TL;DR

• Earlier this week, Magic Eden (the Solana NFT marketplace) announced it was supporting ‘compressed NFTs.’

• ​Basically, they are NFTs that are 2,400-24,000x cheaper than traditional NFTs thanks to their metadata (the image, title and description) being stored off-chain.

• While it can definitely reduce costs and therefore become more attractive for big players wanting to enter the space, it does take away the whole selling point of ‘digital permanence.’

Full Story

Ever heard of compressed ​NFTs​?

Yeah, neither.

But earlier this week, Magic Eden (the Solana NFT marketplace) announced it was supporting them.

So, what are they exactly?

Basically, they are NFTs that are 2,400-24,000x cheaper than traditional NFTs thanks to their metadata (the image, title and description) being stored off-chain.

(And if it's not being stored on a ​blockchain​, there ain't any on-chain storage fees).

The result? Users can create a boat-load of NFTs for pennies on the dollar.

So what are some of the use cases? Think:

• Gaming companies who want to use NFTs as in-game assets for millions of players

• Music festivals who want to sell millions of tickets as NFTs

• Traditional companies who want to track merchandise across supply chains

Our take on this?

While it can definitely reduce costs and therefore become more attractive for big players wanting to enter the space, it does take away the whole selling point of ‘digital permanence.’

It's like getting a sandwich with no filling – technically it's still a sandwich, but it's just not the same.

So, yeah, we’re happy it‘s an option, but we're not rushing to use it.

We like our NFTs with all their metadata permanently intact, thank you very much.