With nearly 900 million transactions and $6.8 billion in transaction value, the Metaplex ecosystem is experiencing extraordinary growth. Existing Solana projects are constantly evolving and finding product market fit, having consistently built through the bear market, while new projects continue to choose Metaplex as the backbone for their core offerings.

This was the perfect time to introduce a new format to showcase these projects and put them in the “Spotlight” (which is where the name originates). 

In these writeups, you can expect to dive deeper into the featured projects, exploring their origin stories, their journey to success, and the inner workings of their products. Most importantly, you’ll learn how they leverage Metaplex as a key component of their offerings, showcasing the unique ways they innovate and build within the ecosystem!

Metaplex is the digital asset protocol that underpins the onchain economy on Solana and the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), offering a full stack solution for creating assets, building securely onchain and delivering web scale performance for users. It powers thousands of applications and communities, supporting one of the largest blockchain developer ecosystems in the world. 

Beyond the protocol, which includes a comprehensive suite of token standards, programs, tools, and resources empowering developers to build decentralized applications using digital assets, the Metaplex ecosystem is supported by:

• The Metaplex Foundation: A non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the development, security, and decentralization of the Metaplex ecosystem. It drives initiatives like this spotlight series and supports the long-term growth of the protocol.

• The Metaplex DAO: A distributed global community of builders, creators and entrepreneurs building on top of shared decentralized infrastructure. The Metaplex DAO is governed by the $MPLX token whereby holders are responsible for dictating changes to the Metaplex protocol and managing the DAO treasury, fostering a collaborative and community-driven approach to ecosystem growth.

So what can we expect from this new series?

As mentioned earlier, the goal of this new series is to highlight both new and existing projects that leverage Metaplex as the foundation for their products. In addition to showcasing their success, the insights gained from engaging with these protocols will allow the creation of more thoughtful and detailed content on how to effectively use Metaplex for specific verticals or use cases that will serve almost as a manual for new projects looking at digital assets for their use cases.

With this series, you’ll gain insights into:

• Latest Narratives and Their Products: As the AI Agent space and onchain economy rapidly evolves, the first series of spotlights have been curated to feature protocols like SendAI, Griffain, and other innovators shaping this exciting new paradigm.

• Different Verticals: Discover how products across various verticals, such as Gaming and Real-World Assets (RWA) operate and excel onchain. Here, additional thoughtful and detailed content that explores how to effectively use Metaplex for specific verticals and use cases will be created.

• Newly Launched Products: Understanding how challenging it can be to launch a new product, this series will help bring visibility to these projects through co-marketing efforts on our socials and in-depth blog posts that highlight their innovations and contributions to the ecosystem.

Are you interested in getting featured? Reach out to Leo or Clay and let’s talk about how we can help! 

If you’re interested in building leveraging Metaplex tools, visit our Developer Hub or join our Discord Server to learn more and get started!