Solana markets itself as a faster and cheaper solution to Ethereum despite network outages. With Magic Eden securing $1.6 billion, Solana seeks to revolutionize crypto with a Web3 phone.
The news broke recently after Solana´s NFT Marketplace Magic Eden scored a $1.6 billion valuation after its latest funding round.
The Solana ecosystem keeps growing, and this time a new Solana division stepped up to bring the Web3-friendly Saga mobile phone to the market. This smartphone will natively support various Solana applications, including the leading NFT marketplace Magic Eden.
The newly announced Solana-powered Saga smartphone will launch at the beginning of 2023. It runs on Android, while being enhanced by a custom toolkit. They dubbed this toolkit SMS, or Solana Mobile Stack. This SDK will help developers to build dapps on Solana, tailored for smartphones. It includes a mobile wallet adapter, a seed vault for security and Solana Pay for easy payments.
Solana is currently one of the fastest blockchains in the world with a rapidly expanding ecosystem of finance, NFT, and other web3 projects. The blockchain ecosystem markets itself as a faster alternative to Ethereum and has seen epic growth since its inception.
Solana currently records a $2.68b Total Value Locked in DeFi protocols and offers a competitive and affordable trading environment with lower fees. According to DappRadar data, Magic Eden ranks second of the top ten dapps on the Solana network.
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How did Magic Eden transform into another Web3 unicorn?
Magic Eden is a Solana-based NFT marketplace that has outperformed established NFT markets on Ethereum and Wax. Based on DappRadar data, Magic Eden has increased its trading volume up to $93.88 million this past week and the SOL token currently sits at $40.98 showing a 13,2% value increase.
This volume currently ranks Magic Eden the fourth among all NFT marketplaces tracked by DappRadar.
Magic Eden supports thirteen wallet providers, including Phantom, Solflare, Solet, and Exodus. Low fees and an easy purchasing structure likely contribute to its success.
One of the most impressive recent successes for Solana NFTs was the Okay Bears collection. It took the NFT space by storm, outperforming big names across all chains like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Axie Infinity, and CryptoPunks.
But not all is peaches and cream in Solana, which is also carving a bad reputation for repeated network outages, copycat collections on Magic Eden and rug pulls.
Magic Eden: the good, the bad and the ugly
Even though Magic Eden has struck a chord in the crypto community by offering lower fees, cool NFT collections and speedy transactions, there is more than meets the eye to this story.
Let’s look into the main issues surrounding Magic Eden
Network downtime
First, there is the issue of frequent outages in the Solana blockchain igniting debates on its reliability and whether the blockchain is sufficiently decentralized.
Solana has suffered 5 network outages this year with the fifth one taking place this month. The cryptoverse reacted on Social Media prompting the SOL= SQL joke and even questioning the future of Solana against other blockchains.
Moreover, when this happens, many of the applications around Solana, such as Magic Eden, the Phantom wallet, and the Exodus crypto browser extension, report outages to their users.
Copycat collections
The amount of copycat collections in Magic Eden has also caught the attention of many in the crypto community. The Solana ecosystem has been copying highly lucrative Ethereum projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club.
In a funny twist of events, Ethereum reacted by doing the same to Solana´s most successful collection Okay Bears by launching the parody collection, Not Okay Bears with the same artwork —just reversed with the bears facing left instead of right.
Rugpulls
Rugpulls are not a strange occurrence in crypto but in Magic Eden, they are seemingly frequent. The most notorious ones took place in February 2022, when the NFT project Balloonsville turned out to be a major money grabber.
The heist amounts to a total of 5,000 SOL, worth almost $600,000 at the time. Another high-profile scam on Magic Eden was King of Chess stealing 645 SOL ($58,000 at the time) from investors.
After these two serious rug pulls, Magic Eden took measures to tighten its security by implementing KYC requirements for creators. This forces new NFT creators to “privately dox” themselves to the company.
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Closing thoughts
Solana´s plans to launch a mobile crypto phone are causing bullish emotions in the market right now. The phone´s name is Saga and marks a revolutionary event attempting to grow Web3 technology beyond the desktop and into everyone’s pockets.
Saga will be based on the operating system Android, and provide access to dapps in the same fashion as regular Android users can download apps today.
Coupled with Magic Eden turning into a unicorn simultaneously this is quite remarkable. With so much fresh capital in hand, it’s hard to imagine what Solana´s next edgy move will be, but DappRadar will continue monitoring the latest developments of Solana and Magic Eden. Follow us on Twitter, Discord, and Youtube to keep up with the dynamic blockchain world.
