Is the Future of NFTs in Ethereum or Solana?

“Inducing good moods makes people more receptive to bullshit and more gullible in general; they are less apt to detect deception or identify misleading information.” — Daniel Kahneman, author of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

🛑 At the time of writing some of the figures presented may have been at their all-time-high. With the recent market shifts however, some figures may now currently be lower.

POTENTIAL

NFTs are full of potential — potential we have yet to fully realize. Unfortunately, the hypnotic all is well hyped noise across faux NFT communities has lured many down dangerous paths — into the dens of thieves and deluded realities, thereby robbing some of us and tainting future possibilities with fear and doubt. Between the noise, what signals exist to guide us towards a more reliable path forward?

When we reflect on the longevity of NFTs as a cultural phenomenon and new technology we must wonder, can we look to the past to uncover where the future lies? Both Ethereum and Solana are two prominent chains seen as driving us into the future of NFTs and we’d like to explore what we’ve seen from projects that provided real value to their communities in order to see where we might all be potentially headed.

FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE

ETHEREUM: WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

The first blockchain used for the NFT market was Ethereum.

CryptoPunks was created in 2017 and was one of the first NFT projects in the market. The curious aspect is that the entire collection (10k NFTs) was free to mint at first and all the revenues came from the secondary market and trading activities.

CryptoKitties is another early and popular Ethereum NFT project that uses blockchain technology within games. In CryptoKitties, users collect and breed NFTs. Each kitty has a unique genome that defines its appearance and traits. Players can breed their kitties to create new furry friends and unlock rare cattributes.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection is probably the most popular and also the most controversial NFT project in the industry. BAYC has increased its value incredibly, in fact, some of the NFTs are worth millions in $USD. Buying an Ape, users gain membership access to a club whose benefits and offerings will increase over time. Bored Ape can serve as digital identity, and open digital doors. The latest initiative of the project is in developing a metaverse with the support of Otherside: in there, the Apes will be an avatar and will let users interact in that digital space.

Lastly we can introduce Decentraland: it can be considered the first metaverse, a virtual online space that is completely third-dimensional. The platform is built on the Ethereum blockchain and allows players to buy plots of land using its in-house crypto token MANA. Players can purchase land and explore Decentraland and can take complete control of the platform through smart contracts. The interesting aspect is that the virtual space has also become a place to organize events such as AMAs or conferences, no more in the real world, but in the metaverse.

GRANTING BROADER ACCESS

SOLANA: GROWTH IN THE NFT SPACE

In the latter parts of 2021 the NFT space met an important change: Ethereum gas fees became too high, whereby a mint transaction crept up to two times the price of the mint in gas in some cases, which led to the failure of many new projects.

In the meantime, the Solana ecosystem had just begun to heat up in the NFT space. Their early stages were not easy for sure, given the chain’s unfamiliarity, but it slowly gathered exposure. And because of its low gas fees, it enabled new projects to launch their collection with a lower investment compared with ETH.

Solana platforms such as Solanart and Magic Eden became important names across socials and they began to build trust amongst users. The key difference between these marketplaces and ETH’s was the barrier to entry — projects had to be verified in order to be listed, while on OpenSea anyone can list their collection, even going so far as copying other collections’ names. In SOL marketplaces, creators first need to verify the collection with the Marketplace team in order to be able to trade it there. This feature gave SOL a critical advantage. When compared with Polygon, for example, whose main marketplace is OpenSea, many scam projects listed their faux projects there, which ultimately financially hurt many NFT enthusiasts.

Collections such as Aurory, minted on August 2021, Famous Fox Federation (September 2021), Pesky Penguins (October 2021), DeGods (October 2021), SouloFox (October 2021) are considered some of the OG Solana projects and some of them reached really high floor price, around 350 SOL right now.

During the ecosystem’s growth many other projects began to step into Solana. And with the recent launch of the Okay Bears collection, we can probably say that Solana got its blessing as a widely recognised NFT market. The Okay Bears collections was created with the support of Magic Eden, one of the most important NFT Marketplaces on Solana, and Coin Telegraph, a well known crypto-news platform which attracted lots of attention, creating incredible volume for OKB in a short time.

CONCLUSIONS

History has shown us just how much innovation shifts over time. Airline carriers from the early 1900s no longer exist, and today 5,000 airline carriers are in operation around the world when, at one time, there were just a few carriers. Comparatively, the innovation in crypto remains early, and we can likely assume that we’re heading towards a future that is more likely to be multi-chain, given how diverse our existing world needs are. But which chain will appeal to the masses, pushing through the noise, and signaling reliability?

• What do you think the culture and technology of NFTs are signaling, in spite of the noise?
• If we could rank each of the projects in terms of their technology, social appeal, or other factors, which factors do you think will take us into the future?
• Do you feel the chain that grants the most access will be the chain of the future for NFTs?

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