4.4 Solana NFTs: Metaplex Standard

The 99.9% Cost Reduction

A 10,000-piece NFT collection on Ethereum costs $50,000-75,000 to deploy. Minting each piece costs users $50-200 in gas fees during peak congestion. Transferring an NFT between wallets: $5-50. Trading a bundle of 10 NFTs: $50-500.

The same collection on Solana costs $48 to deploy. Minting: $0.00025 per NFT. Transfers: $0.00025. Trading 10 NFTs: $0.00025. The difference isn't incremental. It's about 99.9% cheaper during periods of Ethereum congestion.

Magic Eden, Solana's largest NFT marketplace, processes 50,000+ trades daily at fractions of a penny per transaction [1]. On Ethereum, the same volume would cost traders millions in aggregate gas fees. This isn't theoretical. DeGods launched on Solana in October 2021, grew to a 50 ETH floor price (roughly $90,000 per NFT at peak), then migrated to Ethereum in 2023 [2]. The y00ts collection followed the same path, launching on Solana before bridging to Polygon [3].

These migrations weren't rejections of Solana's technology. They were bets on Ethereum's cultural dominance and deeper liquidity for high-value collectibles. But they proved something critical: Solana's infrastructure works. Projects moved for market positioning, not technical limitations.

The Metaplex standard created this economic reality. It's not an Ethereum clone adapted for Solana. It's a complete architectural reimagining built for Solana's blockchain, where transaction costs don't constrain design choices.

Why Solana Needed a Different Standard

Ethereum processes 15-30 transactions per second. Solana targets 65,000 TPS (in theory) [4]. Ethereum charges variable gas fees based on network congestion, ranging from $2 to $200+ per transaction. Solana charges low and relatively stable fees around $0.00025 regardless of network load.

These performance differences create different design constraints.

On Ethereum, developers minimize on-chain operations. Every function call costs money. Complex interactions get expensive fast. ERC-721 and ERC-1155 pack functionality into self-contained smart contracts that users interact with directly. Simple transfers. Minimal state changes. Everything optimized to reduce gas consumption.

Solana's negligible fees flip this constraint. Developers can build complex, multi-step processes without worrying about user costs. Instead of packing everything into monolithic contracts, they create specialized programs that work together. The Metaplex standard reflects this freedom.

Solana achieves speed through parallelization. Traditional blockchains process transactions sequentially: transaction 1, then transaction 2, then transaction 3. Solana processes hundreds of non-conflicting transactions simultaneously using Proof of History, a cryptographic timestamp that orders events before they're validated [5]. This allows the network to pipeline transactions through multiple stages of processing at once.

This architecture changes everything about how you build NFT infrastructure.

The Metaplex Architecture

Metaplex isn't one standard. It's an ecosystem of specialized programs that handle different aspects of NFT creation, trading, and management.

A Solana NFT splits its data across multiple on-chain accounts, each serving a specific purpose:

Token Program (SPL Token): The foundation. Every token on Solana, fungible or not, uses the Solana Program Library. An NFT is technically an SPL token with supply fixed at 1 and zero decimal places. This prevents division or multiplication. One token. Indivisible.

Mint Account: Stores the authoritative record for this specific token. Total supply (1 for NFTs). Mint authority (usually disabled after creation to prevent additional minting). Decimals (0 for NFTs). This account represents the token's existence.

Metadata Account: Stores the NFT's descriptive information. Name, symbol, URI pointing to off-chain JSON with image and attributes. This account uses a Program Derived Address, mathematically calculated from the Mint Account's address. This means the metadata location is always discoverable. You don't search for it. You compute where it must be.

Master Edition Account (Optional): Controls printing of editions. The original NFT can authorize limited or unlimited copies, each tracked separately. Think limited edition prints of artwork. The Master Edition manages the canonical version and grants rights to create copies.

This separation matters. Ethereum packs token logic and metadata into one contract. Solana distributes them across specialized accounts. The Token Program handles ownership transfers. The Metadata Program manages descriptive data. Each does one thing efficiently.

Figure: Ethereum's ERC-721 uses a monolithic smart contract containing all NFT logic, while Solana's Metaplex distributes functionality across specialized accounts. This architectural difference reflects each blockchain's design philosophy: Ethereum optimizes for minimizing on-chain operations due to gas costs, while Solana's low fees enable modular, specialized components.

Metaplex Core, introduced in 2024, consolidated this structure. Instead of multiple accounts, Core stores everything in one account: ownership, metadata, attributes [6]. While this paper focuses on the canonical Token Metadata standard and Metaplex Core, the Metaplex ecosystem now encompasses multiple NFT standards, including Token Metadata, Core, and compressed Bubblegum NFTs. Each standard optimizes for different cost and scalability trade-offs. This reduces blockchain storage requirements by 85% and cuts minting costs proportionally. Projects deploying new collections use Core. Existing collections remain on the original standard. Both work. Core just works cheaper.

The plugin system in Core lets developers attach custom logic directly to assets. Want royalty enforcement? Add the royalty plugin. Need staking mechanics? Attach the staking plugin. Need custom transfer rules? Add a transfer validator plugin. This programmability makes Solana NFTs more flexible than Ethereum's rigid standards.

The Metaplex Toolkit

Candy Machine handles minting for NFT collections. Deploy your collection metadata to Arweave or IPFS. Configure the program: 10,000 total supply, 1 SOL mint price, launch date March 15th at 12:00 UTC. The program enforces these rules automatically [7].

Users connect wallets and call the Candy Machine program. Send 1 SOL, receive one random NFT from the collection. The program handles randomization, launch timing, and supply limits. All rules verify on-chain. No trust required.

Auction House changed NFT marketplaces through escrow-less trading [8]. Traditional marketplaces require transferring your NFT to their escrow contract. Auction House lets NFTs stay in your wallet. You delegate transfer authority to the program. When a buyer completes payment, the program executes the swap atomically. Until then, you control the asset fully.

This enables simultaneous listing across multiple marketplaces. Magic Eden's Auction House instance has delegation. Solanart's instance has delegation. Both can facilitate sales. First buyer to complete a transaction gets it.

This design only works because Solana transactions cost almost nothing. The multiple interactions required would cost $100+ on Ethereum at peak congestion. At $0.00025 per transaction, the complexity becomes practical.

Current Usage and Scale

Solana NFT activity peaked in 2021-2022, crashed hard in 2023, and stabilized at meaningful but reduced levels by late 2024.

Magic Eden dominated the market at peak, processing $4 billion in total trading volume across its lifetime [1]. Daily volume in October 2021 exceeded $100 million. By late 2024, daily volume stabilized around $5-15 million. The 90% decline mirrors Ethereum's NFT market crash but happened more dramatically due to Solana's younger ecosystem.

Over 22 million Solana NFTs exist across tens of thousands of collections [9]. Compare this to Ethereum's 80+ million NFTs, and the scale difference becomes clear. Solana captured significant market share during 2021-2022 but remains smaller than Ethereum's established ecosystem.

Transaction costs stayed consistently low. Even during peak network congestion, Solana NFT transfers cost under $0.01. No gas wars. No $200 minting fees. The economics worked as designed.

Network stability didn't. Solana suffered multiple outages between 2021-2023. September 2021: 17 hours offline due to bot spam during an NFT mint [10]. May 2022: seven-hour outage from NFT minting bots [11]. These incidents damaged confidence. If the network can't stay online during peak demand, high-value collections face unacceptable risk.

Compressed NFTs, introduced in 2023, addressed scaling constraints. The innovation: store NFT state data off-chain in compressed merkle trees while maintaining on-chain proof of ownership [12]. This reduces minting costs to $0.0001 and storage requirements by 99%. Projects can mint millions of NFTs for hundreds of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands.

This makes previously impossible use cases viable. Loyalty programs minting millions of membership NFTs. Game items with massive supply. Mobile apps distributing NFTs to every user. The economics finally work for true mass adoption.

The Creator's Perspective

Developers choose Solana for one overwhelming reason: cost.

Launch a 10,000-piece collection on Ethereum using ERC-721: $50,000-75,000 in deployment and initialization gas fees. Launch the same collection on Solana using Candy Machine: $48. Deploy metadata to Arweave (permanent storage): $200-500. Total cost: under $600.

The Metaplex SDK provides JavaScript/TypeScript libraries for every operation. Create a Candy Machine, upload metadata, configure mint rules, all through documented functions. The tooling maturity rivals Ethereum despite Solana's younger ecosystem.

Metaplex supports on-chain royalty specifications. Marketplaces ignore them. Metaplex’s programmable NFT (pNFT) standard extends this further by enforcing royalties and custom transfer rules at the asset level, giving creators a way to hard-code economic behavior directly into their NFTs even if marketplaces try to route around informal norms. Magic Eden made royalties optional in 2022 [13]. Tensor followed. Most trading happens on platforms that let buyers opt out of creator fees. The technical capability exists. Market incentives killed it.

Some projects fought back. Claynosaurz implemented on-chain enforcement through allowlisting, blocking trades on non-compliant marketplaces [14]. This works but fragments liquidity. Users hate restrictions. The solution often causes more problems than it solves.

Network instability forced risk management decisions. High-value projects worried about outages during critical launches. Some chose Ethereum despite higher costs. Others launched on Solana first, then bridged to Ethereum after building community. The multi-chain hedging strategy acknowledged Solana's technical advantages while mitigating its reliability concerns.

Compressed NFTs changed the calculation for utility-focused projects. A mobile game distributing 10 million in-game items pays $1,000 on Solana via compressed NFTs. The same implementation on Ethereum Layer 2 costs $10,000+. For Ethereum mainnet, it's simply impossible. The use case only exists on Solana.

Want to mint your own Solana NFT collection?

Our hands-on tutorial walks you through deploying a complete collection using Metaplex Core, from environment setup to Arweave metadata storage. You'll learn why there are no smart contracts to write, how Solana's account model differs from Ethereum, and why minting costs under $0.01 instead of $50+.

Read the tutorial: Build Your First Solana NFT Collection with Metaplex Core →

The Collector's Perspective

Speed defines the user experience. Click buy, transaction confirms in a couple of seconds under normal conditions. List an NFT, it appears on marketplaces instantly. Trade 50 NFTs in rapid succession, total cost: $0.01. The friction simply doesn't exist.

Wallet setup is simpler. Phantom wallet installs in seconds, works immediately. No gas fee calculation. No congestion timing. No failed transactions due to insufficient gas. Send, confirm, done.

The escrow-less model means your NFTs stay in your wallet until sold. List on three marketplaces simultaneously, no problem. The first buyer to complete a transaction wins. This control matters psychologically. Your assets remain yours until the instant they sell.

But network outages create anxiety. When Solana goes offline for six hours during a major mint, your transaction may have executed or failed, but you can't verify until the network recovers. When you're spending thousands of dollars on digital collectibles, that uncertainty feels unacceptable.

Metadata storage follows the same patterns as Ethereum. Most projects use IPFS or Arweave for images and attributes. Arweave's permanent storage model costs more upfront ($0.02-0.05 per NFT in storage fees) but guarantees the data persists indefinitely. Some projects use centralized servers to save money. This creates the same risks as on Ethereum: server shutdown means your NFT's image disappears.

Compressed NFTs trade some blockchain decentralization for extreme cost savings. The state data lives off-chain in merkle trees maintained by RPC providers. Ownership proof stays on-chain, but accessing the full asset data requires trusting these providers to maintain the state trees. For low-value utility NFTs, this trade-off works. For high-value collectibles, it introduces dependencies collectors might reject.

Real-World Applications

The Migration Story: DeGods and y00ts

Frank DeGods launched DeGods on Solana in October 2021 with 10,000 unique characters. The collection sold out immediately at 3 SOL ($600) each. Floor prices climbed to 500 SOL by early 2022, then peaked above 50 ETH ($90,000+) after bridging to Ethereum in 2023 [2].

The project demonstrated Solana's ability to support premium collectibles. DeGods built a loyal community through holder events, exclusive merch, and quality artwork. The success proved expensive NFTs could work on Solana despite the chain's reputation for low-cost spam.

The Ethereum migration in April 2023 sparked controversy. DeGods framed it as expanding to where the deepest liquidity exists. Critics called it abandonment. The honest answer: Ethereum's NFT market supports higher valuations for blue-chip collections. When floor prices reach $50,000+, you want access to Ethereum's established collector base and OTC desks.

y00ts, launched as DeGods' sister collection in September 2022, followed a similar path but with different timing. The mint used a Dutch auction starting at 3 SOL and dropping to 1.5 SOL over two hours [3]. This prevented gas wars while finding market-clearing prices.

y00ts migrated to Polygon in March 2023, not Ethereum. This acknowledged that while Solana offered the best technology for minting and trading, Ethereum ecosystem chains provided better discoverability and integration with existing NFT infrastructure. Then in 2024, y00ts migrated again, returning to Ethereum mainnet [3].

Both projects revealed collection builders experimenting to find the right chain for their community. Technically, the migrations used bridges. Holders burned their Solana NFTs to receive Ethereum versions. One-way conversion. Most holders migrated. Some stayed on Solana where the original collections still trade at significantly lower prices.

The migrations highlighted Solana's challenge: technical superiority doesn't guarantee market dominance. Culture, liquidity, and existing wealth concentration matter. Ethereum has all three. Technical performance matters. But ecosystem size, brand perception, and liquidity depth mattered more for premium collectibles.

Magic Eden: The Marketplace That Defined the Ecosystem

Magic Eden launched in September 2021 and rapidly dominated Solana NFT trading, capturing 90%+ market share by early 2022 [1]. The platform processed over $4 billion in total volume, becoming Solana's answer to OpenSea.

The product competed on user experience, not just costs. Instant listing updates. No-delay transactions. Launchpad for new projects. The interface felt cleaner and faster than Ethereum alternatives. When transactions cost fractions of a penny, you can afford real-time updates and instant confirmations without worrying about cost optimization.

Magic Eden's royalty decision in October 2022 reshaped the ecosystem. The platform made creator fees optional, letting buyers choose whether to pay them [13]. This triggered a race to the bottom as other marketplaces followed. Within months, most Solana NFT trades happened without royalties.

Creators sued and complained. Magic Eden argued they were responding to market pressure from competing marketplaces. The economic reality: enforcing royalties requires protocol-level implementation or accepting lower trading volume as users flee to non-compliant platforms.

The platform expanded to Bitcoin Ordinals and Ethereum in 2023-2024, acknowledging that despite Solana's technical advantages, the NFT market is multi-chain. Users want access to all ecosystems through one interface.

Where It Falls Short

Solana's technical design creates real limitations beyond the well-known network stability issues.

Network Centralization and Stability: Running a Solana validator requires far more powerful hardware than Ethereum. Minimum specifications: 128GB RAM, 12-core CPU, high-bandwidth internet [15]. This raises operational costs and reduces the number of potential validators. Fewer validators mean more centralization risk. When the network goes down, restarting requires coordination among a smaller group of operators. The multiple outages between 2021-2023 weren't just technical glitches. They exposed fundamental trade-offs between performance and decentralization. Solana chose speed. The cost is higher validator requirements and concentrated control.

Ecosystem Maturity Gaps: For utility NFTs, gaming assets, and mass-market applications, Solana's low costs create ideal conditions. For high-value art and collectibles, Ethereum's established ecosystem, deeper liquidity pools, and cultural mindshare still dominate. DeGods and y00ts migrations proved this. Solana's MEV landscape differs from Ethereum's but isn't solved. Jito demonstrates that validator control over transaction ordering still allows front-running and extractive behaviors [16]. Metadata dependencies mirror Ethereum's challenges. Most projects use IPFS or centralized servers. Arweave integration helps but isn't universal. The problems aren't worse on Solana. They're just not solved either.

Compressed NFT Trade-Offs: Compressed NFTs reduce costs by another 99% but introduce new dependencies. The state data lives off-chain in merkle trees maintained by RPC providers. Ownership proof stays on-chain, but accessing full asset data requires trusting these providers to maintain the state trees. This creates a spectrum: full on-chain NFTs offer maximum decentralization at higher costs. Compressed NFTs offer extreme efficiency with more trust assumptions. Different applications make different choices. Understanding the trade-offs matters more than declaring one approach superior.

These limitations don't make Solana unsuitable for NFTs. They create specific trade-offs that different projects evaluate differently. A mobile game distributing millions of NFTs chooses Solana without question. A fine art marketplace launching $100,000+ pieces faces harder decisions.

Evolution and Future Direction

Compressed NFTs represent the current frontier. By moving state data off-chain while maintaining on-chain ownership proofs, the standard reduces costs by another 99% from already-low baselines. This enables applications that couldn't exist before:

Loyalty Programs: Issue 50 million membership NFTs to customers for $5,000 total cost. Traditional NFTs made this economically impossible.

Gaming at Scale: Distribute hundreds of millions of in-game items without worrying about blockchain costs. The friction finally matches Web2 expectations.

Social Media Integration: Twitter/X profiles, Reddit avatars, Discord roles, all could be NFT-gated at negligible cost. Previous economics made this impractical.

The technical innovation creates opportunities. Market adoption remains uncertain. Compressed NFTs launched in 2023. Real-world implementations are just starting. Whether projects actually build these use cases or whether theoretical possibilities remain theoretical depends on broader market recovery and developer interest.

Cross-chain infrastructure improved significantly. Wormhole enables asset bridging between Solana and Ethereum with reasonable trust assumptions [17]. DeGods and y00ts proved migrations work technically. The remaining question: do projects want multi-chain presence, or is chain selection a one-time commitment?

Network stability improvements continue. Solana's outages became less frequent through 2023-2024. The development team addressed core issues causing bot-driven congestion. Whether this trend continues or network stress during the next bull market causes regression determines Solana's long-term credibility for high-value applications.

The Performance vs. Prestige Trade-off

Metaplex solved the cost problem. $0.00025 transactions enable NFT use cases that Ethereum's economics make impossible. Gaming, loyalty programs, mass-market applications, all work better on Solana.

But prestige still lives on Ethereum. Blue-chip collectibles chase Ethereum's liquidity and collector base. CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, Art Blocks, they're Ethereum projects for a reason. The cultural weight and established wealth concentration create self-reinforcing advantages that technical performance alone doesn't overcome.

This split creates a multi-chain future. Utility lives where costs make sense. Collectibles live where buyers congregate. Solana dominates the former. Ethereum still owns the latter. Whether this equilibrium persists or shifts depends on network effects, not technical specifications.

Solana and Ethereum serve different market segments. Solana's low transaction costs make it ideal for high-volume utility applications like gaming and loyalty programs. Ethereum's established ecosystem and cultural dominance continue to attract high-value collectibles despite significantly higher costs. This positioning reflects both technical architecture and market dynamics.

Bitcoin carved its own path. While Solana and Ethereum battled over smart contract NFT standards, Bitcoin developers found a way to inscribe data directly onto satoshis, creating NFTs on the original blockchain without smart contracts. Ordinals ignore everything we've discussed about token standards and go back to first principles: if you can store data on a blockchain, you can create digital artifacts. The next section explores how Bitcoin entered the NFT market 13 years after its creation, proving that innovation isn't always about building better standards. Sometimes it's about using what's already there in ways nobody expected.

References

[1] Magic Eden Tops OpenSea in Daily Trading Volume as Solana NFTs Heat Up – https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/19/magic-eden-tops-opensea-in-daily-trading-volume-as-solana-nfts-heat-up

Additionally: Billion Dollar NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Raises $130 Million – https://www.forbes.com/sites/mariagraciasantillanalinares/2022/06/21/billion-dollar-nft-marketplace-magic-eden-raises-130-million-series-b-at-1-6-billion-valuation/

[2] Unraveling DeGods Season III & y00ts ETH Migration – https://nftnow.com/news/everything-to-know-about-degods-season-iii-the-y00ts-migration-to-eth/

[3] Y00ts NFT Collection is Migrating to Ethereum After Accepting $3M Grant From Polygon – https://www.coindesk.com/web3/2023/08/10/y00ts-nft-collection-is-migrating-to-ethereum-after-accepting-3m-grant-from-polygon/

[4] Solana TPS, Max TPS, Block Time & TTF – https://chainspect.app/chain/solana

[5] Solana Synchronization - https://docs.anza.xyz/consensus/synchronization

[6] Metaplex Core Assets Documentation - https://developers.metaplex.com/core

Additionally: How Metaplex Core Moves Beyond NFT Standards – https://solanacompass.com/learn/Validated/how-metaplex-core-moves-beyond-nft-standards-w-stephen-hess-metaplex-studios

[7] Metaplex Guides for Candy Machine – https://developers.metaplex.com/smart-contracts/candy-machine/guides

[8] Trading Assets | Auction House – https://developers.metaplex.com/legacy-documentation/auction-house/trading-assets

[9] Solscan - https://solscan.io/

Additionally: Solana Statistics, Trends And Facts (2025) - https://electroiq.com/stats/solana-statistics/

[10] 04-30-22 Solana Mainnet Beta Outage Report and Mitigation – https://solana.com/news/04-30-22-solana-mainnet-beta-outage-report-mitigation

[11] Solana Goes Dark for 7 Hours as Bots Swarm 'Candy Machine' NFT Minting Tool - https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/05/01/solana-goes-dark-for-7-hours-as-bots-swarm-candy-machine-nft-minting-tool

[12] Compressed NFTs Introduction - https://solana.com/developers/guides/javascript/compressed-nfts

Additionally: How to mint a Compressed NFT on Solana - https://blogs.shyft.to/how-to-mint-a-compressed-nft-on-solana-6e7c0098e51e

[13] NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Moves to Optional Royalty Model – https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/10/15/magic-eden-moves-to-optional-royalty-model

[14] Claynosaurz Royalty Enforcement Announcement - https://twitter.com/Claynosaurz

[15] Guide for validators on how to run a Solana node – https://academy.swissborg.com/en/learn/solana-node

[16] Jito MEV on Solana: JitoSOL & Multisig Treasury Management – https://squads.xyz/blog/jito-mev-solana-jitosol

[17] Wormhole, "Cross-Chain Bridge" - https://wormhole.com/