In Brief:
- Degenerate Ape #7225 NFTs sold for 5980 SOL, marking first ever million-dollar NFT sale for Solana
- Moonrock Capital purchased 13th rarest Ape from Degenerate Ape Academy
- It also purchased 18th Solpunk, a copy of Ethereum-based CryptoPunks
A Degenerate Ape Academy non-fungible token(NFT) was sold for 5980 SOL or $1.1 million on the Solana blockchain platform. It is the largest NFT sale on the Solana blockchain, the rival of the Ethereum blockchain.
According to the announcement, London-based blockchain advisory firm Moonrock Capital has purchased this Degenerate Ape NFT.
Moonrock purchased Degen Ape #7225, a scarred zombie version of an ape with a halo, gold tooth, has a brain in its mouth. The ape is the 13th rarest in the collection. This appears to be the first sale worth more than a million dollars at the time of purchase.
The NFT collection was inspired by a trendy Ethereum-based Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. A collection of 101 Bored Ape sold this week for $24.4 million at the auction house Sotheby. However, the Degenerate collection has a different design and is only based on the same animal.
Another collection, Solanapes mints NFTs with randomized trait combinations. They are the copy of the Ethereum based project Bored Ape Yacht Club. There is another Solana-based NFT collection called SolPenguins, which looks similar to the Ethereum-based Pudgy Penguin collection.
Moonrock also purchased the 18th rarest SolPunk, a Solana-themed version of CryptoPunks, for 1,388 SOL ($260,000). SolPunks are also the same as Ethereum-based Crypto Punks. They even look like original cryptopunks with minor modifications.
People on Twitter also criticized Solana for creating copies of Ethereum based NFT projects. They even criticized for not doing any creative work, especially for art. One of the Twitter users also tweeted that “If a project doesn’t have meaning, it doesn’t have it. You can put all the money that you want in creating a fake pump”.
While some of the others criticized the project saying that nothing like the original even if it’s copied to another blockchain. There’s no originality or creativity or status. Even if it’s rare on-chain just not the same vibe. Going for sol punks is like saying “I’m too poor to afford the real cryptopunks”.
Not everyone thinks that Solana will continue to have success in the NFT world. One of the NFT traders said that Solana is “less mature” and is “not going to be the landing spot for high-end NFTs” in the future.
NFTs have typically been created and sold on the Ethereum blockchain, where the majority of value and interest remains today. But the NFT boom and popularity caused demand and increased fees. For this reason, some investors are looking for other platforms like Solana. Hence, Solana with much fewer fees and traffic has taken off.
Is Moonrock Capital Promoting Solana?
Moonrock bought Solana based NFT projects which are copies of Ethereum-based NFT projects. It looks like they didn’t admire the creativity & originality of the NFTs/art. They’re just supporting a Copy project.
Moonrock is known for doing pump and dump schemes. They already did this with the Polkamon project and others. One Twitter user posted a thread on this saying that, “It’s clear the only thing that MoonRock helped them succeed with was pump investors/insider funds and dump on retail”.
There are chances that Moonrock is highly invested in Solana. They are promoting a Solana based non-creative project to increase the popularity of Solana. It will increase the price of Solana and they can make a profit.
So the question remains: Is this really a pump and dump game for MoonRock Capital?
