Trading NFTs is so expensive! Solana's cross-chain bridge Wormhole connects the Ethereum NFT market.

Since the development of the NFT industry, Ethereum has been dominating this field, but Solana is trying to become a strong competitor with its low transaction fees and fast transaction speeds. However, the largest NFT trading platform, OpenSea, currently does not support NFT trading on Solana, leading to significant differences in its ecosystem compared to Ethereum. The cross-chain protocol Wormhole is attempting to change this situation.

Wormhole NFT Cross-Chain Bridge

The Wormhole NFT cross-chain bridge was launched on the 23rd, connecting Ethereum and Solana in a bidirectional bridge. It allows for the transfer of NFTs in either direction by wrapping the original NFT to make it fully compatible on the other chain.

For example, if a user wants to bring an NFT from Solana to Ethereum to sell on OpenSea today, Wormhole does not directly transfer the NFT from Solana to Ethereum. Instead, it freezes the NFT in a smart contract and mints a new version on Ethereum. The resulting ERC-721 NFT can be used and transferred like any native Ethereum NFT. In the future, the Wormhole protocol also plans to support ERC-1155 NFTs.

Through this cross-chain method, popular NFT collections on Solana, such as Degenerate Ape Academy, Aurory, or SolPunks, can find a broader potential customer base on OpenSea or other NFT trading platforms on Ethereum.

Conversely, Ethereum NFT collectors looking to transfer NFTs through Solana for faster and cheaper transactions or store NFTs in wallets that support the Solana ecosystem can use the Wormhole protocol to freeze the original ERC-721 NFT in a smart contract and mint a new version of SPL NFT on Solana.

More Open NFT Market

Yesterday, the largest NFT platform on Ethereum, OpenSea, had a daily trading volume of around $90 million, while the largest NFT platform on Solana, Solanart, had a daily trading volume of around $6.2 million. From the data, there is still a significant gap between the two. However, the emergence of NFT cross-chain bridges may greatly impact the future direction of the entire NFT market, decentralizing NFT trading from being so concentrated on Ethereum and attracting more projects willing to launch NFTs on Solana.