Around the Blockchain | Solana NFTs Are Coming to OpenSea's Marketplace

This week's news from around the blockchain includes: Solana NFTs on OpenSea, two notable drops on WAX, more NBA Top Shot packs, DeFi Kingdoms: Crystalvale gameplay, and more.

This Week in Solana

OpenSea officially announced on Tuesday that Solana-based NFTs are coming to the NFT marketplace's platform.

Several collections, such as DeGods and Degenerate Ape Academy, saw their activity and floor prices soar on the news. But the biggest impact this news has is likely on the current Solana marketplaces, the most popular of which is Magic Eden.

The positive price action seems to be spreading across all projects. DeGens, a DeGods derivative calling themselves “Same as DeGods…just not as good," minted for 0.06 SOL on LaunchMyNFT on Friday. The collection skyrocketed on Magic Eden to a floor of 2.5 SOL shortly after the stealth launch completed, but has since dropped to a current floor of 0.84 SOL.

Project Hive, a play-to-earn (p2e) player-vs-player (pvp) game, released its first set of NFTs with a public sale price of 2.5 SOL on Monday on Magic Eden. The collection of 3,737 avatar NFTs will have in-game use, as well as other benefits as the project states this collection will be “probably the most important” to the ecosystem.

However, the market seems skeptical, as the floor has dropped from the mint price and is sitting at 0.51 SOL as of the writing of this article. The alpha version of the game is currently available for PC download at the official Project Hive website.

This Week in WAX

With two notable drops this week, WAX is back. Both of these mints were vIRL (virtual in real life), meaning at least some subsection of the collection will be redeemable for a physical version of the NFT. Each project will contain its own rules on what, when, and how eligible NFT holders can make this redemption.

Funko’s popular NFT series, this time featuring Scooby-Doo and his gang, launched 18,750 Standard packs, each containing five tokens. They sold for $9.99 USD each, and an equal number of Premium packs containing 15 NFTs sold out for $29.99 USD each this past Tuesday.

There are up to six rare physical Funkos available to collectors with the corresponding NFTs, and 999 “Grail” rarity Scooby-Doos, as well as 1,550 of each of the four “Legendary” rarity NFTs are available, too.

Anyone who completes the entire set by owning one of every NFT in the “Royalty Collection” (inclusive of the Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Epic rarities) can redeem their NFTs for an exclusive physical Funko. This will be limited to 2,000 total redemptions, but presumably the actual number will be lower.

Eligible collectors will be airdropped redemption tokens on Jul. 27, 2022 and will have until Aug. 26, 2022 to redeem the tokens at the official redemption site.

The official Hot Wheel’s NFT Series 2 release debuted on Thursday. In a unique drop methodology, 26,321 purchase tokens were sold directly on the Hot Wheels NFT Garage website for $25 USD each. These tokens were followed by an airdrop of the packs themselves after verification of the purchase by WAX.

The NFTs, featuring animated vehicles in motion, come in five rarities: Base, Rare, Premium, NFTH, and Showroom. Although it is unclear which NFTs will be eligible for physical redemption in this collection, the Series 1 token redemption is still ongoing until Apr. 15, 2022, and Series 2 redemption tokens will be airdropped on Jul. 29, 2022 with a 30-day redemption period.

This Week in Flow

Flunks, a collection of 9,999 pixelated humanoid NFTs, sold out for $250 USD each on Wednesday. The project is not yet tradable but will be listed on Gaia marketplace. Reveal is set for Apr. 6, 2022. An extensive phase one roadmap has been released via Medium, in line with the project’s high school misfit theme.

NBA Top Shot sold out 100,000 “Extra Spice” packs for $19 USD each on Thursday. The newest Series 3 theme features players such as LaMelo Ball, Trae Young, and Steph Curry, with each moment limited to 6,500 total editions.

Packs contained three base set common moments and one Extra Spice moment each. Everyone was eligible to join the queue and purchase one pack, but those with a Collector Score of 5,000 or above were able to purchase two packs.

Additionally, one pack was airdropped to collectors for every complete set of Early Adopters and Hometown Showdown: Cali vs. NY from Series 1, as well as three packs airdropped for every complete set of Cool Cats from Series 2.

Other Blockchain News

DeFi Kingdoms: Crystalvale, the long-awaited expansion of the popular Harmony game DeFi Kingdoms, finally launched. And with that launch came the dawn of the subnet era for Avalanche.

DFK chain is now officially the first live subnet of the Avalanche network, with Crabada’s own subnet launch planned for later this month (technically Crabada’s Swimmer Network went live before DFK Chain, but only as a Testnet, the actual game has not yet migrated).

The Crystalvale launch was not smooth, but the kinks have since been worked out and eligible players were able to start claiming their $CRYSTAL airdrops as of Saturday morning at 10 a.m. ET.

The gameplay in Crystalvale is currently limited. Updates are expected in the near future.

The Fungibles

Leading the way during crypto's third consecutive positive week, Solana (SOL) increased over 30 percent on a seven-day rolling basis, along with several of the blockchain’s native NFTs, according to CoinMarketCap. This moved the cryptocurrency up to number six by total market cap.

Terra’s LUNA continued its meteoric rise, hitting $114.79, up 25.64 percent this past week. It now sits firmly one spot behind Solana by total market cap.

Also showing week-to-week growth were Avalanche (AVAX, $96.09, 10.61 percent), Fantom (FTM, $1.56, 11.85 percent), Flow (FLOW, $7.41, 11.83 percent), and WAX ($0.36, 8.34 percent).