Solana NFT Platform Closes Its Doors After 1 Year

Solana NFT marketplace Formfunction has decided to wind out its business without specifying the reason for the closure.

The platform announced via Twitter that it will shut down on March 29 because it cannot continue to run Formfunction.

The firm called it an “extremely difficult decision”, but it was made after considerable deliberation and thought.

Even though Formfunction is winding down, you still have complete ownership of your NFTs (that’s the beauty of web3!) We’re also making it easy to export a hashlist of all NFTs you’ve created so that you can continue to display and sell them on the platform(s) of your choice.

Users are advised to delist their existing pieces before the deadline so as to easily list again elsewhere, it added.

Launched on February 3rd, 2022, Formfunction prides itself on being a creator-focused platform on Solana.

The marketplace’s abrupt shutdown announcement caught many by surprise because it generated $5 million in sales despite a “brutal bear market,” as Formfunction’s anonymous community leader “Magellan” tweeted.

This is also indicative of the underwhelming performance of Solana’s NFT network.

In the last 30 days, SOL witnessed a decline in NFT sales and the number of transactions but has retained second rank behind Ethereum in NFT sales volumes by blockchain.

NFT sales on Ethereum, the chain that leads this measure, have decreased by about 11% over the past 30 days to $734 million as of this writing.

According to data from CryptoSlam, Solana has decreased by 38% over the same time frame and is currently in second place with $75 million.

A few well-known NFT collections that were originally native to Solana have apparently chosen to use other blockchains instead. Read here for more details.

That being said, the recent failure of three major crypto-focused banks, the latest being the Silicon Valley Bank [SVB] has sent a ripple effect across the market.

Solana Has No Exposure To SVB

Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder of the Sol blockchain, claimed that neither Solana Labs nor the Solana Foundation had any exposure to SVB.

Most recently, Solana revealed its intentions to launch Code Canvas, a new platform for generative art NFTs that is anticipated to appeal to both art and cryptocurrency lovers.

The team behind Exchange. Art, a Sol-based digital marketplace for fine art, said in a statement that the new platform will let creators and collectors mint and trade generative art NFTs on the Solana blockchain.