Solana Marketplaces: Powering NFT Creators
Price, efficiency and scalability. Three words every NFT creator wants to hear. And while Ethereum-based marketplaces have led the way, Solana’s advantages on speed, minting prices and its minimal environmental footprint have made it a rising star, gaining momentum (and market share) fast—7% to 24% of total NFT trading volume in the last 6 weeks fast.
As a media experience platform that works with creators on any blockchain, we love that Solana is finding its footing in the world of NFTs. In this post, we’re highlighting three innovative Solana marketplaces and launchpads who we’re excited to support: Exchange Art, Metaplex and Hyperspace.
Exchange Art
NFTs have always had rumblings of “disrupting the art industry.” Exchange Art is one of the first platforms to actually do it. Because while many marketplaces offer exclusive collections and big-name drops, Exchange.art is solving one of the art world’s biggest, longest standing problems: provenance. In other words, verifiable ownership.
And boy are they doing it well. Per their recent funding announcement, as of September 9th, Exchange Art has paid over $11M to creators, with 40% of creators having made at least one sale on the platform. And rather than the typical 50-70% that galleries charge, Exchange.art charges just 2.5% per sale. They’re helping both NFT-native artists and traditional artists grow their fan bases digitally and IRL with gallery shows across the US and Europe. Proof of Photo is definitely one of our favorites.
Similarly to how OpenSea uses Pinata, Exchange Art uses Dedicated Gateways to host its metadata for its marketplace, ensuring that collections load quickly and all transactions go through without a hitch.
Metaplex
We’re all about empowering creators. Metaplex is flying the same flag. With over 17M NFTs minted (in just over a year!), Metaplex is fueling the NFT market with its free-to-use, open source NFT standard and protocol.
More than just a platform, Metaplex is a collection of tools and smart contracts that makes creating and launching NFTs easier, for a wider range of people. That includes Metaplex’s Token Metadata program, the Auction House, and the Candy Machine, which as of September 2022, has helped launch over 78% of all NFTs on Solana. Altogether, Metaplex has generated $3B+ in commerce and $1B+ in revenue through Metaplex smart contracts.
We were super excited to have recently expanded our support to include Metaplex-built Solana NFT projects. The Metaplex docs give a detailed look at how developers can use Pinata with their Sugar CLI to deploy Candy Machines, which are the Solana standard for deploying NFT projects. Check ‘em out, and get to building.
Further Reading: How To Create a Solana NFT With IPFS using Pinata and Metaplex
Hyperspace.xyz
With so many niche marketplaces popping up for verticals like gaming and music, finding good NFT buys can turn into a frustrating time suck that kills the spirit. In other words, a challenge. And then there’s Hyperspace.
Rather than trying to bully marketplaces into submission, Hyperspace.xyz embraces Solana’s marketplace diversity, allowing users to trade on their native, low-fee marketplace AND across all other Solana marketplaces—all from a single UI. Beast.
On top of its marketplace experience, Hyperspace gives creators all the tools they need to stay on top of things, including Launchpad to launch projects, Analytics to track and analyze trends, and Upcoming Drops to monitor projects launching everyday on Solana.
Hyperspace is giving the NFT ecosystem the power and stability of traditional markets, a necessary marker for widespread adoption. No surprises, no listing fees, and full access to all markets across the blockchain. This is what web3 is all about.
No doubt the Solana ecosystem is thriving. And while the million-dollar whale NFTs are fading away, demand for NFTs is not. Creators are still building, and we’re excited to help power a new wave of projects that are pushing the ecosystem forward.
H1 - THE RICH TEXT
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H2 - Enabling Widespread Adoption for Music NFTs
paragraph — The first thing the music industry needs is more exposure. For artists, listeners and yeah, the labels. Even with the use cases mentioned above, the majority of the music industry still sees NFTs as a novelty rather than a legitimate way to run a business. We see a future where the experience is built and monetized on the blockchain, with labels taking part of the experience, as well.
Second, there needs to be a big jump in user experience. Listeners know what to expect with Spotify and Apple Music: a smooth, intuitive experience that lets them listen to Lil Nas X with just a few clicks. Web3 platforms aren’t quite there. Music NFTs and related premium content require extra steps that most people don’t yet have an appetite for.
H3 - How Could Music NFTs Save Artists?
paragraph — Musician Daniel Allan spent months building a relationship with the NFT community and raised 50 ETH to fund his new album, Overstimulated. Companies like Audius and artists like Vérité's, who raised $90,000 in an NFT launch, are at the forefront of exploring new ways to get paid. Avenged Sevenfold launched an NFT collection called "Deathbats Club" with 10,000 items that grants holders access to benefits such as meet and greets at shows, lifetime free tickets, limited edition merchandise, and more.
H4 - Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
H5 — How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
LINK — This is how a link looks like. Please provide normal & hover state (if different than this)
- This will be bullet points
- Numbered list is the same but with numbers
- It has a margin-left applied
QUOTE — Everyone is obsessed with making money and seeking alpha, which does a disservice to what [NFTs] can actually do. We have been instructing many bands that NFTs are a ticket for access to an exclusive club.” - M. Shadows, Avenged Sevenfold’s lead singer.
