Metaplex November Round-up

Highlights

- Metaplex had 239k monthly unique signers, representing a 45% increase month-over-month and bringing the YTD total to 1.2 million unique wallets that signed a transaction, the highest of any Solana protocol

- NFTs minted through Metaplex reached 15.8 million in November, the third highest month of all-time

- Nearly 35 million transactions were signed this month, the fourth highest month on record

- The Metaplex DAO voted on and passed two community Metaplex Improvement Proposals (MIPs) related to non-custodial edition sales and soulbound NFTs

- Metaplex Foundation is sponsoring a track for Solana Speedrun 2, a gaming-focused hackathon

Protocol Activity

In November, creators and developers minted 15.8 million NFTs with Metaplex, the third highest month since the protocol’s inception. There were more than 840,000 Token Metadata NFTs minted this month, the highest total since June of this year. Over 125 million NFTs have been minted through Metaplex to-date, including almost 90 million compressed NFTs.

239,131 unique wallets directly signed transactions with the protocol in November, the third highest month on record this year and a 45% increase month-over-month. Year-to-date, 1.2 million unique wallets have signed transactions, making Metaplex the largest Solana protocol based on the number of unique signers.

There were nearly 35 million transactions signed this month, the fourth highest month on record and the second most transactions of any Solana protocol in November. There’s now been over 300 million transactions since the protocol’s inception.

As of November, the total number of Metaplex collectors reached 14.8 million unique wallets, an increase of ~530k month-over-month.

Developer Platform

Developer Hub

Metaplex’s Developer Hub was upgraded with the addition of new Rust examples to the Token Metadata documentation including Rust client and CPI snippets. Developers can now experience the ease of use of Metaplex Rust crates with minimal dependencies. 

Token 2022

Soon developers and creators will be able to mint Token22 tokens with Metaplex. The integration was audited by Mad Shield and several improvements were put in place based on the findings. By using Token22 with Token Metadata, developers, creators, and collectors can experience benefits such as programmability, royalty enforcement, and enhanced integration support across applications. New guides have been added to Developer Hub as well.

The code has been deployed to devnet and will be deployed to mainnet shortly thereafter. 

Updating Compressed NFTs 

The Update metadata instruction for Bubblegum is being refactored following developer feedback and is expected to be released to devnet and then mainnet soon.

Metaplex DAO

Metaplex Improvement Proposals (MIPs)

The Metaplex DAO voted to successfully pass two different MIPs as part of the Metaplex Protocol’s governance process.

MIP-7 enables non-custodial edition sales and MIP-8 is a new change to Token Auth Rules in order to enable soulbound programmable NFTs. Both proposals will now move to implementation by the Metaplex Foundation. 

As a reminder, any MPLX holder is able to propose, comment, and vote on MIPs, which may propose changes to any program in the Metaplex Program Library.

DAO Grant Applications

dReader is a platform that enables comic readers and collectors to discover, read, collect, and trade digital comics. In addition to a number of ongoing engagements with top Solana collections, dReader has also won multiple hackathons including Grizzlython, Sandstorm, and Encode. The team recently applied for a locked, performance-based $MPLX grant from the Metaplex DAO in order to onboard additional creators, users, and artists onto their platform. Through the onboarding of these users, dReader expects to mint at least 100,000 NFTs in the next 12 months. The voting period began on December 6th and will end on December 20th. Make sure to follow @metaplexfdnd on X for updates.

Community Activations

Metaplex Foundation is sponsoring a track for Solana Speedrun 2, a gaming-focused hackathon and the 2nd Solana Game Jam. 150,000 $MPLX will be granted to the top three projects that demonstrate fun gameplay, engaging and novel mechanics, and creative use of the Metaplex Program Library.

The prizes will be allocated as follows:

1st - 75,000 MPLX

2nd - 50,000 MPLX

3rd - 25,000 MPLX

Application Ecosystem

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

• Rainfi, a popular lending protocol on Solana, launched a new use case for Metaplex NFTs as tokenized loans. The new feature enables peer-to-peer loans for fungible tokens and uses NFTs to represent the collateralized funds on-chain. When the loan is repaid, the NFT is burned and the funds are released. 

• Sniper, one of the leading NFT marketplaces on Solana, recently added support for trading NFTs in any SPL token. The new feature is powered by Jupiter, Jito Labs, and Birdeye. 

• Honeycomb, an infrastructure protocol that’s compatible with Metaplex NFTs and offers on-chain programs and SDKs for web3 gaming, has developed a generalized state-compression solution that has successfully brought down on-chain fees for its Player Profiles program by ~1300x. State-compression is expected to be implemented across all of their programs in order to create the first scalable gaming solution directly on SVM. 

• Magic Eden released the beta version of their new cross-chain wallet, designed to serve as a one-stop solution for NFT collectors across Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Polygon. The wallet supports Metaplex NFTs. ‍

• Solandy, creator of one of the most popular Solana developer channels on youtube, released a new video tutorial on how to use Metaplex Umi, a modular framework for building and using JavaScript clients for Solana programs.

Creator Ecosystem 

Solana creators are discovering new ways to build-on chain communities and attract audiences through NFTs. Some highlights include:

• Okay Bears continues to go mainstream, launching Okay Bears themed apparel in 1,149 ZARA stores across 74 countries. The project also held a Movember 2023 Open Edition drop, which raised funds and awareness for men’s health. 

• PUBLIQUE is an animated universe created by Robbie Shilstone consisting of unique characters, each with their own stories as part of the project’s upcoming short films. Collectors will have the opportunity to contribute story ideas and develop the characters alongside the project. PUBLIQUE recently airdropped Apples to lucky Breakpoint attendees that will serve as the first component of the new collection.  

• Claynosaurz celebrated their one year anniversary on Solana this month. Launched in the depths of the bear, the project has quickly redefined how professional-grade IP and web3 can be intertwined in order to attract mass appeal. 

• Cyberz, launched by two well-known Solana creators Woody and Token Guy, is a cyberpunk style idle game that serves as a low barrier to entry for new web3. The game uses Metaplex NFTs as in-game assets and beta testing is currently underway. It’s expected to launch in Q1’24.

• Dazed Ducks, an OG collection that minted in 2021, recently redesigned their merch shop allowing both web2 and web3 access. They also launched solwheels, a gamified experience where users can spin with sol and sol gems to win prizes ranging from coupons to NFTs. Next month they plan to launch an exciting new venture called CardBay. More details to come. 

For on-going community updates, please follow @metaplex on Instagram and X (formerly 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. For additional Metaplex on-chain metrics, please refer to the following link.