The road ahead does seem to be bumpy for the once smooth-sailing Solana (SOL) blockchain. Ever since the FTX fallout, speculations began to build around the future of Solana.
The circumstances unveiling post-Alameda Research debacle are worrying for Solana, as its NFT space is feeling the brunt.
Top Solana NFT projects, y00ts and DeGods have announced in early 2023, they would be shifting to Polygon and Ethereum blockchains, respectively. Also bridging to a new blockchain is the $DUST token.
y00ts founder, Frank DeGods (doxxed as Rohun Vora), has long teased a potential Solana departure.
Announcing the departure, Frank DeGods thanked the Solana community tweeting:
https://twitter.com/frankdegods/status/1607155074224250881
Frank DeGods, however, made it clear that the decision to bridge to new blockchains is meant to explore new opportunities.
Frank requested the DeGods, y00ts, and $DUST holders to steer away from spreading any negativity. He expressed his faith in the strength of the Solana NFT ecosystem saying it is “incredible.”
Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace developed on Solana, had also recently announced a Polygon integration.
Polygon has been actively forming new corporate partnerships, thanks to its community-focused NFT collection ecosystem. The likes of Reddit, Starbucks, Donald Trump NFT collection, etc., have found their new home in the Polygon ecosystem.
As per the NFT collection data from CryptoSlam, DeGods and y00ts are the only Solana NFT projects to be placed in top 20 volumes across time metrics.
Reportedly, since January 2022, Solana has lost 97% of its developers’ workforce—down to 75 from 2,453.
Being long placed in the top 25 tokens as per the market cap, SOL even contested and eventually claimed the top 10 token placement.
At press time, SOL is trading at $11.32, down from its year-high of $204.58, per CoinMarketCap (CMC). SOL stood around the $14.89 price mark a month ago, CMC data shows.