Solana is super-fast and has created a vast ecosystem of Defi and Web3 applications of all kinds. It was Tuesday when OpenSea announced via Twitter that the biggest NFT marketplace in the crypto will integrate Solana-based NFTs in April. Alas, we don’t know when in April but the good news is that the month is going to start by tomorrow.

What size of a market are we talking about when we speak of OpenSea? And how did that decision affect Solana?

OpenSea is the biggest marketplace

The news is so big because OpenSea is even bigger. With a trading volume of $10,8 billion this year on Ethereum alone, OpenSea is the world’s biggest NFT marketplace. Of course, Solana NFTs are not that popular compared to the collections available on Ethereum. This means that they are on average less pricy and only known to a relatively small community.

And this is the reason why the whole market has gone bonkers for the last 48 hours. Many investors immediately began to buy Solana-NFTs hoping to get a bargain on some collections before they hit OpenSea and reach out to a broader audience.

In effect, floor prices got swept and some of the biggest collections increased in value. Since the price for NFTs is set in SOL some collections got even more expensive because SOL saw a price hike of around 27 % in the last few days.

Apes and DeGods

Two examples of that effect are the collections of the Degenerate Ape Academy and the so-called DeGods. The Degen Apes floor increased at the time of writing to 96,9 SOL which is roughly 11.000€ for the cheapest ape. And the floor price for the cheapest DeGod has moved to a similar range.

It is worth mentioning that not all of the collections profited from the recent shopping spree that some investors initiated. It seems that premium NFT collections still have a huge advantage over less popular projects. The floor price of other projects like the Crypto Cavemen Club for example hasn’t moved by an inch and trading volume has stayed relatively flat according to the data of Magic Eden.

It came as no surprise that OpenSea was working on an integration. In January the information was leaked that this would be one of the next steps for the platform. Now it remains to be seen if the release is going to add more value to the Solana NFT scene and existing collections.