3 min read
Solana has rapidly risen as a rival to Ethereum for NFT collectibles and decentralized finance protocols alike, with a significant uptick in activity in recent months alongside a surge in the price of SOL. As the ecosystem expands, so too are tools to help traders, investors, and collectors alike navigate the space.
Today, Nansen—a crypto analytics platform favored by NFT traders—announced that it will soon integrate Solana, joining Ethereum and other existing blockchain networks supported by the site.
With the upcoming functionality, which is pegged to launch in Q1 2022, users can tap into Nansen to track activity within Solana DeFi protocols, view how new Solana NFT collections are performing at launch, and view the sales and price patterns for popular existing NFT projects.
Nansen has become a popular resource for NFT flippers, or those who aim to buy low and sell for a significant return, as the analytics tools highlight burgeoning sales trends. The platform’s “smart money” ethos has been praised by NFT traders for tipping them off to rising interest in collections, for example.
The platform tracks more than 100 million crypto wallets created across Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain, and Fantom, “enriching” the data with public wallet labels. That way, for example, NFT collectors can see which projects that the community’s best-known traders are buying into (or selling out of), particularly with Nansen’s “NFT Leaderboard” feature.
An NFT acts like a deed of ownership to a verifiably unique digital item, including artwork, video files, and interactive video game items. The market has expanded significantly in 2021, including nearly $10.7 billion worth of trading volume in Q3, per data from DappRadar.
In September, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik told Decrypt about the opportunity he sees for the NFT space to introduce newcomers to the crypto industry and build affinity with digital collectibles.
“DeFi has brought the capital into crypto, and NFTs are bringing the people into crypto,” he said. “If you ask a normal person about finance—they don't care about finance, so why would they care about decentralized finance? But if you ask them about music, art, entertainment, or gaming, there's a lot of people who are really passionate about these topics.”
While Ethereum is currently the leading blockchain platform for NFT collectibles, Solana has emerged as a popular alternative in recent months. Solana’s lower fees and faster transactions have apparently helped spur adoption of the platform for collectibles, which now has more than 130 active projects, per data from Solanalysis.
Crypto research firm Messari recently compiled data from CryptoSlam that shows more than $500 million worth of secondary market NFT trading volume by the end of September. However, the findings excluded Solana Monkey Business, one of the top collections on the platform—and a favorite of celebs like Steve Harvey and Alexis Ohanian—so the actual total is even higher.
Meanwhile, DeFi activity has also climbed significantly on the platform since summer, with DeFi Llama reporting a current total of $15.2 billion worth of assets locked in Solana protocols. That’s up from $1.22 billion as of August 1. In terms of SOL rather than USD, it’s a rise from 33.6 million to nearly 60.8 million in the same timespan.
The value of Solana’s SOL cryptocurrency has likewise soared as the platform has seen rising developer activity of late, growing from $34 on August 1 to a new all-time high of nearly $260 set on Saturday, per data from CoinGecko.
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