Wormhole Launches Solana-Ethereum Bridge to Move NFTs Cross-Chain

Solana-based interoperability protocol Wormhole officially announced the launch of a cross-chain bridge between the competitors Solana (SOL) and Ethereum (ETH).

This bridge will enable the transfer of digital assets between ERC-20 and SPL blockchains.

The total value locked (TVL) in the decentralized finance space has skyrocketed to nearly $170 billion, climbing towards the $192 billion peak earlier this month. This growth in TVL continues to grow as more and more layer 1 blockchains gain traction, driving this demand for cross-chain bridges.

Ethereum is currently in the lead at $118 billion, followed by Binance Smart Chain (BSC) at $16.23 billion, then Solana at $8.74 billion, Terra $8.05 billion, Polygon at $4.1 billion, Avalanche $3.16 billion, and Fantom at $1.24 billion, according to DeFi Llama.

As Yearn Finance (YFI) creator Andre Cronje explained last week in a panel hosted by Sanctor Capital,

“The whole DeFi wave gave a reason for people to begin interacting with different blockchains.”

“The more we’re interacting, the more we are realising that there’s actually a little bit too much activity for any one chain to handle this stuff.”

“While I can’t specifically pinpoint a big bang moment, it’s a combination of the maturing of different blockchains and their DeFi ecosystems, and things like NFTs that are giving people more and more of a reason to interact.”

On Wednesday, Wormhole stated that they are launching the NFT bridge between Ethereum and Solana, meaning users will now be able to send Ethereum and Solana NFTs such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Degen Ape Academy cross-chain.

🔥 Wormhole extends their Token Bridge to support #NFTs, making it easy to move NFTs between Ethereum and Solana https://t.co/fvuqz5WvK3

— Solana (@solana) September 22, 2021

Just like different layer 1 blockchains are cropping up and ruling the cryptocurrency market, non-fungible tokens (NFT) are all the mania right now as well.

NFTs are currently the most vibrant sector, representing material activity on Ethereum, as can be seen in the daily number of ERC-721 transfers that increased by over 10x from the beginning of 2021 to today.

NFT marketplace OpenSea, meanwhile, is the economic hub of NFT activity on Ethereum, which grew at a staggering pace this year. In August, OpenSea registered more than $3 billion in total volume while the number of unique buyers peaked at 35k the same month.

Besides attracting new users and generating new economic activity, NFTs also congested the Ethereum network and started growing on other blockchains, which offered cheaper and faster alternatives.

So, Wormhole is enabling the users to move digital art across the two blockchains.

For now, in the initial version, the bridge will only support ERC-721 (with metadata) and SPL assets with plans to expand NFT support even further to enable cross-chain transfers of ERC-1155 assets as well.

“We can't wait to see how users will leverage the NFT bridge to bring together previously disparate communities of artists, musicians, and content creators across multiple ecosystems,” tweeted the team.