Large projects are once again showing interest in Solana: for example, the crypto wireless platform Helium recently migrated to it from its own L1 blockchain, minting 1 million Solana NFTs in the process. 

The whole mint cost Helium only $113; on Polygon, the project would have paid $32,800. This is possible thanks to Solana’s new state compression technology, which enables low-cost minting of large NFT collections. By the way, XP.NETWORK has a similar feature: batch bridging, which helps you bridge hundreds and even thousands of NFTs in one go and save lots of money.

Finally, the issue of Solana outages, too, may also get fixed in the near future. Put together tiny minting costs, a good marketplace infrastructure, fast finality, and a very flexible NFT token standard – and you get a recipe for a new wave of popularity. 

At XP.NETWORK, we prepared for it in advance. However, integrating Solana into an NFT bridge wasn’t a walk in the park – here’s why.

Why bridging Solana NFTs is a challenge

Why bridging Solana
NFTs is a challenge

Solana is the second-biggest non-EVM chain integrated with the XP.NETWORK, after Tron. As you may know, we support more blockchains than any other  NFT bridge, and among them there are many non-EVM platforms, from MultiversX to Secret Network and Tezos. Each has its own wallets, programming language, and – most importantly – NFT token standard. 

Because of the differences in standards, integrating a non-EVM chain is always a challenge – but for us it’s also an exciting one. We have to make sure that every NFT that passes through XP.NETWORK will come out on the other side with the same smart contract logic, including token IDs, rarities, and royalties. 

Solana’s case is even more complex than most. The blockchain uses the Rust language, and the general token standard is SPL (Solana Public Library). However, almost nobody uses these standards to write NFT contracts from scratch – rather, both creators and developers use an NFT protocol and toolkit called Metaplex . Part of it is Candy Machine, the most popular NFT minting tool on Solana. 

Candy Machine supports such features as semi-fungible tokens, limited and open editions, complex metadata (e.g. a separate URI for animations and website) and even programmable NFTs with enforced royalties. 

What this all means is that NFT devs and even regular users can launch collections with complex contract logic using simple modules. From the point of view of an NFT bridge like XP.NETWORK, the complexity is to reproduce this logic correctly.

Check what’s bridging to and from Solana: Polkamon, Unstoppable Domains, and more

Check what’s bridging to and from Solana: Polkamon,Unstoppable Domains, and more

With XP.NETWORK, you can transfer NFTs between Solana and 25+ more chains, EVM and non-EVM. All the fees are paid in the coins of the origin chain: for example, in SOL when bridging to Polygon, or in MATIC when sending from Polygon to Solana. 

We are working on enabling Solana in V.3.0 of the bridge, which supports automated whitelisting and contract deployment. For now, it’s on V.2.0, so every Solana collection needs to be whitelisted with the XP.NETWORK team before it can be bridged. Of course, eventually we’ll loop all the chains into V.3.0.

If you’re curious to see which NFTs are traveling between Solana and other chains, use our state-of-the-art NFT Explorer. You’ll see many of our long-time partners on the list:

• Unstoppable Domains (to Solana)
• Hokizuki Apes (from Polygon and MutiversX to Solana and from Solana to Polygon)
• Polkamon (to and from BSC and Avalanche), etc.

Our partners are very excited about the opportunity of getting listed on both OpenSea (Polygon, Avalanche, BNB Chain) and Magic Eden. XP.NETWORK is the first NFT bridge that makes it possible at a low cost and in complete safety.