Understanding compressed NFTs
Compressed NFTs are a type of non-fungible token (NFT) designed to reduce the cost of storing and transacting with NFTs on the Solana blockchain.
With the increasing adoption of NFTs, developers face difficulties maximizing storage and lowering minting costs for these digital assets. The Solana blockchain introduced compressed NFTs (cNFTs) to overcome such challenges.
CNFTs are a newer type of non-fungible token that leverages state compression technology to store data more efficiently on Solana. Unlike traditional NFTs, which store all the token’s metadata directly onchain or via external links (like IPFS), cNFTs use Merkle trees to optimize data storage.
In simpler terms, while regular NFTs store individual ownership and metadata records for each token onchain, cNFTs group these records in a highly compressed format. This significantly reduces storage costs and improves transaction speeds.
Although the technology is still in its infancy, it accounts for most NFTs minted on Solana.
Did you know? In March 2023, Crossmint produced the first large-scale mint of compressed NFTs on Solana. Minting 300,000 NFTs the traditional way would cost over $74,000, but with state compression technology, Crossmint reduced this cost to less than $200!
Key features of compressed NFTs
With cNFTs, artists and developers can mint thousands, even millions, of tokens at a fraction of the cost of traditional NFTs, boosting innovation.
Let’s look at some key features and benefits of cNFTs:
Cost efficiency: Minting thousands of compressed NFTs costs only a fraction of what it would for regular NFTs. For instance, as per Solana’s report, about 24,000 SOL are needed to create and mint 1 million traditional NFTs utilizing the traditional metadata route. It is possible to organize cNFTs so that the same setup and mint cost 10 SOL or less. This implies that anyone…..
