Morning Minute | Solana Pay Integrates with Shopify and $440B of E-commerce

TylerD's Market Summary

Solana Pay just unlocked crypto payment rails for millions of Shopify merchants - and merchants are winning big in other ways here too. Find out how, plus catch up on a huge day for digital art.

🤝 Shopify Partners with Solana Pay

Builders on Solana continue to make major moves (in relative silence compared to coverage of other blockchains).

The latest - a major partnership between Solana Pay and Shopify.

Shopify is integrating Solana Pay, unlocking crypto payments for millions of businesses.

The move is absolutely a major step in pushing the e-commerce space forward.

What Happened?

Solana Pay is a decentralized, open-source, peer-to-peer payments protocol. It's built on Solana by Solana Labs.

Now it is an approved app integration (plug-in) with Shopify, available to millions of businesses and users.

And USDC is the first payment option.

Josh Fried, business development and partnerships at the Solana Foundation had this to say:

“Some people argue the killer app for crypto hasn’t arrived, but it has: it’s payments. [Everyone] should be doubling down on this.”

This is a major unlock for Solana Pay, providing access to the e-commerce sector. For those who have been living under a rock, e-commerce is massive and growing rapidly.

A few key stats:

U.S. e-commerce reached $900B in 2022
The total global market size was $5.7T in 2022
E-commerce sites make up 22.3% of total retail sales (and expected to grow to 25% by 2025)

And Shopify is the king of e-commerce.

They account for 10% of total U.S. E-commerce and $444B worth of global activity. Now they are getting access to 11M Solana Pay users.

Why Does It Matter

So of course this matters for Solana Pay - but why does it matter for e-commerce merchants?

Three primary reasons:

Lower processing fees
Removal of chargebacks
Access to faster payments and Web3 features

Lower fees: Credit card processing fees typically range between 1.5%-3.5% per transaction. With Solana Pay, they're expected to be $0.00025 per transaction. And fees are waved through rest of 2023.

No chargebacks: Chargebacks remain a major issue for e-commerce businesses, totaling $200B for the industry. Merchants get hit with chargeback fees, penalties and then the operational overhead. There are no chargebacks with Solana Pay. It's a huge potential savings.

Crypto & web3 access: Shopify merchants can now transact on crypto rails with simple and rapid cross-border payments. They also unlock web3 native features like token-gated offers & NFT-based loyalty programs.

So it's a big deal for merchants as well.

Now we just need easier integration direct to bank accounts (enter Beam, a story for tomorrow) and more blockchain access (behind the scenes) and this can really take off.

Still, exciting moves happening on Solana.

🖼 Another Big Day for Art

Art is back in focus with major drops and events happening today, along with some teasers of big things to come.

Starting with today, here's the quick list of mints and events:

Rik Oostenbroek's Velocity Series mint "Momentum"
Snowfro's "heart + craft"
Sam Spratt's The Monument Game closes and 1/1 auction ends (7:30 pm ET)

Velocity Series will get its first test of demand with Rik's kickoff Dutch auction mint today.

Then Snowfro is back with his first major drop since Friendship Bracelets, in partnership with Jordan Lyall and the Prohibition team over on Arbitrum with their 0.01 ETH generative open edition mint.

And Sam Spratt's widely acclaimed Monument Game comes to an end tonight with deliberations beginning.

But that's not all.

Yesterday we also got new announcements and teasers from 3 other major artists.

Grant Yun said a physical 1/1 piece is coming in 2023
ACK teased an epic new piece that could be "a performance of a lifetime"
Diewiththemostlikes announced his "chub packs" will be launching on Nifty Gateway on Sept 12

It's a lot to unpack (especially the Die... chub pack announcement picture).

A few quick reactions - artists are clearly leaning into physicals and more performance art. And I love it.

Digital displays are still woefully behind and collectors want to display their pieces. More physicals just makes sense.

And Sam Spratt has shown once again how performance art can capture the market, an area that ACK is certainly familiar with (some could argue he is one of the godfathers of performance art in the NFT sector).

It's fun to see the continued innovation, and I'm looking forward to each of these.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

Trading volume fell sharply to just 5,400 ETH on Wednesday; the NFT board saw major green though, led by the Azuki ecosystem (Azuki +10% to 3.87 ETH, Elemental Beans + 43% to 0.68 ETH)
There were 15 projects which surged 20% or more on the day, spanning DigiDaigaku, Parallel, Checks and Azuki as mentioned above
NFT Stats reported that there have been just 70 NFT trades over 50 ETH this month, down from 3,805 in March and the lowest level since June 2021
Yuga CEO casually announced their new Punks brand lead as Natalie Stone on yesterday's Rug Radio show, though no other formal announcements have been made yet
DeGods rolled out a major upgrade to their Points Parlor with v1.1, featuring higher $DUST rewards, new risk-free strategy testing, bigger prizes from community-led products and promised more clarity around utility coming soon
Parallel is conducting an Avatar Snapshot today at 5 pm ET for access to the beta game
FIBA and Venly launched their first-ever digital NFTs for the upcoming FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023, in 4 price tiers ranging from $4 to $950 and available on Polygon
LooksRare's $LOOKS token has rallied 24% in the past week to $0.06 ($55M market cap) since its new casino-like YOLO game was released

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

The crypto market was up on Wednesday; BTC +1.8% at $26,450; ETH +1.5% at $1,670
DeFi's TVL has fallen to $37.5B, its lowest amount since early 2021 and below even post-FTX collapse level
Tornado Cash developers were charged with Money Laundering and Sanctions violations to the tune of over $1B
Immutable Games unveiled the first playable demo of Infinite Victory at Gamescom 2023, only playable live at the event (playtest coming this fall)

🚀 NFT Total Volume

BAYC (1,150 ETH, 23.9 ETH Floor)
DeGods (437 ETH, 3.65 ETH)
MAYC (430 ETH, 4.62 ETH)
Wrapped Cryptopunks (231 ETH, 47 ETH)
Azuki (204 ETH, 3.87 ETH)

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase

The Blitnauts (60%, 0.8 ETH Floor)
DigiDaigaku (50%, 2.68 ETH)
Azuki Elemental Beans (43%, 0.68 ETH)
Metal Tools Access Pass (34%, 1.74 ETH)
Parallel Avatars (30%, 0.26 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a busier day of mints and events, again with most action in the art sector.

The first Velocity Series mint takes place today as Rik Oostenbroek kicks off with his mint of 200 1/1s for "Momentum" in a Dutch auction for pass holders.

Then the much anticipated Snowfro mint "heart + craft" kicks off at 1 pm ET over on Prohibition. Priced at 0.01 ETH, this one is meant for everyone who wants to collect and will be open for a long time. Thus it's more for collectors than traders.

If you want more, see the full list of today's drops from Swizzy's daily mint monitor.

Rik Oostenbroek - Momentum (10:00 a.m. ET)
Veefriends x Reebok - Sneakers public sale (10:00 a.m. ET)
Snowfro x Jordan Lyall "heart + craft" (1:00 p.m. ET)
Rhythm & the Machine (1:00 p.m. ET)
Base - Optimism drop (1:00 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.

For all volume and floor price data, see Lucky Trader's Project Rankings page.

For all upcoming mints, see Lucky Trader's NFT Calendar page.

Author Bio

Tyler Warner

Tyler is a high-volume NFT trader, having reached the top 100 in NFT sales revenue using NFTBank’s rankings, a Pengu maxi (in Luca we trust), and a writer for Lucky Trader. Tyler’s writing spans market analysis, news breakdowns, project ecosystem overviews, and web3 opinion pieces.

Disclaimer: The author or members of the Lucky Trader staff may own NFTs discussed in this post. Furthermore, the information contained on this website or the Lucky Trader mobile application is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as financial advice. AI may have assisted in the creation of this content.