Solana's monthly NFT sales surpass Ethereum for the first time

Solana's recent leap in growth has produced a surprising result in the NFT market: monthly Solana NFT sales beat Ethereum NFT sales in December 2023 for the first time. According to data from analytics platform CryptoSlam, Solana NFT sales were worth around $366.5 million in December compared to $353.2 million on Ethereum. CryptoSlam's “organic” sales figures exclude suspicious transactions marked as “wash trading,” with Ethereum NFT sales excluding $381 million while Solana NFT sales only excluding 10, 1 million dollars. According to CryptoSlam, Solana's total transaction count of $366.5 million almost matches the network's all-time high, which was worth around $373.5 million in October 2021 when the space was just heating up. Solana also saw the number of unique buyers and sellers double in December and a much higher total number of NFT transactions. CryptoSlam reports approximately 218,000 sellers and 279,000 buyers on Solana in nearly 6.6 million NFT transactions. Meanwhile, Ethereum has about 114,000 sellers and more than 143,000 buyers with 698,000 transactions.

Ethereum NFT sales volume in December was fairly steady compared to November's total value of nearly $350 million, while Solana saw a surge from around $83 million at the time. Of course, Solana has seen its price increase significantly in recent times. SOL is up more than 71% in the past month and has more than quadrupled in price in the past three months. In contrast, Ethereum is up 9% over the past 30 days and about 44% since the last three months.

Solana price chart. Source: TradingView


Solana's price surge may be part of the reason why the value of its NFT sales soared in December, but it doesn't account for the nearly tripling of unique traders and the increase in monthly NFT transactions. sixfold. Additionally, average NFT sales on Solana actually dropped from around $74 in November to less than $56 in December. The increase in users and transactions is likely due to the broader momentum surrounding Solana and the hype surrounding specific projects tied to access to airdrops and other perks. For example, Tensorians, the NFT project tied to leading Solana marketplace Tensor, saw $28 million worth of transactions in December, while Mad Lads generated $24.5 million in transactions. pandemic. According to CryptoSlam, the top Ethereum NFT project in December was Bored Ape Yacht Club with NFT transactions worth $19.5 million, followed by Pudgy Penguins with transactions worth about $18.3 million. At a glance, CryptoSlam's data suggests that Bitcoin Ordinals transactions – that is, the protocol that allows NFT-like media to be included on the Bitcoin blockchain – have generated more trading volume than Ethereum and Solana combined in the past year. December, with a value of 881.2 million USD across more than 493,000 transactions. However, CryptoSlam tracks Bitcoin Ordinals differently than NFTs on other networks. The data includes BRC-20 token transactions, which are minted through the Ordinals protocol but function as fungible tokens, which are interchangeable on other chains. CryptoSlam does not track trading of Ethereum ERC-20 tokens or Solana SPL tokens, similar to BRC-20 tokens. Uncategorized Ordinals – meaning various media assets not part of an identified project – generated transactions worth around $88.5 million in December, with the top single Ordinals project being Bitcoin Frogs reached $27.7 million. The next highest ranked single Ordinals project is the BRC-20 token? Bitcoin Punks, a CryptoPunks knockoff, with a trading value of nearly $3.3 million in December. Fungible token transactions make up a huge portion of the Ordinals transactions tracked on the platform, causing It is difficult to get Bitcoin data at face value.