Also on Solana (SOL), the non-fungible token (NFT) is starting to gain traction. The first-ever NFT over $1 million has now been sold on its Ethereum (ETH) rival.
It concerns the following “Degenerate Ape” (#7225), which was sold yesterday for 5,980 SOL, worth $1.11 million:
Moonrock Capital just acquired the 13th rarest @DegenApeAcademy NFT for 5980 $SOL ($1,109,170.40) pic.twitter.com/STkwJetRl1
— Moonrock Capital (@MoonrockCapital) September 11, 2021
It would be the thirteenth rarest NFT from the collection, which are called the “Cryptpunks of Solana”. The “Degenerate Ape Academy” collection is currently worth about $250 million, $50 million more than the rest of the NFT collections on Solana combined:
weekly $SOL NFT market capitalization check:@DegenApeAcademy is worth nearly $50 Million more than the rest of the projects in the top 10 combined. pic.twitter.com/2IgmZl2n0h
— Space Gatsby (@SpaceGatsby_J) September 11, 2021
It is not the only NFT on Solana that Moonrock Capital, a European cryptocurrency investment firm, bought yesterday. A few hours later, Moonrock bought a so-called “Solpunk,” a Cryptopunk imitation, for 1,338 SOL worth $257 thousand.
Moonrock Capital just acquired the 18th rarest @PunksOnSolana NFT for 1388 $SOL ($257,446.24) pic.twitter.com/ex0dl64gCk
— Moonrock Capital (@MoonrockCapital) September 11, 2021
The NFT market exploded on Ethereum early this year. Digital artist Beeple sold an NFT artwork in March for a whopping $69.3 million, still the most expensive NFT ever. Since then, many CryptoPunks have been sold for several million each. At the beginning of this summer, the NFT market seemed to cool down a bit, but in July it started to swell again and in August OpenSea broke massive records.
In the meantime, the NFT market seems to be cooling again and the volume on OpenSea is decreasing considerably. That increase in NFT volume was again accompanied by a huge increase in transaction costs on Ethereum. That may be why some traders are transferring this market to other blockchains, such as Solana.
The SOL price started to rise sharply in mid-August. SOL was still around $45 on August 15 and reached a on September 9. all time high (ATH) at $213.5, up a whopping 375%. Since then, the price has been corrected to $180.