early buyers could also claim a free Claynosaurz: Call of Saga NFT last year, which now start at 16.87 SOL on marketplaces—about $1,650 worth.

Saga Monkes said that it will mint additional NFTs to airdrop to Saga owners who minted their Genesis NFT after the initial snapshot, but there’s no timeline for the next wave of NFTs.

Solana Labs has not yet confirmed future plans for the Saga smartphone, including whether it will produce more of the device or create follow-up phones, but the company has been teasing additional plans following December’s sellout.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to clarify the differences between Saga Monkes and the Node Monkes project on Bitcoin.