Solana Centered NFT Marketplace Triggers SOL Bulls To Strive $300 Moonshot

Solana (SOL) has had an impressive run this month and is now re-targeting the $200 floor. On Thursday, SOL reached a new all-time high of $214, it is expected that it will reach over $300 soon following the announcement of an NFT marketplace that integrates Solana by cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

The cryptocurrency derivatives exchange revealed on Monday that its NFT platform launched on its U.S. subsidiary, FTX.US, would allow users to mint, buy, and sell NFTs across the Solana blockchain as well as Ethereum. While the platform is native to the U.S.-based domain of the platform, the billionaire CEO of the exchange Sam Banksman Fried, also SBF, in a tweet said that non-U.S users can access it.

SBF also revealed that the platform would allow trading of NFT collections from rivaling marketplace OpenSea on FTX. The NFT marketplace was highly anticipated by investors and as such has fueled the price of SOL.

The marketplace ongoing live was flooded by submissions of NFTs for minting. There were a lot of spam requests which led the exchange to the introduction of a fee for considering submissions on the platform. SBF announced a $500 one-off payment to discourage spamming, the price was however lowered to $10 per NFT minted after complaints of the fee being too high were noted. 

Solana is booming, making waves with its surging cryptocurrency price and rising NFT and decentralized finance activity. It has gained an edge over Ethereum recently as users consider it to be performing better than Ethereum in terms of efficiency and fees.

Solana’s lowered gas fees have made it an emerging player in the NFT industry, backed by the launch of dedicated digital collectibles marketplaces such as Solanart, DigitalEyes, and its integration into music streaming platform Audius. 

Solana first launched NFTs with their own native platform Solanart in August with the introduction of Degenerate Ape Academy—a non-fungible token (NFT) project built on the Solana blockchain.

The Degenerate Ape Academy is a collection of 10,000 unique pictures of cartoon apes. The collection sold out in a mere eight minutes, with the overall trading volume reaching almost 96,000 SOL (over $5.9 million). Currently, the trading volume is around 781,700 SOL (over $143 million). 

In another development related to NFTs, September also saw Audius, a music streaming service that rewards users for supporting the network, launched on Solana.

Notably, its success has not been tied to NFTs alone. It is a similar story with DeFi for Solana. The blockchain has captured people’s attention following its epic run in which it displaced XRP as the sixth-largest asset by market cap. A look at the numbers shows a 170% increase in TVL on DeFi platforms in Solana since mid-August.

The crypto asset is already up 66.4% in September after closing August 200.8% up. Investors are bullish on the blockchain and some consider it to be a long-term competitor to Ethereum. Ethereum has been the de-facto platform for NFTs and still holds the crown for volumes, however, Solana has been billed to gain some of its market shares.