Bitcoin Surpasses Solana to Become May’s Second Most-Traded NFT Ecosystem

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Bitcoin Surpasses Solana to Become May’s Second Most-Traded NFT Ecosystem

By RoryKeyz

As we all know, Ethereum has perennially led the NFT race, with collections such as CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and its array of other Blue-Chip projects being unquestionable faces of the non-fungible space.

When it comes to second place on the NFT blockchain charts, a couple of names may spring to mind without any statistical research, with these being the likes of Solana and Ethereum’s Layer-2 scaling protocol Polygon. And for the most part, this is correct, as the former has become accustomed to occupying the table’s second spot, whilst the latter is always up there or thereabouts.

However, as data from NFT analytics platform CryptoSlam has recently shown, there is new kid at the summit of NFT ongoings, with this being no other than the grandfather of all blockchains, Bitcoin.

The Numbers

The CryptoSlam-provided data in question indicates that trading across May saw Bitcoin surpass Solana to become the second most popular NFT blockchain.

Here, NFT trades on Ethereum throughout the 30-day period- April 23rd-May 23rd that is- amounted to a valuation of around $393 million, with Bitcoin coming in second with a figure of around $173.5 million.

Whilst Ethereum’s unmatched influence in the NFT space explains the vast disparity between first and second spots, what’s of more surprise here is Bitcoin’s relatively comfortable placing in second. This is because third place Solana only amassed a little under $49 million worth of NFT sales across the same time period- i.e., almost $125 million less than Bitcoin.

Of course, such feat also meant that Bitcoin outperformed the likes of Polygon, Mythos, BNB, ImmutableX, Cardano, and many other well-established NFT blockchains.

The BRC-20 Token

Whilst the Bitcoin NFT scene (a.k.a Ordinals) is certainly growing, the majority of the blockchain’s trade traffic came through the popularity of its new BRC-20 token.

That being said, such token standard- which was launched in March by Twitter user ‘Domo’- isn’t exactly of the non-fungible type, as instead it’s a fungible token that’s gone-on to attract a lot of interest from developers, creatives, and traders from the memecoin space.

The BRC-20 standard is said to be a novel concept that “employs Ordinals and Inscriptions to create and manage token contracts, token minting, and token transfers, which are stored on the Bitcoin base chain”.

Further, and as you may already know, the most notable Bitcoin-residing memecoins to contribute to the blockchain’s impressive trade volume in have been ORDI, NALS, VMPX, PEPE, and ORDI- i.e. coins that were primarily developed for experimental purposes, as opposed to being focused on utility or investment.

Here, the early days of May saw BRC-20 memecoins hit a market cap of over $1 billion, however as of this week, such valuation has sunken to around $447 million mark.

Staying on the topic of ‘uselessness,’ analysts at multichain wallet developer BitKeep have stated that BRC-20 tokens are “worthless and that users should not waste money mass minting this fun experiment”. Whilst, as first glance, you may assume that such statement would offend the tech’s creator ‘Domo,’ these thoughts in-fact emulate the words in which the community developer used when first launching the standard back on March 9th.

Although the numbers for the past 30 days look promising for the BRC-20 ecosystem, it’s pretty transparent that its popularity has largely come through the speculative traders that’ve been revelling in its memecoin madness over the past month or so. In turn, the space is largely concentrated with actors looking to make a quick buck, as opposed to those that have long term utility at the forefront of their investment decisions.

With this in mind, it’s quite likely that the hype surrounding BRC-20 tokens may die down in weeks to come, further meaning that this week’s headlines won’t necessarily be repeated in another 30 days time.

Bitcoin NFTs

On the Bitcoin NFT side of things, May saw Magic Eden rise above Unisat to become the dominant marketplace in the Bitcoin Ordinals space.

For context, the most popular Bitcoin Ordinals project of the last 30 days has been ‘Bitcoin Frogs,’ which amassed almost 300 BTC (or around $7.9 million) worth of trades on Magic Eden.

For comparison, such figure is only slightly lower than that of Blue-Chip project Doodles on OpenSea- however, for even more context, it’s still less than a quarter of the amounts generated by the likes of the Bored and Mutant Ape Yacht Club collections.

Regardless, the trade volume for Bitcoin Frogs was still lightyears ahead any other Bitcoin Ordinals project throughout such time period, however we should still give notable mentions to the likes of Misprints and DogePunks, who were both able to attract over 50 BTC ($1.32 million) worth of sales.

Catching Up

To catch up to the leader of non-fungible ongoings Ethereum, it’s vital that Bitcoin Ordinals develops similar protocols to that of the Vitalik Buterin-pioneered blockchain. For example, these may include building infrastructures for supporting DAOs, as well as creating standards for facilitating mass integration.

However, in reality, we may never actually see Bitcoin catch up with the non-fungible prowess of Ethereum- or at least not any time soon, nor whilst the bear market continues to beckon. This is because the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem is already thought to be worth a whopping $27.5 billion, with such figure being the result of the blockchain playing host to many well-established Blue-Chip projects and communities, as well as several highly ambitious, billion-dollar native metaverse platforms (such as those from the likes of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Azuki).

That being said, Bitcoin’s successes on the NFT and memecoin front isn’t a priority for many BTC holders, as on the contrary, many believe that their introductions are harmful to the Bitcoin ecosystem because of the upwards pressure they place on its block size, as well as the distortion they may make to its ‘true’ value.

On the philosophy side of things, Bitcoin maxis may also question whether such innovations align with the vision of the Bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Article by RoryKeyz