NFT Marketplaces Pivot to Memecoins

Legacy NFT marketplaces Opensea and Magic Eden are doubling down on their attempts to capture a slice of the memecoin markets.

Magic Eden acquired token trading app Slingshot on April 9, and Opensea is in the process of rolling out Solana token trading for select OS2 users.

The revamped OS2 platform launched with token trading enabled for Ethereum compatible chains such as Arbitrum, Base, Apechain, and Ronin, but is now expanding to Solana, whose DEX volumes have exceeded Ethereum’s for most of 2025 amid the memecoin craze.

The move has been met with criticism from the Solana community.

Part of the dismay and confusion is driven by the fact that Opensea 2.0 supports Solana memecoins before it offers Solana NFT trading, despite Opensea’s legacy platform integrating Solana NFTs in 2022.

The NFT marketplace pivot comes at a time when NFT volumes are down significantly from their highs, and the sector continues to lose mindshare to the memecoin space. Total trading volume across all marketplaces on April 15 was just $3.1 million, down a staggering 97% from the $106 million local high set on Dec. 17.