Solana NFT Summer, OkayBears Soar & Chimpers Launch

State of the Market

It has been a slow week for NFTs, with transaction volumes on OpenSea at just half that of the previous week ($590M this week vs $1.2B last week). The week of 9 May is the lowest volume week since the start of 2022. This is not entirely unexpected given the events in crypto last week, which spooked investors and drew the spotlight away from NFTs. ETH also hit a new low for the year last week — briefly touching $1,700.

I expect this low-volume trend to continue as the market takes a breather and ETH finds its footing. In a crypto bear market, liquidity for NFTs can dry up quite quickly, so it is important to manage risks while awaiting signs that may signal the start of the next bull cycle. Meanwhile, good teams will continue to build and deliver, and we can expect many more interesting things to happen later in the year. Make no mistake — NFTs are not going away. There is no need to feel FOMO or rush into projects in the current market conditions.

This week, we take a deeper look at NFTs on Solana. Firstly, we can see that Ethereum is still by far the dominant chain for NFT trading, capturing ~85 – 90% of trading volumes. Solana is in a distant second position but has been rising fast — in the past 7 days, it has captured almost 1/6 of the total NFT sales volume. A large part of this is driven by OkayBears, the top traded collection on Solana. We discuss OkayBears and Solana NFTs later in this report.

Trading volumes on the major Solana NFT marketplaces have been increasing (in SOL terms). The number of daily active users trading Solana NFTs has been fluctuating between 10,000 to 25,000, hitting an all-time high of over 25,000 just a few days ago. Overall, the data is positive and is indicative of a vibrant, growing NFT ecosystem. It remains to be seen if this trend will continue.

Top NFT Collections This Week

Despite the lower volumes on OpenSea and crypto volatility in recent weeks, the floor prices of most major collections have maintained relatively well (in ETH terms). For example, Bored Apes are still at a 100E floor price. This is generally a healthy sign, indicating that owners are not panic selling. Even Azuki prices have recovered somewhat from the news