As Solana NFTs see high-profile exits, will this offering be a game changer

Solana’s new state compression technology could bring down the cost of minting NFTs.
The total NFT sales volume for Solana grew 31% in the last 30 days.

Solana’s [SOL] NFT ecosystem has been severely hit by exits of two of its most popular and valuable NFT collections, y00ts and DeGods, in 2023. While y00ts has almost completed its migration to the Polygon [MATIC] chain, its sister project, DeGods, move to Ethereum [ETH] was also underway at press time.

Realistic or not, here’s SOL’s market cap in BTC’s terms

As per CryptoSlam, the total NFT sales volume on Solana grew 31% in the last 30 days. However, the NFT trade count dipped by over 8%. It remains to be seen how much of an impact the absence of aforementioned collections will have on the second-largest NFT market in the crypto space.

Source: CryptoSlam

However, amidst this negativity, the Solana network introduced a game-changing technology which could entice the NFT community in the days to come.

Solana NFT minting becomes affordable

The Solana Foundation was planning to make it cheaper to store NFTs on the blockchain using its ‘state compression technology’. As per the blog post, compressed NFTs are just like traditional NFTs, except for the fact that cost of minting is drastically reduced.

In the example provided by Solana, minting a million uncompressed NFTs costs more than $250,000 on the chain currently. The same will cost $113 using compressed NFTs, almost a fraction of the original.

Solana highlighted that NFT compressions were the first time that the technology of state compression was being used. The technology was already being used by applications in the Solana ecosystem, such as Dialect and Crossmint.

1/ Solana’s low fees have made it an industry leader. But thanks to a recent innovation from teams across the ecosystem, it’s about to cost even less.

Introducing state compression, a new way to store data on Solana that lowers cost significantly. https://t.co/0baMJ0vOn1

— Solana (@solana) April 6, 2023

Network activity slows down

As far as network activity was concerned, the number of daily active users on the chain increased 14% in the last 10 days, according to Token Terminal.

However, despite the growing number of users, the trading activity failed to exhibit a noticeable jump as transaction fees remained subdued.

Source: Token Terminal

Read Solana’s [SOL] Price Prediction 2023-24

SOL’s price increased narrowly over the previous week, to settle at $20.45 at press time. It could be because of the considerable dip in trading volume, as evidenced in the following graph by Santiment.

However, a positive takeaway was the rise in development activity, which could instill confidence among SOL investors.