NFT Superstar Beeple Announces Collaboration with Solana – Create Your Own NFT?

Prominent digital artist Mike Winkelmann, professionally known as Beeple, is bringing “immersive 3D NFTs” to the Solana blockchain. 

Stephen Hess, CEO of Solana NFT marketplace Metaplex Studios, announced the news on Sunday at Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

“In partnership with the Render Network, we’re excited to welcome Beeple to Metaplex and Solana,” Hess announced, adding that Beeple would be “debuting the future of streaming and immersive 3D NFTs.”

While he did not disclose many details of the collaboration, a slide accompanying the announcement revealed that users will be invited to “create your own unique NFT with a Beeple Everyday” using a “randomized set of objects and time to create with.”

Render Network, a peer-to-peer service for providing 3D rendering power, is already involved with Beeple, who has served as an advisor to the platform. Render Network allows individual creators and small studios to tap into significant amounts of distributed rendering power without the potentially sizable expense of building a local rendering farm.

Beeple’s Record-Breaking NFT Project

In early March 2021, Beeple’s “Everyday: The First 5000 Days” NFT project, which was in the making for around 13 years, sold for a whopping $69.35 million at Christie’s, becoming the most expensive NFT ever sold, and positioned Beeple among the top three most valuable living artists.

And in November 2021, the artist’s HUMAN ONE fetched $28.9 million at Christie’s 21st Century Evening Sale, becoming the follow-up to the artist’s record-breaking digital artwork. The piece was composed of both an NFT and a physical sculpture. 

Solana NFTs Take a Plunge

Meanwhile, the daily sales volume of NFTs on the Solana blockchain has reached its lowest level in more than a year amid the prolonged crypto winter that has seen the value of almost all cryptocurrencies plunge by more than 70% compared to their all-time highs.

More specifically, Solana NFTs’ daily sales volume has been hovering around $1 million for the past couple of days, a level not seen since early August 2021. For perspective, Solana NFTs’ daily sales volume reached an all-time high of over $48 million in late August 2021. 

Part of the decline in interest in Solana NFTs has been attributed to the rise of the Aptos blockchain, a Proof-of-Stake Layer 1 blockchain conceived by former Meta engineers. 

The protocol, which aims to leverage its new smart contract language, Move, in order to reach a throughput of over 100,000 transactions per second, has been seen as a Solana killer.