In brief
- Solana NFTs will be added to the OpenSea marketplace in April.
- The news follows months of leaks suggesting that support was in the works.
Following months of building leaks, leading NFT marketplace OpenSea confirmed today that it will indeed add support for NFTs minted on the Solana blockchain.
OpenSea revealed the news with a short teaser video posted to its official Twitter account, poking fun at the barrage of tweets pointed its way about plans to add Solana. The video, which OpenSea tweeted is about “the best kept secret in Web3,” notes that Solana support is coming in April. No date was mentioned, but the month starts on Friday.
Solana is the second-largest NFT ecosystem behind Ethereum, with an estimated market cap of $1.5 billion across its myriad collections. The Solana NFT space grew rapidly last fall on the back of rising collections like Solana Monkey Business, Degenerate Ape Academy, and Aurory. Solana offers faster, cheaper, and more energy-efficient transactions than Ethereum’s mainnet.
The best kept secret in web3🤣 pic.twitter.com/xuZn64cZ4U
— OpenSea (@opensea) March 29, 2022
The first leaks showing potential Solana integration into OpenSea appeared in January, when well-known hacker and blogger Jane Manchun Wong discovered mentions of Solana and the popular Phantom wallet in parts of the site.
Just this week, she discovered evidence that suggested the Solana launch was near, including a “Solana Beta” logo on the site, as well as support for the Solflare wallet. Recently, others on social media noticed that they could connect a Phantom wallet to OpenSea, even if the NFTs themselves aren’t yet available on the platform.
OpenSea’s teaser video quickly shows NFTs from a number of top collections on Solana, including Solana Monkey Business, Aurory, Boryoku Dragonz, Catalina Whale Mixer, and Degenerate Ape Academy.
The Solana Monkey Business account tweeted, “We are setting sail monkees!” Meanwhile, Solana metaverse platform Portals tweeted that it “can't wait for Portals to be listed on OpenSea.” Meanwhile, Magic Eden—currently the largest NFT marketplace on Solana—simply tweeted, “bring it.”
bring it
— Magic Eden 🪄 Solana's Leading NFT Marketplace (@MagicEden) March 29, 2022
The Ethereum-driven OpenSea is currently the most popular marketplace across the wider NFT industry, racking up billions of dollars each month in trading volume, including more than $5 billion in January across Ethereum and sidechain scaling solution, Polygon. In January, OpenSea was valued at $13.3 billion following a $300 million Series C raise.