OpenSea Just Said They’re Integrating Solana NFTs in April

OpenSea launched in December of 2017. Today, it stands as the largest NFT marketplace in the world. Since it dominates the market when it comes to NFT trading, ensuring that your NFTs are supported on the platform is critically important. At the end of the day, their user volume could make or break a project.

And now, a lot more projects are about to get access to OpenSea. The company just announced that they will add Solana NFTs starting in April 2022.

OpenSea unveiled the news on Twitter earlier today (Mar. 29, 2022). With this move, Solana will become the fourth blockchain network whose NFTs can trade on OpenSea. Previously, OpenSea added integrations that support Ethereum, Polygon, and Klaytn. Solana is the third-largest blockchain in terms of NFT sales. To date, there has been over $1.26 billion sold to 244,107 buyers across more than 1.3 million transactions. And it stands to reason that OpenSea integrations will only increase Solana’s popularity.

This announcement wasn’t entirely unexpected. In January 2022, tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong tweeted that OpenSea was working on Solana integration. Scumbags founder B. Haley tweeted a similar image showing OpenSea’s blockchain filter featuring Solana in November 2021.

A stronger competitor

When it comes to Web3 marketplaces, Magic Eden is currently the leading platform for Solana NFTs. It has some 414,260 traders and $706 million in total sales volume. For comparison, OpenSea has recorded $22.73 billion in NFT sales thanks to its 1.3 million buyers. And its worth? A staggering $13.3 billion.

But does its size make OpenSea the best place to buy SOL? Not necessarily.

OpenSea will have a tough time competing with Magic Eden’s low transaction fees. Magic Eden charges a 2% transaction fee, but it has no listing fee. OpenSea, on the other hand, charges 2.5% on every transaction. While the average transaction on Magic Eden is just $96.50, OpenSea users spend an average of $1,872. But the two platforms don’t necessarily need to consider themselves competitors – they simply cater to different kinds of buyers. Specifically, MagicEden is geared more towards users who want lower-cost NFTs and higher velocity trading.

But regardless of what marketplace wins out in the end, by adding Solana to its platform, OpenSea is making SOL more accessible to a greater number of users than before. This means that, after this announcement, Solana is an even stronger competitor in the space. It is especially exciting for artists creating projects on the Solana blockchain – such as Solana Monkey Business, Degods, and the Degenerative Ape Academy – who will receive even more eyes on their work.

This was a developing story and was updated.