Ever wondered if those who hold an NFT of the top Solana projects have some sort of godly intuition as to what other projects to buy and when to buy? Well then, below we’re going to explore two aspects of these blessed holders:

1. Crossover between holders of the top 10 projects by Market Cap.

2. Profitability of other collections they mint or purchase.

More of the data presented in this report can be explored, interacted with and updated in the dashboard below 👇:

☝️ The dashboard can be updated on-demand by pressing the refresh button 🔄 in the top right corner of the page.

I. Top NFT Projects by Market Cap

Chances are you’ve heard about many of them, you don’t become the top dog being quiet. But although these all are successful by all means, we can see DeGods eclipsing all the other 9 projects with its Market Cap of over 4M SOL, worth over $133M at the current price.

By the number of holders however, things are a bit more balanced and it offers us a good base of addresses to track their minting and trading activity on the Solana blockchain.

*The tables used to build the dashboard currently have data from Dec 2021 onward. This only affects the DeGods collection as the minting date and many last trades of mints were executed before the available data.

II. Holders Crossover Between Top 10

When we look at the crossover of members between the top 10 projects there is a fairly large overlap, with 15% to 30% of each project’s holders crossing over. Most of the addresses only hold a NFT from just one other project, but we can also see many holders having a presence in up to 7 other top communities.

This hints at a close relationship between the projects that succeed and a common goal of holders to help succeed as many of these projects as possible.

Once we break down this crossover a little more, we can better understand the one to one relationship between these communities.

A lot of the projects have their holders part of the Okay Bears community. We can see particularly high crossover percentages coming from DeGods, SMB and Degen Apes. On the other end of the spectrum we have Jelly Rascals and Degen Fat Cats with the least crossover between them and the rest of the top projects.

III. Projects Outreach: Minting Participation

Unsurprisingly, the majority of holders coming from the top 10 projects have participated in the minting of at least one other project. The percentage of participation goes as high as 77% in the case of Blocksmith Labs.

Many of these users have participated in a large number of minting events. We can see large counts of users in the 10-100 category, but also in the 100+ category. As a result, we can say about the current top 10 projects that they have brought together individuals who have been present in a wide variety of projects and communities, making them hubs of knowledge and experience relating to the Solana NFT space.

With this vast experience altogether, let’s see if following their moves would be a clever thing to do. We will be comparing the minting price of the collections they minted to the current floor price of each.

Even with all their experience on hand, it seems like it remains a numbers game where you try to hit just slightly more than you miss. In the case of all 10 projects, more than half of all other collections their holders minted are worth less than their minting price.

There is an upside however. Minting prices are usually very cheap so the initial risk associated with participating is quite low. At the same time, some of the projects have the potential to multiply their value more than 1000 times, and we can see that being (sometimes) the case.

So are the winners able to raise everyone else out from underwater?

Below we have plotted the following assumptions:

• We mint one NFT of each project holders mint.

• We don’t sell any of the mints to the current date.

If we were to follow the minting signal of any of the base project, we would still be in profit at this moment. When we look at the progression of the profit over time we can tell it still is risky and previous months have been extremely volatile, but the low entry point and potential upside seem to sufficiently counterbalance costs with minimal (or in our case without) effort.

IV. Projects Outreach: Buy-In Signal

We must however consider that minting a project might not always be possible as access is more and more often based on lengthy vetting processes. However, there is nothing stopping anyone from just buying into a collection as soon as it hits the market.

Similar to the minting signal, we will look for the collections that were purchased by holders of the top 10 projects. A few assumptions were made:

• The date of the first buy-in is the signal date.

• The strength of the signal is given by the percentage of project holders making the same purchase on the signal date.

• We don’t sell any of the purchased NFTs to the current date.

Yet again, it is a game of numbers. The success rate is just under 50% overall and there is no clear correlation between the signal strength and the Floor Price (FP) multiplier that collection reaches. In fact, the most successful collections had quite weak signals.

In the case of purchased collection we can better observe the experience of holders who can appreciate the potential of a project and match that with a proper entry point. Even so, with a generally more expensive starting price, following buy-in signals is more risky and profits tend to be lower.

The profit over time chart is very similar to that of mint profits, but in this situation, given the lower room for error, profits actually turn into losses for a few months, at the end of a prolonged downtrend experience by the entire crypto and NFT market.

Even so, the recent rally brought our buy-in signal strategy back up from underwater and we would still be in profit without ever selling any of the collections we purchased.

V. Diamond Hands

Although we all wish we would have diamond hands and never ever sell, we should turn back to the holders of the most successful collections and see when they sell. What we’re seeing below is the number of NFTs sold collectively by the holders of the top NFT projects.

We’ve seen already that these holders minted and purchased a wide variety of projects over time, and yet most of the NFTs accumulated were never sold. Conviction? Not worth the effort? Pure diamond hands?

Who knows.

In the case of tokens that were sold, we do see certain key periods. In over 80% of the time, these are sold in less than 1 month since they were minted or purchased. As a difference between the two, minted NFTs tend to have a shorter hold time compared to those purchased.

This can be used to anticipate the behavior of experienced and likely large NFT traders and position ourselves to avoid being dumped on and turn a profit at the right time instead. That could mean either selling earlier or buying in after the dump.

Conclusions

• There is a lot of crossover between the top 10 NFT projects by market cap. This creates a network of holders rich in experience and knowledge that can help further the success of projects.

• Most of the top projects holders are very active in the Solana NFT space and have participated in many minting events over time.

• Despite the vast experience in the field, most of newly minted projects turn out to be worth less than their initial price. However, because the mint price is generally very low, the success of a few project proved to be enough to make the activity profitable. The minting participation signal is a good one to follow over the long term.

• Buy-in signals prove to be just as unsuccessful as minting events, but once again they can turn profitable with the success of just a few. However, in this case there is a higher entry cost and therefore a lower potential upside, making the strategy of following buy-in signals risky.

• Top project holders seem to have little interest in selling most of the items they have either minted or purchased. But in the case of those they do sell, they do so rather quickly, generally in less than 1 month.

• The long-term success of a project is anyone’s guess and certainly none of the top project holders has a golden formula to enrich themselves by flipping NFTs. We can however learn from these holders that crossing over between many projects helps us recognize value and the rest is a numbers game we need to have the patience to live through.