// the find
metaplex-foundation/metaplex
A directory of what the Metaplex Foundation works on!
This repo is a README-only index pointing to the Metaplex Foundation's actual projects — on-chain Solana programs (Token Metadata, Candy Machine, Auction House), SDKs for JS/iOS/Android, and tooling like Sugar and Shank. It contains no code. If you're building NFT infrastructure on Solana, this is the map, not the territory.
The toolchain is genuinely well thought out: Shank generates IDLs from native Solana programs, Solita turns those IDLs into typed JS SDKs — that's a real codegen pipeline, not hand-written glue. Sugar (Rust-based Candy Machine CLI) replaced the old JS CLI for good reason — it's meaningfully faster for large collection launches. Auction House's escrowless sales model is a real protocol design win; NFT doesn't leave seller's wallet until settlement.
This repo itself is a navigation dead-end — 3,353 stars on a README directory is a vanity metric that inflates the apparent activity of the ecosystem. Last push was August 2024 and several linked repos (especially the JS SDK) have been superseded by Umi, which isn't even mentioned here, making this directory actively misleading for newcomers. No indication of which programs are still maintained vs. quietly abandoned beyond the small 'Deprecated' section — and the graveyard list is almost certainly incomplete.