Morning Minute | Solana Is Hot
TylerD's Market Summary
A surprise airdrop delight has sent the Solana ecosystem. Read on to find out the winners and if Solana can compete with ETH.
🎁 JITO Airdrop Does Not Disappoint
The Jito airdrop has been the primary talk of Solana for the past week or so (it's a fast-moving space right now).
The market started out predicting $0.10-$0.30 per token at the time of airdrop.
Then it increased to the $0.60-$0.80.
And then closer to $1 on Thursday morning, pre-airdrop.
Well, those estimates were low.
JTO came out above $2, showering the Solana ecosystem with 4-5 figure airdrops and a shiny new $2.5B FDV coin.
Then it continued to grind up all afternoon and overnight, holding at $3 this morning (and $3B FDV).
Christmas came early.
Market Impact
Everything in the Solana ecosystem went into full send mode.
Memecoins BONK jumped 37% to a $769M marketcap. For reference, PEPE is at just $640M.
Solana's 2nd leading memecoin GUAC jumped 22% to a $54M marketcap.
This drove volume on Solana's Jupiter DEX to $669M, not far behind Uniswap at $928M. And another Solana DEX Raydium also hit top 5 in volume with $208M.
It wasn't just the coins that won though.
The NFT board was washed in green.
Tensorians led the way jumping 75% and reaching a 100 SOL floor as traders hungrily grabbed NFTs ahead of the next major airdrop (a Tensor airdrop is widely expected and can be farmed by staking Tensorian NFTs, along with bidding/listing NFTs).
Those Tensorians saw $4.6M in daily volume, more than 2x the next leader on CryptoSlam's board.
Other NFTs benefitted as well. Just check some of these leaderboard winners:
- Mad Lads +14% to 237 SOL
- Quekz +30% to 62 SOL
- CHADs +68% to 15 SOL
- BONKz +65% to 5.2 SOL
Overall, Solana saw $13.4M in volume compared with ETH's $16M.
And 2 of the top 3 NFT projects by volume were on Solana (Tensorians and Mad Lads).
This is all happening while SOL also jumped 10% on the day to $72.
Now the question becomes - where does Solana go from here?
Is this sustainable?
Well, inflows keep coming. So far in December, SOL has seen roughly ~$150M in inflows to its blockchain according to data from flipside.
That includes a new inflow of $60M yesterday.
As long as new money is flooding this ecosystem, the upward momentum can continue.
And bi-weekly airdrops certainly don't hurt.
ETH-natives seem to have a real alternative on their hands now with Solana.
It's got a blossoming token and DeFi ecosystem and is seeing growing interest in its NFTs.
Those NFTs aren't matching ETH's in quality - yet.
But founders and builders are likely to start dropping more on Solana to capitalize on the hype and inflows.
Being open-minded, and cross-chain, is likely the best way to approach 2024 to optimize gains.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH Trading volume on Thursday fell to $22.9M; the leaderboard flipped green after a red week
- Pudgy Penguins led top movers, soaring 32% to 11 ETH (lil Pudgy jumped 30% to 1 ETH and Rogs +50% to 0.7)
- Mocaverse jumped 46% to 3.18 ETH on the news that Animoca raised another $11.88M to keep building out Mocaverse
- Vera Molnar sadly passed away yesterday at the age of 99, which drove interest in her final NFT set Themes and Variations which jumped 28% to 7.4 ETH
- Ordinals inscription #8 sold for $460,000 yesterday, so at least one buyer is not shaken by the recent Ordinals fud
- HYTOPIA is restructuring on-chain control of uncirculated $TOPIA tokens to enhance transparency and efficiency, introducing timelocks, 1B tokens for rewards, avatar staking and more
- DeGods announced that their alpha team will be developing airdrop guides for Solana
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors were up big on the day; BTC +1.1% at $43,750; ETH +5.2% at $2,370; SOL +14% at $73.28
- Layer Zero Labs announced that its token will come in the first half of 2024 as a response to its community and increasing calls for clarity
- Arbitrum is proposing an idea to develop ApeChain on Arbitrum, in collaboration with Offchain Labs and Horizen Labs, which would use $APE as the native gas token ($ARB +10% to $1.17)
- Futureverse and Reebok are partnering to introduce Reebok Impact in 2024 as a digital shoe experience combining AI, web3 gaming and metaverse
🚀 NFT Total Volume
- Pudgy Penguins (2,945 ETH, 11 ETH Floor)
- BAYC (2,006 ETH, 29.45 ETH)
- MAYC (1,398 ETH, 5.6 ETH)
- LilPudgy's (921 ETH, 0.99 ETH)
- DeGods (725 ETH, 3.24 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase
- The Mounts of Seedworld (105%, 0.35 ETH Floor)
- Mutant Hound Collars (97%, 0.97 ETH)
- InfiniGods (70%, 0.25 ETH)
- CyberKongz (65%, 0.9 ETH)
- Pudgy Rogs (49%, 0.7 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Events
Today is another art-focused day as Art Basel continues.
The PROOF team will be sharing first glimpses of its upcoming Grails V drop, Rare Scilla is doing the Meme card, and A.A. Murakami is doing Between Two Worlds in partnership with Verse as a 1/1/150 priced at $244 each.
The other item to watch is Jack Butcher's reveal of whatever Oviators will be, happening at 11 am ET.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- A.A. Murakami - Between Two Worlds (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Grails V art preview (10:00 a.m. ET)
- Memes by 6529 (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Jack Butcher x Salvino D'Armati - Oviators (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Pudgy Penguins x Nouns Toy (8:00 p.m. ET)
Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.
