Price, efficiency and scalability. Three words every NFT creator wants to hear. And while Ethereum-based marketplaces have led the way, Solana’s advantages on speed, minting prices and its minimal environmental footprint have made it a rising star, gaining momentum (and market share) fast—7% to 24% of total NFT trading volume in the last 6 weeks fast.

As a media experience platform that works with creators on any blockchain, we love that Solana is finding its footing in the world of NFTs. In this post, we’re highlighting three innovative Solana marketplaces and launchpads who we’re excited to support: Exchange Art, Metaplex and Hyperspace.

Exchange Art

NFTs have always had rumblings of “disrupting the art industry.” Exchange Art is one of the first platforms to actually do it. Because while many marketplaces offer exclusive collections and big-name drops, Exchange.art is solving one of the art world’s biggest, longest standing problems: provenance. In other words, verifiable ownership.

And boy are they doing it well. Per their recent funding announcement, as of September 9th, Exchange Art has paid over $11M to creators, with 40% of creators having made at least one sale on the platform. And rather than the typical 50-70% that galleries charge, Exchange.art charges just 2.5% per sale. They’re helping both NFT-native artists and traditional artists grow their fan bases digitally and IRL with gallery shows across the US and Europe. Proof of Photo is definitely one of our favorites.

Similarly to how OpenSea uses Pinata, Exchange Art uses Dedicated Gateways to host its metadata for its marketplace, ensuring that collections load quickly and all transactions go through without a hitch.

Metaplex

We’re all about empowering creators. Metaplex is flying the same flag. With over 17M NFTs minted (in just over a year!), Metaplex is fueling the NFT market with its free-to-use, open source NFT standard and protocol.

More than just a platform, Metaplex is a collection of tools and smart contracts that makes creating and launching NFTs easier, for a wider range of people. That includes Metaplex’s Token Metadata program, the Auction House, and the Candy Machine, which as of September 2022, has helped launch over 78% of all NFTs on Solana. Altogether, Metaplex has generated  $3B+ in commerce and $1B+ in revenue through Metaplex smart contracts.

We were super excited to have recently expanded our support to include Metaplex-built Solana NFT projects. The Metaplex docs give a detailed look at how developers can use Pinata with their Sugar CLI to deploy Candy Machines, which are the Solana standard for deploying NFT projects. Check ‘em out, and get to building.

Further Reading: How To Create a Solana NFT With IPFS using Pinata and Metaplex

Hyperspace.xyz

With so many niche marketplaces popping up for verticals like gaming and music, finding good NFT buys can turn into a frustrating time suck that kills the spirit. In other words, a challenge. And then there’s Hyperspace.

Rather than trying to bully marketplaces into submission, Hyperspace.xyz embraces Solana’s marketplace diversity, allowing users to trade on their native, low-fee marketplace AND across all other Solana marketplaces—all from a single UI. Beast.

On top of its marketplace experience, Hyperspace gives creators all the tools they need to stay on top of things, including Launchpad to launch projects, Analytics to track and analyze trends, and Upcoming Drops to monitor projects launching everyday on Solana.

Hyperspace is giving the NFT ecosystem the power and stability of traditional markets, a necessary marker for widespread adoption. No surprises, no listing fees, and full access to all markets across the blockchain. This is what web3 is all about.

No doubt the Solana ecosystem is thriving. And while the million-dollar whale NFTs are fading away, demand for NFTs is not. Creators are still building, and we’re excited to help power a new wave of projects that are pushing the ecosystem forward.