Morning Minute | Solana Winter Is Here
TylerD's Market Summary
Momentum is seriously building on Solana right now. Find out what's happened and what's coming to decide if this trend will continue.
📈 Solana Reaches $99, Flips ETH in DEX Volume
When most people talk about crypto leaders, they focus on BTC and ETH.
It's been that way at least since ETH boomed in the 2021 cycle and cemented its place squarely as the #2 cryptocurrency.
Well, now a new L1 is seriously entering the conversation - Solana.
What Happened?
Solana briefly spiked close to $100 in trading on Thursday, briefly flipping BNB by market cap to become 4th in overall crypto market cap and 3rd putting stables aside (Tether is 3rd).
But the price action is just confirming what market participants have already been doing - using Solana more than ETH and ETH L2s.
Solana flipped ETH for the first time ever this past week in weekly DEX volume (trading volume on decentralized exchanges on-chain vs exchanges like Coinbase).
Yesterday Solana saw more DEX volume than ETH and its leading L2s Arbitrum and Optimism combined. SOL had $2.12B vs ETH at $1.2B, Arb at $600M and OP at $97M.
It's not just coin trading.
Solana also flipped ETH in wash-adjusted NFT trading last week, also for the first time ever.
Tensor flipped Blur in that time as well in daily volume.
So Solana is becoming a serious competitor to ETH in both coin trading and NFT trading volume.
Is It Sustainable?
One factor is money flow.
The inflows to Solana have been massive lately.
In the past month, a net $658M inflowed to Solana across CEXs and Bridges.
That's on top of a Jito airdrop which brought in millions.
And more airdrops are coming.
Jupiter announced its airdrop will come in January, and with it trading at $0.80 on perps markets, this could be a billion-dollar airdrop to the Solana community.
Tensor (leading NFT marketplace) will be doing an airdrop likely H1 2024, as will several other protocols on Solana.
Money will continue pouring in.
It's a very bullish setup, and for me, that makes the price action we've seen so far in SOL just a warm-up for what's to come.
As for specific NFTs and memecoins, that's anyone's guess. The NFT market on Solana is certainly more immature than ETH's, without more than a dozen or so fairly "serious" projects to buy into.
That will need to change to see NFT volume on SOL continue at ETH levels or higher.
Memecoin mania will likely fade in and out (and can't sustain these levels indefinitely right?), but given the cheap gas fees and low barrier to entry, expect these to stick around in some capacity.
As long as there are products to buy and trade (NFTs, coins) and DeFi protocols to use (staking, lending, etc.), expect the Solana crypto economy to go one way in 2024.
Up only.
🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?
Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:
- ETH trading volume jumped to $22.2M on Thursday; NFT leaders saw mostly red
- Project Godjira NFTs led top movers on ETH, with 3 of its collections rallying 60-70%
- The $GRAPE token fell to $0.11 and a $22M market cap after its first 24 hours of trading; the NFTs fell 22% to 1.63
- Solana NFT leaders took a hit as SOL popped with most down 5-20%; Mad Lads -7% to 178 SOL floor and Tensorians -5% to 106 SOL floor
- Magic Eden introduced Open Solmap, as a way to own and develop Solana's transaction history and blockspace through digital plots (similar to bitmaps on BTC); the project led volume on the day and doubled in price
- Smolbrains NFT holders were airdropped the $SMOL token, unaffiliated with the official team but embraced anyway, leading to the token soaring to $15M
- Elementerra announced a perk for Solana Saga owners, allowing them to stake the device-bound Genesis Token on Elementerra and earn Elementum tokens
🌎 Around Crypto and Web3
A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:
- Crypto majors ended up mixed on the day; BTC -1.15% at $43,600; ETH +1.4% at $2,310; SOL +6% at $93
- $WIF ran past a $300M market cap at peak on the day before retracing to $240M overnight; most SOL memecoins followed with broad pullbacks
- The SEC held a rare joint conference with all the spot BTC ETF applicants on Thursday with a decision reportedly coming by Jan 10
- A web3 game called Anipang Match is coming to LG Smart TVs as part of the latest app additions
🚀 NFT Total Volume (ETH)
- Azuki (2,201 ETH, 5.65 ETH Floor)
- MAYC (1,101 ETH, 5.2 ETH)
- DeGods (922 ETH, 2.59 ETH)
- Pudgy Penguins (849 ETH, 10886 ETH)
- Moonbirds (459 ETH, 1.41 ETH)
📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)
- PG Fusion (71%, 1.2 ETH Floor)
- Project Godjira Gen 2 (67%, 0.47 ETH)
- PG Genesis (61%, 9.85 ETH)
- Mintify Genesis (27%, 0.09 ETH)
- San Fran Tokyo (15%, 0.64 ETH)
🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals
Today is another slow day of drops ahead of the holidays. Expect it to be quiet this next week perhaps with stealth launches.
But anything that does catch steam between Xmas and New Years will have some room to run.
See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor.
- Gongkan - Galactic Kongquest (8:00 a.m. ET)
- Early SOLSMAS (11:00 a.m. ET)
- Linda Dounia - Le Bouquet (12:00 p.m. ET)
- King Xero - Champ (6:30 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.
