Solana
In April, the Solana Foundation announced state compression, an ecosystem-wide experiment with a new approach to reduce costs for decentralized apps by magnitudes. State compression is a data structure that builds upon the blockchain fundamental of Merkle trees to allow decentralized apps to store hashed smart contract data on-chain that updates directly onto the Solana ledger. It cuts data storage and execution costs down dramatically, while maintaining the security and decentralization of Solana’s base layer.
State compression is a blockchain game-changer for scale and cost that’s already bearing fruit throughout the Solana ecosystem. Minting NFTs on Solana with compression is much cheaper than minting NFTs without it — even more so when compared to the cost of minting on other blockchains.
Now, seven months after the announcement of compressed NFTs, the Solana Foundation has conclusive data on the actual cost of using compression. As of Dec. 20, 2023, any project can use cNFTs to mint one million NFTs for $247.80 (compared to the initial estimates of $113.42 in April 2023) — significantly less than more than $6 million it would cost to mint one million NFTs on Ethereum, or the more than $98,000 it would cost on Polygon.