Why Solana?

A "short" story behind how we chose the Solana network for CryptoMemories NFT-s.

Ethereum + Opensea?

This combo would be the best one based on stability and volume. Opensea is the leader in the NFT segment, Ethereum is the leader in smart contracts. The problem is with the transaction fees... Every transaction with the NFT-s would require a transaction on the ERC20 Network. So if we mint or trade these NFT-s, we (or the user) need to pay at least one transaction on the ERC20 network. The Ethereum network is currently pretty loaded, therefore one transaction cost is around 100$. If a lot of user wants to mint at the same time, it could go as high as 300$. And you did not pay yet for the NFT itself! It is only the transaction cost. This is absolutely a NoGo for our project and our community. This is still the playground of the whales with hundreds of ETH.

Results: Very, very expensive. Not for normal blockchain users

Polygon + Opensea?

The other possibility would be to use Polygon which is building on the ETH network and could also go with Opensea. The advantage of this would be that on the Polygon network you can do transactions at a pretty low cost. So you can trade NFT-s for a small amount. But first, you need to use a bridge between Polygon and Ethereum and that transaction also costs a lot. So here you need to pay a high initial amount and you could only trade with low fees after that. But the volume on Opensea with the Polygon network is pretty low, much lower than with the ETH network. So you pay a lot as well, but do not get what you wanted.

Results: Moderately expensive, but we do not get the volume that we wanted

Binance Smart Chain / Cronos? Pretty centralized, huge luck is needed to be chosen and listed on the centralized marketplaces.

Solana + (Magic Eden+Solanart+Digital Eyes+Solsea+Alpha Art)

The newest NFT projects which are not for whales with 100+ ETH are going to the Solana blockchain. The reason for this is that Solana has pretty low fees, with like 0,1$, it is fast and scalable. A lot of NFT projects are moving from ETH to Solana right now. Simply because it is cheaper but also easy to use and user-friendly. You can use a Phantom wallet in the same way as a Metamask, but you do not need to throw out hundreds of bucks for the fees. Obviously, the marketplaces on Solana are smaller than on the Ethereum blockchain and like Opensea. But these marketplaces are growing rapidly and the difference in volume is not that high already. We can also work with a lot of Solana marketplaces, because we have many on the SOL network. There are also great applications for Solana, which could do pretty awesome things.

Results: Transactions almost for free, easy to use, scalable. The volume is smaller, but growing rapidly

So this is the reason that CryptoMemories NFT-s will be published on the Solana blockchain