Solana's Okay Bears Top All Ethereum NFT Projects With $18M in Sales in One Day

Ethereum remains the dominant platform for NFTs, but rising rival Solana is putting up a fight as new projects draw more attention and leading marketplaces embrace the network. And over the last day, a new Solana NFT project has generated more trading volume than any Ethereum one.

Okay Bears, a Solana-based profile picture project spanning 10,000 unique avatars, launched yesterday on Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden at a mint price of 1.5 SOL (about $145) per NFT. Secondary market sales quickly surged, sending the price of the collection soaring and generating millions of dollars’ worth of trading volume.

According to data from leading NFT marketplace OpenSea, Okay Bears is the top-traded collection that it tracks, beating an array of prominent Ethereum collections. The marketplace shows 187,543 SOL worth of secondary trading over the last 24 hours, or about $18.4 million worth at Solana’s current price. That covers the entire market, not just sales on OpenSea itself.

Compare that to 4,565 ETH ($13.1 million) worth of trading for Gary Vaynerchuk’s new VeeFriends V2 launch over the last 24 hours, as well as 4,136 ETH ($11.9 million) in volume for Yuga Labs’ recently-acquired Meebits and 3,534 ETH ($10.1 million) for new project Imaginary Ones.

This appears to be the first time that a Solana NFT project has beaten individual Ethereum projects in terms of 24-hour trading volume. Overall, Solana NFT trading volume is up 216% over the past 24 hours to $29.1 million, according to data from CryptoSlam—but Ethereum sits at $104 million over the same span (down 25%).

"We are thrilled to have launched and seen 96% of the trade volume for Okay Bears since launch,” Tiffany Huang, Magic Eden’s head of content and marketing, told Decrypt. “This is a new era of growth for Solana. Solana projects have just as bright of a future as projects on other chains. Communities, regardless of chains, will ultimately pick winning collections.”

Solana analytics platform ChainCrunch tweeted early this morning that Tuesday marked the single largest day ever for NFT trading volume on the platform. It was also the top day for unique users paying fees on the network, and the most active Solana apps in a single day, according to ChainCrunch’s data.

An NFT works like a deed of ownership to a unique digital item, including things like artwork, profile pictures, sports collectibles, and more.

Okay Bears is reminiscent of the popular Ethereum project Bored Ape Yacht Club, with animal-themed avatars that sport a randomized array of traits. As with the Bored Apes, the creators of Okay Bears plan to reward holders with future NFT drops and additional perks and benefits ahead on an extensive roadmap.

As of this writing, the cheapest-available Okay Bears NFT is listed for 52 SOL on the top Solana marketplace Magic Eden, or about $5,100. Magic Eden likewise tweeted that it has seen record overall NFT trading volume over the past day. Huang told Decrypt that the platform generated over 380,000 SOL (about $37.4 million) of secondary trading volume in a 24-hour span, a record for the marketplace.

Editor's note: This story was updated after publication to include comments from Magic Eden.