Solana NFT Breakdowns · 02
Solana Monkey Business.
The One That Got Bought Back.
Episode two of a series breaking down Solana NFT collections. Five thousand monkeys, a two million dollar sale, and a community that bought its own copyright back off a marketplace.
Solana Monkey Business is a 5,000 item Solana NFT collection minted in August 2021 at 2 SOL. It set an early record when one monkey sold for 13,027 SOL. Its intellectual property was sold to a marketplace in February 2023, and the holder DAO bought it back two months later for two million dollars.
Minted
August 2021, at 2 SOL each.
SOL, One Sale
SMB #1355, October 2021, about $2M.
Buyback
MonkeDAO reacquiring the IP, April 2023.
Supply Today
Magic Eden, read 3 September 2026.
The Rise
What actually happened, with the date attached to each of them.
August 2021, Two SOL A Monkey
Five thousand items at 2 SOL. It arrived when Solana had almost no blue chip PFP collections, and it became the reference point the rest of the ecosystem was measured against.
October 2021, The 13,027 SOL Sale
SMB #1355 sold for 13,027 SOL, roughly two million dollars, then a record for a Solana NFT. Reported by Hypebeast on 3 October 2021. It is the moment Solana NFTs entered the same sentence as the Ethereum blue chips.
A Holder DAO That Actually Had Teeth
MonkeDAO formed out of the holder base rather than the team. In February 2022 it went public with a dispute over royalty splits, saying it had received a fraction of what was promised. Decrypt covered it on 17 February 2022. It was settled by a holder vote in March 2022.
The Turn, And What It Cost
The part of the story people skip, at the same weight as the rise.
February 2023, The IP Was Sold Out From Under The DAO
Hadeswap, a Solana NFT marketplace, acquired the SMB intellectual property. Price undisclosed. MonkeDAO said it had been trying to buy the IP itself and found out about the deal days before it was announced. Decrypt, 13 February 2023.
April 2023, The Community Bought Its Own Copyright
MonkeDAO reacquired the IP for two million dollars, approved by roughly 97 percent of the governing vote. Decrypt, 20 April 2023. A holder group buying back the rights to its own artwork is close to unique in this category.
The Floor Did Not Follow The Story
A good governance outcome is not a price. The live table on this site reads the current floor from Magic Eden every hour, and a collection can be well run and still trade far below where it once did. Those are separate facts.
Nobody Publishes The Founders
The team stayed pseudonymous and no source reviewed names them. That is not an accusation. It is a thing you should know before you size a position on a collection whose leadership you cannot look up.
What It Teaches
Three things that survive the cycle.
The Art Is Not The Asset. The Rights Are.
SMB is the clearest case on Solana that a PFP collection and the copyright behind it are two different things, and that holders can find out the hard way that they only ever owned one of them.
A Record Sale Is One Transaction
The 13,027 SOL sale is real and it is also a single trade. One print does not make a market, and treating a record as a valuation is how people talk themselves into the top.
A DAO Is Only Worth The Leverage It Has
MonkeDAO worked because it could organise, vote and raise. Most holder groups cannot do any of the three, and the word DAO in a Discord does not mean the holders can act.
Supply and current floors from the live Magic Eden feed on this site, read 3 September 2026. Dated events from Hypebeast 3 October 2021 and 27 April 2022, Decrypt 17 February 2022, 13 February 2023, 20 April 2023 and 10 August 2023, CoinDesk 20 September 2022, 6 January 2023, 28 March 2023 and 10 August 2023, Cointelegraph 10 August 2023, The Block 12 May 2025, and CoinGecko for DUST token prices. Episodes 06 to 09 read 23 September 2026: Magic Eden stats API, CoinGecko, Forbes, OpenSea, OKX, Tensor and the launchpad listings, with the venue named beside every floor because they disagree. Dated events from CoinGecko Learn updated 13 June 2023, nft now 4 April 2022, Decrypt 26 August 2022 and 31 July 2024, The Block 28 August 2022, SolanaFloor 22 July 2024 and 12 November 2024, Cointelegraph 17 December 2024, Cryptonews 17 December 2024, the UK Financial Conduct Authority notice of 16 December 2024, and the Bored Ape Solana Club history document and Magic Eden blog for that collection. Peak floor prices are not published where no dated source gives one.
The Other Breakdowns
Same shape every time: what happened, what it cost, and what it teaches.
Gorillae Gang
A Solana OG collection started in Tulum, and the one I hold.
DeGods
Left Solana. Came Back.
y00ts
Took The Grant. Gave It Back.
Okay Bears
The Best Launch Solana Ever Had.
Cets on Creck
The Brand That Outlived The Floor.
The Pond
The FWOG Artist’s Hundred.
Retardio Cousins
The One The Regulator Named.
Bored Ape Solana Club
The Derivative That Got Its Own Badge.
Top 10 Solana NFT Collections
Ranked by thirty day volume on Magic Eden, refreshed hourly.
Common Questions
A 5,000 item Solana NFT collection minted in August 2021 at 2 SOL each, trading on Magic Eden under the symbol solana_monkey_business. It was one of the first blue chip PFP collections on Solana.
SMB #1355 sold for 13,027 SOL, roughly two million dollars, in October 2021. It was a record for a Solana NFT at the time, reported by Hypebeast on 3 October 2021.
MonkeDAO, the holder collective. It was sold to the marketplace Hadeswap in February 2023 and MonkeDAO bought it back for two million dollars in April 2023, per Decrypt.
The team has stayed pseudonymous and no source reviewed for this page names the founders. This site does not publish names it cannot verify.
It changes hourly. The live table on this site reads it from Magic Eden along with the rest of the top ten Solana collections, so the number there is current rather than the one that was true when this page was written.
The Rise Is The Easy Half.
The Turn Is The Lesson.
Every breakdown on this site publishes what went wrong at the same weight as what went right, with a date on each of them.
Not financial advice.