Highlights

- Usage of the Metaplex protocol continues to grow with an all-time high of 15.7 million NFTs created in August, representing the fourth consecutive record-breaking month

- The Metaplex Foundation released several improvements to the protocol’s developer experience, including the launch of a new developer hub with deeper support on Compressed NFTs and an expansion of Kinobi (client code generator) to support Rust

Protocol Activity

In August, creators and developers minted 15.7 million NFTs with Metaplex, representing the largest volume in a single month since the protocol’s inception and the fourth record breaking month in a row.

In addition, over 245,000 unique wallets directly signed transactions with the protocol in August, representing the second highest month of all time. There are now 12.9 million unique wallets that have ever held a Metaplex NFT, an increase of ~540k unique wallets month-over-month.

Developer Platform

In August, the Metaplex Foundation shipped several improvements to the Metaplex developer platform, including a new developer hub, expanded functionality for Compressed NFTs and a new Rust client for Token Metadata.

Developer Hub

Metaplex Foundation overhauled the front door of the protocol’s developer experience with the launch of a new developer hub. The site features new documentation and examples for how to build with Compressed NFTs and how to deploy on-chain royalty enforcement using Token Metadata. In addition, it provides detailed docs on Candy Machine, which is used to launch generative collections like SMB and Claynosaurz.

Compressed NFTs

In addition to improved documentation and SDKs, an updated version of Bubblegum, the on-chain program underpinning compressed NFTs, shipped to mainnet. Bubblegum now allows creators to decide whether the NFTs in their collection can be decompressed.

While decompression allows a compressed NFT to become compatible with all existing Metaplex NFT infrastructure, the rapid adoption and development of compression-native tooling is causing several creators to prefer keeping their entire collections uniformly compressed, which this update now supports.

In addition, the Metaplex Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API has received several upstream stability and performance improvements with the help of community contributions from Triton RPC, Helius and Tensor.

Token Metadata Rust client

In August, Metaplex released the Token Metadata v2.0.0.0 Rust SDK. This comes with a number of significant benefits for developers building on the Metaplex Protocol including

- Improved shipping velocity via auto-generated SDK

- A clearer interface for calling Token Metadata with on-chain programs

- Simplified dependencies that make developing with Token Metadata easier

- An abstraction layer that makes breaking changes less likely

Powering this new SDK is Kinobi, Metaplex’s client code generation library for Solana programs, which in course has been improved for conditional resolvers, error traits, better instruction input resolution.

“Uses” feature in Token Metadata

A new Metaplex Improvement Proposal, MIP-6, was created proposing the deprecation of the “Uses” feature inside of Token Metadata. If you’re currently relying on this feature, the Metaplex Foundation will be gathering feedback and making a final call within the coming weeks.

Application Ecosystem 

The ecosystem of applications and services built on Metaplex continues to grow with a variety of new compression-enabled use cases testing and discovering product market fit.

DRiP, a platform for artists to airdrop free digital collectibles, raised a $3 million seed led by Placeholder and co-led by 6th Man Ventures, Anagram, and Collab+ Currency. Almost ~500k users have subscribed to DRiP’s weekly airdrops of compressed NFTs, with a wide variety of drops in August including a partnership with STEPN and MOOAR, among others.

Solarplex has just released their v2 platform. This new release elevates the concept of community engagement via a unique NFT reactions feature, which serves as a way to highlight and celebrate the incredible talent of artists within the space. Artists will also be able to share mints directly on their timeline, blending NFTs and social interactions. Click here to join the waitlist.

TipLink launched a free tool for building and minting a custom avatar using compressed NFTs. Similar to what we’ve seen from NFT adoption on Reddit, experiences like these represent the beginning of on-chain user account models that can power decentralized applications.‍

Tensor airdropped 100k compressed NFT Shards to mint their Tensorian PFP collection. Tensorians and Shards have traded over 250k SOL in volume in less than 30 days, marking a milestone in total volume traded on compressed NFTs. Tensor also shipped Swapsorian, an OTC tool for safely trading Tensorians for other Tensorians + SOL. ‍

Phantom has expanded the “Recent Activity” section of their wallet to include Metaplex Compressed NFTs. The new features allow you to “keep track of your cNFT activity across a wide range of transactions including sending, receiving, buying, selling, and minting.”‍

Matrica rolled out support for holder verification for compressed NFTs, starting with the Tensorian collection. This paves the way for significantly expanding the types of experiences that can be token gated.‍

Helium is a decentralized wireless network that powers individual hotspots in more than 170 countries, as well as offering 5G services to certain American cities. This month, Helium Mobile, the hybrid wireless carrier that combines service from the Helium 5G network and T-Mobile, rolled out service in its first market, Miami, for just $5 per month. Originally hosted on its own blockchain network, Helium migrated to Solana earlier this year. As part of the migration, each hotspot was minted as a compressed NFT, which act as credentials, verify authenticity, and provide data for developers. They also enable token-gated experiences. ‍

Crossmint makes it easy for developers to create, manage, sell and custody NFTs. In addition to offering an API solution, they recently launched a no-code UI in order to make it easier for non-developers to mint compressed NFTs, as well as regular NFTs.

Creators

Creators on Solana are discovering new ways to build on-chain community through NFTs. Some highlights include:

Photo Finish is a virtual horse racing platform that allows users to buy, sell, breed and race their horses. This past month they held a Virtual Kentucky Derby as part of their official partnership with Churchill Downs. 

Heist, the popular risk-based idle game, launched its second season including new heists, scavenger trips and new locations. Heist has proven to be one of the most popular web3 games on Solana and has demonstrated a new way to incorporate NFTs as in-game playable characters. 

Breadheads is a physical art project known as one of the first collections with composable traits. They recently started dropping monthly gaming challenges as compressed NFTs. The August challenge had 40K unique mazes embedded in the compressed NFTs, with the winner of the most mazes receiving a prize.

For on-going community updates, please follow @metaplex on Instagram and Twitter. For developers, we recommend following and turning on notifications for @metaplexstatus. To contribute to the Metaplex protocol, please engage with us on Github or consider submitting a Metaplex Improvement Proposal (MIP) at mip.metaplex.com.

Lastly, a thank you to TopLedger for their data support on this month’s round-up and providing real-time monitoring on Metaplex activity and usage to the ecosystem.