OpenSea is a major NFT (non-fungible token) platform with a turnover of more than $23.5 billion. In July 2021, the company had been valued at $1.5 billion and, by December, its market cap rose as high as $13.3 billion. 

NFTs are like digital signatures that make it easy to establish who owns copyright over intellectual property, while also simplifying the making of donations and sales of goods. These tokens are most commonly used in the field of digital artworks and even the Hermitage uses them when selling its own collections.

Initially, OpenSea only supported Ethereum, but then rising commission fees (frequently in excess of $50) led to a slowdown in activity and the emergence of competing platforms. As a result, a young project built on the Solana blockchain and known as Magic Eden registered twice the number of transactions as OpenSea despite having half the user base.

Solana is significantly оutperforms Ethereum both in terms of transaction processing speeds (peak level of 50,000 TPS) and commission charged (less than one cent). The network is still lagging somewhat behind in terms of security and decentralisation, which can occasionally result in downtime. However, its number of nodes is rising (1652 at present) and, with the capitalisation of $39.7 billion, Solana is beginning to challenge Ripple, sending them down to sixth place in the overall rankings.

OpenSea's ability to offer cheap transactions is a strong driver of its popularity — a quality that led to its recent inclusion in Solana's list of supported blockchains this April. Solana's addition to the list of major NFT platforms will only increase demand for SOL, with the coin gaining 16% this week alone. Solana will become fourth in the list of OpenSea blockchains, behind Ethereum, Polygon and Klatyn.

Solana's inclusion will enable OpenSea to attract more young artists for whom current commissions on the creation of NFT collections are unaffordable, while also enabling this latter to retain its top spot in the market.

StormGain analytical group

(cryptocurrency trading, exchange and storage platform)