Everything To Know About Solana NFT Marketplace, Solsea

The Solsea NFT marketplace plays an important role in the short history of the Solana NFT ecosystem. As a matter of fact, Solsea claims to be the first open NFT marketplace on Solana. So what does Solsea look like now, and where does it fit into the growing field of Solana NFT marketplaces?

NFT growth in 2021 led to a search for Ethereum alternatives

First off, let’s go into some quick background on Solana around the time of the Solsea NFT marketplace launch.

As is well known, 2021 was the year that NFTs really started to break out into mainstream consciousness. Without a doubt, as the year progressed Ethereum was the undisputed top of the NFT space as far as blockchains.

In fact, with a few key exceptions (NBA Top Shot on Flow and Axie Infinity, which migrated from Ethereum to the Ronin sidechain) the most well-known NFTs pretty much all lived on Ethereum. However, due to the way Ethereum functions, as NFTs got more popular, the chain actually became less attractive to many people.

For this background, let’s just focus on three main issues with Ethereum that arose when it came to its growing NFT market. Namely, these were its environmental impact, low transaction speeds, and high transaction costs. As a result of these things, demand for alternative smart contract chains that could facilitate NFT trading grew.

Solana NFTs answered the demand for non-ETH NFTs

Enter Solana. Solana officially launched in 2020 and was relatively quiet for a while. However, its status as a proof-of-stake blockchain meant that it was an alternative that improved on Ethereum as far as the three previously mentioned issues.

To be sure, by the Fall of 2021, anyone searching for non-Ethereum NFTs was likely to be pointed to Solana above other options. In this way, Solana became Ethereum’s main competition, even if Ethereum still dwarfed it in price, market cap, and usage.

There was just one more stumbling block though. While anyone foraying into Ethereum NFTs would soon happen upon OpenSea, there wasn’t a comparable NFT marketplace on Solana. And that’s what Solsea wanted to address.

The beginnings of Solana NFT marketplace Solsea

The Solsea NFT marketplace, a product of the ALL.ART protocol, launched at the end of August 2021. As the name heavily implies, it aimed to be a Solana equivalent to the then-Ethereum exclusive NFT marketplace, OpenSea.

It’s important to note that the marketplace Solanart actually launched before Solsea, in July 2021, and is generally recognized as the first Solana marketplace. Even so, Solsea painted itself as the first open Solana NFT marketplace.

At the time of launch, Solsea introduced a number of groundbreaking features for users of its NFT marketplace. For example, its features included NFTs with embedded licenses, a rarity index for NFT collections, wallet funding through FTX, and integrated NFT minting. 

Solsea also launched its NFT marketplace with a popular calendar feature that helped users track upcoming NFT drops. With all these features, plus the specific benefits of Solana NFTs versus Ethereum, Solsea quickly established itself as a home for Solana NFTs.

What is the status of the Solsea NFT marketplace today?

So did the Solsea NFT marketplace live up to its name by becoming the OpenSea of Solana NFTs? In short, no it did not.

For one thing, OpenSea launched in December 2017, long before most people had ever even heard of NFTs. In contrast, Solsea launched when NFT mania was already in full swing. Thus, it seems fair to assume that other Solana NFT marketplaces were developing their platforms at the same time as Solsea. Not to mention Solanart, which came out the month prior.

To that end, a number of Solana NFT marketplaces launched not too long after Solsea did, providing further competition. The main two being Digital Eyes and Magic Eden.

At present, Solsea actually comes in after those other three marketplaces as far as all-time trade volume. What’s more, Dapp Radar actually pegs the trade volume of a single Solana NFT collection – Solana Monkey Business – ahead of Solsea.

All in all, the Solsea NFT marketplace may not have become the “OpenSea of Solana” but it still has just over 80,000 traders and an active platform. It remains to be seen if Solsea will be able to maintain and grow its user base and platform along with the growing Solana NFT ecosystem.

Want to know more about how to buy Solana NFTs? Check out our beginners guide on Solana NFTs to help you get started!