Magic Eden integrates Solana’s compressed NFTs into marketplace

Non­fun­gi­ble token (NFT) mar­ket­place Mag­ic Eden has announced that it will sup­port Solana’s com­pressed NFTs (cNFTs) to pro­vide a cost-effi­cient and scal­able alter­na­tive to own­ing dig­i­tal collectibles.

Today we’re releas­ing sup­port for cNFTs (find them in our pop­u­lar collections) 

cNFTs are a new wave of NFT cre­ation only pos­si­ble on Solana. The “c” stands for com­pressed (not Car­dano don’t wor­ry) which allows them to be pro­duced at a frac­tion of the cost of tra­di­tion­al… pic.twitter.com/WbO4qqWLEt

— Mag­ic Eden (@MagicEden) Sep­tem­ber 14, 2023

cNFTs are dif­fer­ent from the usu­al Solana NFTs because their data are com­pressed and are stored off-chain. Because of this, pro­duc­tion in larg­er quan­ti­ties is more fea­si­ble as they require less­er fees to mint. 

Accord­ing to Mag­ic Eden, this type of NFT is ide­al for the cre­ation of mass-pro­duced col­lec­tions in var­i­ous indus­tries like gam­ing, music, events and the meta­verse. The NFT mar­ket­place believes that it allows cre­ators to reach wider audi­ences with­out spend­ing more. 

The NFT mar­ket­place also believes that by low­er­ing the costs involved in NFT pro­duc­tion, it can poten­tial­ly pro­mote adop­tion and become an “easy access point” for new peo­ple to try out col­lect­ing NFTs. With low­er costs, users can col­lect NFTs with­out risk­ing a large amount of funds to acquire col­lec­tions. It low­ers the risk of los­ing mon­ey over NFTs. 

cNFTs are pow­ered by Solana’s state com­pres­sion, a fea­ture that allows as many as 1 mil­lion NFTs to be mint­ed with just around $110. Com­pared to mint­ing NFTs on Ethereum which could cost any­where from $2.9 to over $30 to mint per NFT, the cost of mint­ing is dras­ti­cal­ly low­ered with cNFTs. 

Relat­ed: ‘WTH did I just wit­ness?’ Mag­ic Eden turns porno after host­ing ser­vice hacked

While there may be ben­e­fits to host­ing NFTs off-chain, it also some­times comes with chal­lenges of its own. In 2022, NFTs that were mint­ed on the cryp­to exchange FTX broke down and showed blank images as the exchange went bank­rupt. An engi­neer point­ed out that the NFTs were host­ed using a Web2 API, instead of the blockchain and warned that there’s a les­son to be learned in host­ing NFTs using Web2 technology. 

Mag­a­zine: NFT Col­lec­tor: Giant Swan’s goth­ic VR dream­scapes… roy­al­ty night­mare on OpenSea