OpenSea Re-Adds Solana (SOL) NFT Trading Over 4 Years After Beta Launch

OpenSea Restores Solana NFT Trading

OpenSea has restored support for Solana-based NFT trading, the marketplace confirmed in an official announcement published on August 31, 2026 — more than four years after the feature first arrived in beta. Collectors can now search, buy, sell and place bids on Solana NFTs directly on the platform, with initial support covering collections such as Claynosaurz, Mad Lads, Collector Crypt and Phygitals, the last two being storefront-style collectible projects. The return fills a long-standing gap in marketplace coverage for the Solana ecosystem: OpenSea first rolled out Solana NFT trading in April 2022 as a beta serving roughly 165 collections, then pared the integration back as the NFT bear market deepened. In the interim, the company rebuilt its trading stack around OS2, the revamped platform that went fully live on May 29, 2025 with complete support for Solana's fungible tokens, though NFT trading stayed offline until this week's relaunch. The marketplace now lists 28 supported blockchains in total, a roster spanning Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Avalanche, Ronin, Sei and Berachain alongside newer entrants such as Monad, MegaETH, Unichain and Zora. The announcement does not specify which additional Solana collections will join the initial four, so the pace of catalog expansion remains unconfirmed. For the network, however, the significance is straightforward: a top-tier NFT venue is re-entering a chain whose collections once ranked among the busiest in the industry, restoring a second surface for collector demand just as retail on-ramps multiply. Mad Lads, one of Solana's best-known profile-picture collections, anchors the launch roster alongside Claynosaurz.

OpenSea's official X post confirming Solana NFT trading is live again

https://x.com/opensea/status/2094547650502631836?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Mercari Opens a 1-Yen On-Ramp

A parallel retail on-ramp opened the same day in Japan. Mercoin, the crypto arm of e-commerce operator Mercari, added Solana (SOL) to Mercari's in-app trading service on August 31, per the company's official announcement, lifting the tradable lineup to 16 assets. The service carried only BTC, ETH and XRP until June 2026, when a Coincheck integration brought 12 more coins — DOGE, SHIB, BCH, LINK and AVAX among them — as detailed in our coverage of Mercari's SOL launch in Japan. The decisive mechanic is funding: buyers can acquire SOL from as little as 1 yen using Merpay balances generated by Mercari sales proceeds or accrued points, eliminating the separate bank-deposit step that standard exchange purchases require. Execution, however, runs through Coincheck — Mercoin intermediates each order, with Coincheck acting as counterparty at its retail book prices, which embed a spread that functions as built-in slippage even though trading commissions are waived. Access requires a Mercoin trading account plus a Coincheck linked account, and users who already hold a standard Coincheck account cannot apply for one. Custody is constrained as well: SOL bought through Mercari cannot be sent to external wallets, while direct Coincheck customers have had withdrawal access since June 4, 2026. To seed adoption, Mercoin is granting 200 yen in points to eligible first-time SOL buyers who purchase via the campaign page between September 1 and September 14 at 12:00 JST. The addressable audience skews strikingly new: roughly 90% of Mercoin users had never traded crypto, and cumulative accounts topped 4 million as of end-March 2026. For newcomers weighing how to buy SOL, the app-native path removes friction — though the service is designed for gradual, small-ticket accumulation rather than impulse-driven FOMO entries, and volatility and spread risks still apply. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

Record Fees Meet New Funnels

Both launches land against record on-chain throughput. On-chain data shows the seven-day moving average of Solana's daily fee revenue reached roughly 9,200 SOL as of August 27 — an all-time high — while non-vote transactions over the trailing week totaled about 191 million, also a record. COINOTAG's read: access, not price, is Solana's current growth lever. Each new surface — a top NFT marketplace re-entering at scale, an e-commerce app converting sales balances into steady buy-side flow — widens the funnel feeding a chain that recently passed its double-disinflation vote, tightening staking economics just as demand diversifies beyond traders into collectors and first-time retail savers.