Bubblegum, a tool that reduces the cost of interacting with NFTs on the Solana blockchain using compression techniques (cNFTs), is routinely being used to mint over 3 million NFTs weekly. The main adopter of Bubblegum is Drip Haus, a project that allows creators to mint and launch NFTs. Drip has been promoting Bubblegum’s compression technology since early 2023.
It is noteworthy that a cost-saving feature has generated so much usage on Solana, considering that the blockchain already has low fees compared to Ethereum. Even in a low-demand environment, a simple token transfer on Ethereum costs $0.63, while Solana transactions usually cost fractions of a cent.
Bubblegum utilizes Merkle Trees, a widely used data structure in blockchains, to reduce the cost of minting cNFTs. This is because the digitalization of items in a Merkle tree scales logarithmically, meaning that minting a larger number of NFTs results in lower costs per cNFT.
However, the minting houses do not equal a heated market for NFTs on Solana; data from Solscan shows that the volume in terms of SOL for NFTs has been relatively stable over the past 90 days.
Metaplex, the company behind Bubblegum, is also responsible for the Candy Machine, a platform that enables NFT launches on Solana. Furthermore, they updated their protocol in January to allow NFT creators to apply royalties.
*Translation of the article “Millions of Compressed NFTs Are Being Minted Weekly On Solana” with permission from The Defiant.
Disclaimer: The text presented in this column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of CriptoFácil.