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Issue 2: Solana NFT Macro Update




Cryptoslam’s data above shows the last 9 months of NFT trading across all chains. Whilst overall sales have fluctuated between 2.5 billion USD to as high as 4.6 billion USD at its peak, there are a couple metrics that stand out to me. When the price of Solana dipped late January to under 100, it seemed to reinvigorate the Solana nft space. We have had multiple projects that have flourished, and there’s little doubt that the ecosystem has matured immensely since then. Let’s revisit January 22 2022, Solana dips under 100 for the first time since September 2021 and DeGods is valued at 5.5 Solana – the floor price equivalent of 522.5USD. At this point, Solana Monkey Business is still arguably the only bluechip that no one would argue against. However, with the ascension of DeGods over the following 3-4 months is unparalleled. From creating utility for their token $DUST to upgrading the artwork in their DeadGod collection, the project propels past both non builders and builders in the space to solidify its status as the premier project, replacing the old with the upgraded new. The peak of DeGods USD value was likely around April 26 when the floor was around 345 and Solana USD value was between 95-100USD = just under 33K.



It’s wild to think that late April, a mere 6 weeks ago, was potentially the peak of Solana nfts this year. Whether that will hold true for the remainder of the year remains to be seen. No one knows if that will be the case, nor let anyone tell you that it is or will not be. In terms of the aforementioned ‘peak’, I am merely describing the USD floor price of DeGods nft project. If I was to speak on floor price in terms of Solana, well we’re currently at the peak with DeGods holding 359.69 as of this moment. The catch22 is that the USD equivalent is 13.67K USD, around a 59% dip in value if you’re into fiat conversion. In other words, if you floored a DeGod at its peak USD value on April 26, you’d be able to comfortably buy 2 DeGods right now and still have around 140 SOL left or in other words a floor DeGod on April 26 is worth 862.5 SOL at current prices. It’s honestly depressing to work this out and I am by no means fudding Solana or nft projects, I’m just commentating on the current state of the Solana nft market and reality of recent developments.


Now to summarize and say the entire Solana nft ecosystem is over would be absolutely bullshit. Whilst market cap of all projects have more than halved in the last 8 weeks if not more, there are a lot of positives. Okay Bears launched and shattered previous daily volume records as well as shifting the paradigm with their focus on branding combined with their clean aesthetic. The project is currently firmly slotted in third place for market cap with 54.3% unique ownership, one of the highest amongst established projects. The Catalina Whale Mixer, a project that had launched last year has risen from a modest 8-10 SOL in January to comfortably holding 100 and eclipsing previous OG Degenerate Ape Academy. Likely, an event that most Solana nft investors would be surprised at if you told them that to start the year. That’s not a shot at DAA, I’m still a firm believer in monoliff’s ability to execute, moreso a reflection of Catalina Whales evolution and rise to stardom. Catalina Whales have a total listing percentage of 1.49% with unique ownership of 37.76%, suggesting that there’s a higher amount of stacking amongst holders compared to Okay Bears.


Four more success stories that would round out the top 10-12 market cap projects for this year would no doubt be Blocksmith Labs, Cets on Creck, Famous Fox Federation and Taiyo Robotics. The common thread amongst all the successful top tier projects is the team behind them. FFF has been leading the charge on building out utilities for the Solana nft market. They have built out the Famous Token Market, P2P swap through FoxySwap, FoxySweep and even FoxyBid amongst a list of other unnamed utilities. FFF have even created a way for communities and projects to make raffling easier. Blocksmith Labs on the other hand has first mover advantage on the WL platform they’ve created, making it super simple to verify WL by connecting discord roles to phantom wallets.


Whilst we’re here, I may as well drop some sneaky alpha too. Late June/Early July, Cets on Creck are going to experience something confirmed by peblo is a spaces this evening. The nature of the details were left unconfirmed, however, there was certainty around something that will likely push the project back towards its local highs of 100+ in my opinion.

If we circle back to the metrics that concern me in the first image presented. Let’s take a look at the ratio between unique buyers and sellers last month. Prior to May 2022 and the LUNA fiasco, there was a relatively even if not positive unique buyer to seller ratio. However, in the month of May, we’ve seen more than double the amount of unique sellers to buyers, something we have not seen across the last 8-9 months of NFT trading. The data takes into account all cross-chain NFT projects and is not limited to just Solana, however we can assume that a lot of this data is Ethereum driven. Regardless, it still applies to our market.

The other metric that I have harped on about for the longest while is volume. In the last couple of months, daily volume has been strong. Particularly with DeGods mostly carrying through March and April, pumping immense amounts of liquidity across all types of projects. We then had a collection of projects start to formulate at the top which we’ve mentioned prior in this piece. So DeGods not only buoyed the entire market for more than 2 months, but also lengthened the amount of time we’ve been able to hold other projects with Solana mostly swinging between 90USD and 110 USD at the time. The Solana NFT market was then fortunate to have Okay Bears do over 200K SOL volume in its first 24 hours which started the trend of having almost the entirety of the spaces transaction volume concentrated on the one project. Since then, we’ve had other projects such as Trippin’ Ape Tribe which has existed for only two weeks but completed almost 420K Solana since inception. These mints and project launches have inflated the overall volume statistics you see above.

We’re currently fluctuating between 200K and 300K SOL traded on a daily basis in our ecosystem barring the odd hype launch here and there. Volume continues to be carried by DeGods and Okay Bears, but even now we are starting to see the drop in daily volume for these two projects as well.

If you look at the Okay Bears Volume chart above you’ll see numbers starting to dwindle. Time held per project for the long term investor may not change too much, however for the short term flipper, time held per project has been shortened to the hour for some of these mints. It’s a race to the exit for the flippoor, and my concern is what is the ratio of short term flippers compared to long term holders in this space? If short term flippers were to account for over 50% of the space, I’d be sure as hell bearish on around 95% of projects in the next 6 months. With only the established, proven builders to carry on.

Again, keep your eyes on the daily volume for even the top projects as they are the leading indicators of the health of the space. The current concern is that it seems like daily volume has started to trend below 200K per day with June 1 coming in at 164K and today’s volume so far coming in. That being said, we still have project drops such as Vandal City and Duppies coming in the month of June so stay tuned.

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