Digital artist Grant Yun debuted his non-fungible token (NFT) collection “Life in Japan” on Solana’s marketplace Exchange Art on April 18, through the drop “A Bright Spring Day”. The NFTs sold out within nine minutes after the mint became public. The collection delves deeply into memories from his time in Korea and frequent visits to Japan.
Despite publishing previous digital art pieces from his Life in Japan collection on Ethereum up until now, Yun shared with Crypto Briefing that he’s been keeping an eye out for Solana and Exchange Art from the sidelines for a long time.
“From all that has gone on these past few years, it is clear to me that Exchange Art is one of the leading platforms for SOL-based NFTs that is not only future-focused but also artist-focused. Beyond what platforms can do for artists today or what they’ve done for artists in the past, it is important to see what platforms are going to do for artists in the future,” he adds.
However, Solana is a competitive environment when it comes to token sniping. Users rely on bots to streamline token buying and minting processes. According to a Dune Analytics dashboard created by user maditim, the most profitable meme coin trading wallets on Solana are bot users.
Yun became aware of this after the launch of his collection on Exchange Art was announced, and reserved minting spots for holders of its previous works. This strategy guaranteed fair participation for users, he stated.
“Luckily I had some wonderful teams I worked with that helped me find an alternative solution to get my work in the hands of REAL people. The method did take some additional steps for collectors and quite a bit more work on my end but in the end it was worth it.”
Holders of “A Bright Spring Day” might want to hold their NFTs dearly, as Yun said he’s not sure that another drop from the Life In Japan series will be launched on Solana. Nevertheless, the digital artist shared that this is not his last work launched on this network.
“It took me some time to come to SOL but that was because I wanted to make sure there was a robust art culture on this chain, which I am now 100% convinced there is. I’m sure many people are aware I tend to take my time and tell my stories throughout multiple works of art over the years. When will be my next SOL drop? Even I don’t know the answer to this question but I hope to come back sooner than later!”