Introduction

Since the start of 2022, the NFT ecosystem on Solana has majorly grown 2which is nothing short of impressive. While 2021 was the year of Ethereum’s NFTs with the likes of CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, Solana’s NFTs have been all over the place in 2022. Now in the NFT realm, Solana could be called an Ethereum contender, which has the potential to even surpass it in the near future. Collections such as Dust Lab’s DeGods and their newly launched y00ts have facilitated the growth and recognition of Solana NFTs on the Web3 community.

In this analysis, the state of NFTs on Ethereum and Solana blockchains has been evaluated and broken down from various aspects. The analysis aimed to provide a holistic comparison of the NFT ecosystem on the two blockchains.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the analysis of NFT sales activity on Ethereum and Solana since the beginning of 2022 has demonstrated that although Ethereum started the year from a dominant position in terms of number and volume of sales, Solana gradually increased its presence in the market and obtained a considerable amount of Ethereum’s share in the following months to the point that it ultimately overtook Ethereum’s sales volume. While Solana experienced significant growth especially in terms of the number of traded NFTs and as a result the overall sales volume, Ethereum endured a major decline in its NFT sales activity. The sales of both networks have started to decline since May, except that Solana witnessed multiple surges in its sales activity thanks to the launch of some of its anticipated collections. From the price standpoint, NFTs on Ethereum is much more expensive compared to Solana’s NFTs. Analyzing the NFT marketplaces has also indicated that OpenSea is not the dominant marketplace anymore. While likes of LooksRare and X2Y2 have started to take shares from OpenSea’s pie, Magic Eden has experienced incredible growth month after month, as the only major Solana marketplace. The comparison of top NFT collections has shown that the sales activity has almost equally divided between the two chains, with Solana having slightly had a higher share. Both networks have had a representative (Terraforms on Ethereum and Okay Bears on Solana) with an immensely high sales volume of more than $3B during the last 6 months. The analysis has also indicated that Ethereum collections have had a higher average price and lower number of transactions, while Solana collections have had a much lower price and higher number of sales instead, which ultimately generated a similar sales volume for the collections of both blockchains.

Analysis

Blockchains Overview

• The monthly analysis of the NFT sales has demonstrated that overall, while Ethereum lost or at best, maintained its sales amount, Solana gained a massive jump in its NFT sales in the first half of 2022;
• While the NFTs sales volume on Ethereum has continuously declined since the start of the year, Solana’s dramatically increased and surpassed Ethereum’s in May. Since June though, the sales volume on both networks drastically decreased to lower levels;
• In terms of the number of NFT sales, the numbers for Ethereum have been much higher compared to Solana, and even though it has had a downward trend, it still has outperformed the rising number of NFT sales on Solana;
• Considering the number of NFTs themselves, Solana has grown massively compared to Ethereum, which has had a slight downtrend since the start of the year;
• In a broader perspective, the NFT sales activity on Solana peaked in June and has decreased since then, while Ethereum has had a gradual decrease since the beginning of the year.

Methodology

The required data for the analysis of NFT sales were collected from the ez_nft_sales and fact_nft_sales table of the core schema of the Ethereum and Solana databases, respectively. To convert the sales amount on Solana into USD, and with the goal of not putting heavy computational loads on the velocity, the fact_hourly_token_prices table of the core schema of the Ethereum database was used instead of swaps data. However, the oldest data point for the WSOL token belongs to January 2022. As a result, the last 6 months were considered as the overall time frame for the analysis. It is worth mentioning that for the macro trends and comparison between the two blockchains, the data from the beginning of the year up to the current data was selected, as the intention was to identify the changes throughout the year, instead of focusing on January, or even September. For the project name of the NFT collections on Solana, the data in the dim_nft_metadata table were used.

Daily Sales

• In two periods in late March and early April, the NFTs sales volume on Solana momentarily surpassed Ethereum. It was in late April that the sales on Solana dramatically increased to its all-time high and with that, started to take Ethereum’s first spot;
• Although the sales volume on both chains started to decrease in May, Solana’s decline slowed with multiple spikes following the launch of new collections during May and June;
• In terms of the number of transactions, while there have been ups and downs for both chains, with Solana getting close to Ethereum between the start of May and the end of June, overall the distance between the two chains remained in a similar range;
• Although the number of collections involved in NFT sales stayed in a constant range with a slight upward trend, the number of NFTs that were sold majorly increased on Solana which resulted in the chain surpassing Ethereum in the second half of May. While Ethereum’s overall sales remained steady during the measured period, the number of sold NFTs has started to decrease on Solana’s, after its peak in June, to ultimately coming below Ethereum in recent months again;
• The number of buyers and sellers also have had a similar trend as the number of sold NFTs with Ethereum staying steady, while Solana started to decrease after a surge in its numbers;
• Price-wise, NFTs on Ethereum have been much more expensive compared to Solana’s, and although their price drastically decreased following the overall state of the crypto market, they are still being traded for unreasonably high prices. The trend has been also the same for NFTs on Solana, only in lower price ranges.

Marketplaces Overview

• The Ethereum NFT marketplaces, especially OpenSea and LooksRare were the dominant marketplaces in terms of NFT sales volume. OpenSea was the dominant store on all the measured metrics in the first few months of the year;
• Interestingly, Magic Eden as the number one NFT marketplace on Solana has started to gradually increase its dominance, especially in terms of the volume and the number of sold NFTs;
• Magic Eden surpassed OpenSea very early in the year and remained the top marketplace in terms of sales volume and the number of traded NFTs;
• Although OpenSea’s dominance has not been the same in the recent months as the start of the year, it has preserved its position as the store with the highest number of transactions since the beginning of the year;
• While other marketplaces have had a negligible share of overall NFT sales during the period, X2Y2 has started to become responsible for a considerable share of sales volume since June, which has helped Ethereum to regain some of its lost NFT sales activity.

• The daily trends of marketplaces over the last 6 months have also been similar to their macro trends;
• It is worth mentioning that while marketplaces such as LooksRare and X2Y2 on Ethereum have started to obtain some recognition and some pieces of the total share, Magic Eden has been the only large marketplace on Solana that can compete with the likes of OpenSea on Ethereum;
• The majority of marketplaces on Solana are too small and their total share has been almost negligible;
• The analysis of the average NFT prices in different stores has demonstrated that the most expensive NFTs have been sold on Larva Labs with a considerable margin with the NFTs of the next marketplace. After that, LooksRare on Ethereum and SMB Market on Solana has had the most pricy NFTs.

Collections Overview

• The analysis of the sales of the top 30 NFT collections on both chains has indicated that surprisingly, Solana has had a slight edge over Ethereum in the past 6 months;
• While the volume has almost been equal between the two, the number of sales and the number of sold NFTs of Solana’s top collections have been higher;
• Among the top collections, Terraform from Ethereum and Okay Bears from Solana have generated an incredible sales volume of more than $3B each over the past 6 months;
• DeGods (sol), Meebits (Eth), The Otherside (Eth), and Solana Monkey Business (sol) have all had a sales volume of more than $1B in the measured period;
• In general, Ethereum collections have had a higher average price and lower number of transactions, while Solana collections have had a much lower price and higher number of sales.
• The Otherside collection on Ethereum might be the only exception on the network, at least in the top collections, that has had an incredibly high number of transactions compared to its counterpart.

NFT Collections’ Daily Sales

• The daily analysis of NFT sales of top collections has shed some light on the multiple spikes on the previous daily charts;
• The Okay Bears collection was single-handedly responsible for the massive surge in the sales volume of Solana between late April and late May;
• Besides that, the sales of Communi3 and Trippin’ Ape Tribe have also had a great impact on the increase in the volume of sales of Solana;
• Terraforms as one of the major collections on Ethereum was mainly responsible for its high sales during the early months of the year;
• On a more recent note, the ABC collection on Solana had a great sales activity and generated a considerable amount in U.S. Dollars between late August and early September.