Magic Eden Tops OpenSea in Daily Trading Volume as Solana NFTs Heat Up

The Solana non-fungible token (NFT) market is beginning to find its stride, with daily transactions on the ecosystem’s leading marketplace, Magic Eden, now topping OpenSea, its Ethereum blockchain counterpart.

According to weekly data from DappRadar, Magic Eden has seen roughly 275,000 daily transactions (which includes purchases, bids and listings) compared with OpenSea’s 50,000, according to weekly data from DappRadar.

When reached by CoinDesk, Magic Eden provided data showing 330,000 true sales (not also bids and listings like the DappRadar data) had occurred over the last week, which works out to about 47,000 daily transactions.

The number of unique users trading NFTs on each platform, however, remains in favor of OpenSea. In the past 24 hours, Magic Eden has hosted 24,000 traders, with OpenSea hosting 41,000, according to DappRadar.

While Magic Eden users are transacting at greater rates than on OpenSea, the lack of blue-chip NFT projects on the Solana system has led to lower total sales volume, despite more transactions.

In terms of capital being spent, OpenSea remains a good distance ahead, seeing $35 million of sales volume compared to Magic Eden’s $10 million. The average price of an NFT traded on OpenSea was also over $700, well above Magic Eden’s average price of $123.

The difference in the ways NFT traders are interacting with the two platforms is likely, in part, a result of network fees on the different blockchains. At the time of writing, the gas fees to buy a single Ethereum-based NFT on OpenSea are around $30, with Solana fees being less than a cent.

Usage stats over a 30-day period tell a similar story, though OpenSea’s total volume of traders is down 1% from the previous month while Magic Eden’s has increased 316%.

On-chain data of this nature can also be misleading, with metrics like transactions and sales volume being subject to varying definitions and even manipulation.

All in all, the NFT market is seeing a shift away from its formerly Ethereum-dominated ways, with traders more evenly spread between alt-chain marketplaces and the average number of user transactions increasing with fewer fees.

OpenSea does, of course, offer Solana NFT trading of its own, having announced the integration in early April. But usage on the platform has so far lagged behind the hype, with Solana NFT sales on OpenSea being around 9% of Magic Eden’s since launch, according to data from Magic Eden.