Sales of Solana NFT Explode, Exceeding Ethereum in Monthly Volume for the First Time

Data from CryptoSlam indicates that in December, NFT sales surpassed Ethereum due to the increasing enthusiasm behind Solana.

Due to Solana's recent financial success, the NFT market has seen an unexpected development: in December 2023, for the first time ever, the monthly sales volume of NFTs on the network exceeded that of NFTs on Ethereum.

In contrast to $353.2 million on Ethereum, Solana NFT sales in December were approximately $366.5 million, according to statistics from analytics site CryptoSlam. The "organic" sales data provided by CryptoSlam do not include suspicious trades that are flagged as "wash trading." Approximately $381 million worth of Ethereum sales and just $10.1 million worth of Solana sales are removed.

According to CryptoSlam, Solana's total trading value of $366.5 million almost equaled the network's all-time record, which was roughly $373.5 million in October 2021 when the market was just getting started. Though never over the course of a full month's worth of deals, we have occasionally seen the daily Solana NFT sales volume surpass Ethereum.

In December, Solana witnessed over twice as many unique buyers and sellers as well as a much higher number of NFT transactions overall. According to CryptoSlam, there were around 6.6 million NFT transactions on Solana involving roughly 218,000 sellers and 279,000 purchasers. In contrast, about 143,000 buyers and approximately 114,000 sellers participated in 698,000 transactions on Ethereum.

In contrast to November's about $350 million total worth of NFT sales, Ethereum's NFT sales volume in December was essentially unchanged, whereas Solana experienced a spike from roughly $83 million worth at that time.

Naturally, the cost of Solana has increased significantly in recent times. almost the last three months, the price of SOL has more than doubled, and it has increased by almost 71% in the last month. In contrast, Ethereum has increased by almost 44% over the past three months and by 9% over the last 30 days.

The value of Solana's NFT sales may have increased in December due in part to a price rise, but this explanation does not take into consideration the roughly threefold increase in unique traders and the sixfold increase in monthly NFT transactions. Furthermore, the average Solana NFT sale actually decreased in December, going from roughly $74 in November to less than $56.

There could be two reasons for the increase in users and transactions: the general buzz around Solana and the excitement surrounding specific projects that could grant access to airdrops and other benefits. Mad Lads earned $24.5 million in transactions in December, while Tensorians, an NFT project connected to the dominant Solana marketplace Tensor, saw $28 million in trades.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club, with $19.5 million in NFT trades, was the biggest Ethereum NFT project in December, according to CryptoSlam. Pudgy Penguins came in second with roughly $18.3 million in trading.

At a glance, the data from CryptoSlam indicates that in December, trading volume created by Bitcoin Ordinals (the protocol that allows NFT-like media to be placed on the Bitcoin blockchain) exceeded that of Ethereum and Solana combined, with $881.2 million worth of trades occurring across over 493,000 transactions.

But unlike NFTs on other networks, CryptoSlam tracks Bitcoin Ordinals in a distinct way. Trading of BRC-20 tokens, which are created using the Ordinals protocol but behave like fungible, swappable tokens on other chains, is included in the data. While Solana SPL tokens are functionally identical to BRC-20 tokens, CryptoSlam does not monitor the trade of Ethereum ERC-20 tokens.

About $88.5 million worth of trades in December were in Uncategorized Ordinals, or different media assets that aren't a part of a specific project. At $27.7 million, Bitcoin Frogs was the most valuable individual Ordinals project.

What is the second most ranked Ordinals project by itself that isn't a BRC-20 token? A parody of CryptoPunks, Bitcoin Punks saw less than $3.3 million in trade activity in December. It's challenging to accept the Bitcoin statistics at face value because a significant amount of Ordinals trading that is tracked on the platform consists of fungible token deals.