OpenSea is the worlds market leading place to trade NFTs and its service is expanding slowly but steadily. Earlier this year the support for Solana NFTs was added to the platform which has become an important milestone. Competitor MagicEden sees a lot of trading volume which is at times even higher than the daily volume on OpenSea. This fact revealed that Solana-based NFTs are in fact an important economic factor to both its blockchain and marketplaces like OpenSea.

What is Optimism and what makes it important for Ethereum and the NFT space?

Optimism is becoming more important

Ethereum successfully completed the Merge and shifted to proof of stake. While this is maybe the biggest step in its history so far, there is a lot of work ahead that is supposed to solve several of Ethereum’s problems. Speed and transaction costs are perhaps the most pressing issues for the world’s biggest smart contract platform.

Both will be addressed with sharding, but the technology is still under development and it could up for more than a year until it becomes available. Optimism is a layer 2 blockchain that is available right now and it contributes to Ethereum’s adoption.

Transactions are bundled in so-called optimistic roll-ups and are far cheaper since each bundle contains hundreds of transactions for the same costs. This is why Optimism also became more interesting for NFT ecosystems.

Are Optimism NFTs becoming a thing?

Optimism is OpenSeas most recent addition among Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Klaytn, and Arbitrum. Hundreds of different collections call Optimism their home and within hours many of them became available on OpenSea with Apetimism, Bored Town, MotorHeadz, and OptiChads being the most mentionable collections backed by Optimism.

Still, these collections on Optimism are a niche when compared to the volumes on Ethereum or Solana. The overall market has taken a hit in the last few months after cryptocurrencies first faced a fatal contagion effect with the 3AC and Celsius bankruptcy which were closely connected to the collapse of Terra.

Interestingly enough, some of the high-priced collections have lost far less value compared to many other crypto assets keeping a relatively stable price during an uncertain time. This raises the question if high-value collections will provide better protection or if they might see even more difficult times. The crypto, as well as the stock market, are both in a waiting position and inflation data as well as the Feds policy are dictating the pace and have been affecting the price since the beginning of 2022.