Jack Kubinec 

Mert Mumtaz

Jeffrey Albus

The essential source for all things Solana — exclusive news, deep analysis, and the latest trends.

Lightspeed

Gm! This week we're joined by Emon Motamedi to discuss the Solana incubator. We deep dive into how to find great ideas, building in crypto, finding product market fit, advice for founders, what is cohort 3 &amp; more. Enjoy!
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Follow Emon: https://x.com/EmonMotamedi
Follow Jack: https://x.com/whosknave
Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq
Subscribe to the Lightspeed Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed
 
Find out more about the Solana Incubator: https://x.com/incubator
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Grab your tickets to Permissionless IV. Use code LIGHTSPEED10 for 10% off: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-iv
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Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/
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Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors the Lightspeed podcast. As Ledger celebrates 10 years of securing 20% of global crypto, it remains the top choice for securing your Solana assets. Buy a LEDGER™ device now and build confidently, knowing your SOL are safe.
 
Buy now on https://shop.ledger.com/?r=1da180a5de00.
--
(00:00) Introduction
(02:14) Post Accelerate Takeaways
(11:55) Ledger Ad
(12:47) How To Find Great Ideas
(19:41) Building In Crypto
(22:43) What Has PMF In Crypto?
(29:32) Ledger Ad
(30:25) Should Founders Launch Tokens?
(35:30) Real World Use Cases In Crypto
(39:25) Advice For Founders
(44:53) Examples From The Solana Incubator
(52:56) The Stablecoin Business Model
(55:50) What Is Cohort 3?
(58:59) Outro
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Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation.

Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Jack, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

The Solana Incubator: Finding Crypto's Next Breakthrough App | Emon Motamedi

Gm! This week we're joined by Kyle Samani &amp; Chris Heaney to discuss the state of Solana DeFi today. Enjoy!
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Follow Kyle: https://x.com/KyleSamani
Follow Chris: https://x.com/crispheaney
Follow Jack: https://x.com/whosknave
Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq
Subscribe to the Lightspeed Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed
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Grab your tickets to Permissionless IV. Use code LIGHTSPEED10 for 10% off: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-iv
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Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/
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Zenrock is a permissionless, decentralized custody network backed by 1RoundTable Partners, 10T, Maven11, and Spartan. Live on Jupiter, $ROCK is the native token for transactions within the Zenrock ecosystem and secures Zenrock’s decentralized custody network.

The first application launching on Zenrock is zenBTC – yield-bearing Bitcoin on Solana. zenBTC will be live in April 2025. Visit zenbtc.io to learn about earning yield with Bitcoin on Solana.
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(00:00) Introduction
(02:36) The State Of Solana DeFi
(05:38) Market Making Onchain
(10:10) Zenrock Ad
(10:59) Solana Network Upgrades
(17:56) The Axiom Success Story
(21:30) Competing As A Perps DEX
(23:26) The Future Of Tokenization
(29:42) Zenrock Ad
(30:31) Bitcoin
(34:30) Solana: The L1 vs Apps
(39:51) Why Does DeFi Matter?
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Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation.

Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Jack, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

The State Of Solana DeFi With Kyle Samani & Chris Heaney

Gm! This week we're joined by David Rhodus to discuss the future of Pipe Network. We deep dive into what is a CDN, DePIN's major unlock, how to scale a DePIN network, competing with the big infrastructure providers &amp; more. Enjoy! 
--
Follow David: https://x.com/DavidRhodus
Follow Jack: https://x.com/whosknave
Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq
Subscribe to the Lightspeed Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed
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Grab your tickets to Permissionless IV. Use code LIGHTSPEED10 for 10% off: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-iv
--
Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/
--
Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors the Lightspeed podcast. As Ledger celebrates 10 years of securing 20% of global crypto, it remains the top choice for securing your Solana assets. Buy a LEDGER™ device now and build confidently, knowing your SOL are safe.

Buy now on https://shop.ledger.com/?r=1da180a5de00.
--
(00:00) Introduction
(01:48) What Is A CDN?
(07:49) Ledger Ad
(08:41) How Does Pipe Network Work?
(16:28) How To Reduce Latency
(18:37) How To Scale A DePIN Network
(22:14) Tokenomics As A DePIN Network
(25:56) How To Build A Successful CDN Network
(31:10) Ledger Ad
(32:02) Building On Solana
(38:57) The Opportunity For Disruption In CDNs
(45:39) The Future Of Pipe Network
(47:12) AI
(50:41) Advice For Founders
--
Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation.
 
Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Jack, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Crypto's Next DePIN Catalyst With David Rhodus, Pipe Network

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Anyone spending time on Crypto Twitter recently has been sure to run into users trying to farm positioning on some kind of mindshare leaderboard.



These leaderboards — the most popular of which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kaito-yap-to-earn-takeover">live on Kaito</a> — use algorithms to rank users’ X engagement. Some crypto ecosystems looking for better engagement will offer financial incentives to users who earn engagement points.



The first leaderboard to specifically measure Solana mindshare will be released Monday by Wallchain, the team exclusively told Lightspeed. Influential Solana CT users will receive quacks, Wallchain’s offchain points currency. In many cases, including Kaito’s, points are used to determine allocation in a future token. Wallchain co-founder Yuri Yatsenko declined to confirm whether a token is in the works.



Wallchain’s algorithm is built to disincentivize spam engagement by applying “exponential decay” in quack earnings to users who are repeatedly flagged for spam, Yatsenko <a href="https://x.com/kyparus/status/1906087494686248971">said</a>.&nbsp;



Based on a pre-launch version of Wallchain’s leaderboard, the highest-mindshare Solana posters over the past 30 days were Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Helius co-founder (and Lightspeed podcast co-host) Mert Mumtaz, and trading influencer Ansem.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXccuNkmFMrpM74J5Eddr9biZmKnaaINguckmMXbmCHMR3UmK7-CbWddOfa8RKr9ngTrhcdievj_pm7vUV9IY6I99d3yzqqzeSjhYGDJwHCohA2WxzNuRZ6IIV5sNCITikf2cg13?key=5iBagISS1-jYVxcE9zLuZQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.wallchain.xyz/app/profile">Wallchain</a></figcaption></figure>



But while the top of the leaderboard checks out at first glance, many in crypto still complain that tying token incentives to X posts makes CT lower-signal and higher-noise.&nbsp;



“[Y]eah I absolutely hate it lol,” Blockworks Research analyst Boccaccio said when I asked if he had thoughts on the mindshare leaderboard trend. He added that such leaderboard programs are “bad for [the] marketing side because [they are] clearly being gamed and not useful anymore” and have “ruined CT’s noise/value ratio.”



Yatsenko agreed that “toxic incentives” and “short-term alignment” have turned many existing mindshare leaderboards into “spam-to-earn” programs. He added that this can be solved by algorithms prioritizing users showing “authentic, sustained engagement” around a small number of projects.



While the market may be reaching a saturation point for CT mindshare leaderboards, my view is that there’s a real business model here. Until now, crypto ecosystem builders looking to pay influencers sometimes had to go through middlemen and opaque value propositions. Sometimes influencers are allocated tokens for their services, which can be worth a lot of money.



In a perfect world, mindshare algorithms make ROI on influencer spending more measurable.



Interestingly, Yatsenko and his co-founder Max Bevza initially built MEV rebate software. But after going through Alliance DAO’s incubator, the duo decided to pivot to so-called AttentionFi — which can be loosely defined as apps monetizing crypto social media activity. Yatsenko said the seemingly unrelated sectors are “conceptually related.”



“MEV focuses on value gaps in transactions — AttentionFi focuses on value gaps in attention flows,” Yatsenko wrote. “Until now, we couldn’t measure attention value at scale. But with the latest advances in LLMs, we can finally understand and evaluate content quality, relevance and impact — automatically.”



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data analytics

Solana to get first Kaito-like mindshare leaderboard

Jeff Albus

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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For all its speed and throughput, Solana has always wrestled with the fact that the tech powering its performance was also limiting its potential.



Proof-of-history, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-proof-of-history">the cryptographic clock</a> that helped set Solana apart from other blockchains, gave the network a unique way to order events before consensus. However, it never solved consensus itself.



Instead, PoH had to be paired with Tower BFT, a Byzantine fault-tolerant mechanism layered atop Solana&#8217;s block stream. It worked, but it was complex, hard to optimize and increasingly outpaced by the ambitions of the network and its builders.



Last week, Solana announced a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y_7ddr8oNOknTQYHzXeeMD2ProQ0WjMs/view">proposal</a> to sunset both proof-of-history and Tower BFT in favor of something new: Alpenglow.



Alpenglow is a structural reimagining of how time, consensus and data flow across the network. <a href="https://www.anza.xyz/blog/alpenglow-a-new-consensus-for-solana">Developed by Anza</a>, a core engineering team spun out from Solana Labs, Alpenglow completely outmodes the innovations inherent to proof-of-history.



It’s introducing a streamlined consensus framework that collapses sequencing, voting and block finality into a single integrated design.



The big flashy headline here is that we&#8217;re looking at global finality in under 150 milliseconds — though your mileage may vary, based on network conditions, validator participation, etc. etc.



The problem wasn&#8217;t that PoH was flawed, so much as that it had to be paired with layers of coordination to finalize blocks. PoH sequenced events with a verifiable delay function, producing a ledger of time that validators could use to agree on order.



That sequence still needed to be voted on, though, and still had to be finalized and confirmed. And in a world where Solana was already pushing 400ms block times, finality (not production speed) became the network&#8217;s big bad bottleneck.



Tower BFT took 12.8-ish seconds to finalize a block. To mask that lag, Solana introduced “optimistic confirmations,” giving dapps a probabilistic guarantee of finality. But it wasn&#8217;t enough. Finality really, really needs to match production.&nbsp;



To that end, Alpenglow <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y_7ddr8oNOknTQYHzXeeMD2ProQ0WjMs/view">introduces</a> two core components: Votor and Rotor.



Votor is the new finality engine, capable of reaching consensus in one or two voting rounds. If 80% of the stake is online, finality can be achieved in a single round. If only 60% is responsive, it falls back to a second. Both paths run concurrently, and whichever completes first wins.&nbsp;



Rotor, meanwhile, reworks how data spreads through the network. Built as a refinement of Solana&#8217;s Turbine protocol, Rotor replaces Turbine&#8217;s layered tree with a single flat relay structure. It leverages erasure coding and deterministic relay assignment to broadcast data with minimal hops and maximal bandwidth.&nbsp;



It&#8217;s so fast that the speed of light — the literal geographic delay between nodes — becomes the primary limit. Which, if you&#8217;re anything like me, had you &#8220;<a href="https://youtu.be/BDuZqYeNiOA?feature=shared&amp;t=52">1.21 JIGAWATTS?!</a>&#8220;-ing and &#8220;GREAT SCOTT!&#8221;-ing off the furniture the first time you read it.



The result is a protocol where finality is about as instantaneous as anyone could have dreamed. In simulated testnets with Zurich as a reference node, 65% of Solana&#8217;s stake reached notarization in under 50ms. Full finality landed at 150ms median, sometimes as low as 100ms.



This is not a latency illusion. There&#8217;s no probabilistic middle ground. This is true, verifiable cryptographic consensus, faster than most Web2 APIs.



And even under adverse conditions, Alpenglow remains performant. Its &#8220;20+20&#8221; resilience model can tolerate 20% adversarial stake and 20% non-responsive stake while still achieving consensus.



For builders, the implications are immense. Games, payment apps and real-time protocols no longer have to hedge against finality lag. There&#8217;s no second-layer cheat.&nbsp;



For developers building reputation, automation or sensitive coordination layers on Solana, Alpenglow unlocks a pathway to transactions that are deterministic, final and global in less than the blink of an eye.



There is much to get philosophical about here. Alpenglow will give Solana something rare in blockchains: a sense of present tense. No waiting, no guessing. Just the truth, right now.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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blockchain

Solana eyes Alpenglow for next-gen consensus layer

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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I hosted Permissionless Labs CEO David Rhodus <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke20r3gJSXE">on the Lightspeed podcast</a> this week, and he gave me an overview of Pipe Network, the company’s forthcoming content delivery network (CDN) that’s being built on Solana.&nbsp;



His pitch made some intuitive sense: CDNs — which temporarily store online content on servers around the world to get closer to end-users — haven’t seen much innovation in 25 years. Pipe could let content be stored even closer to users, which would make their content load faster.&nbsp;



But outside of the product itself, what made an impression on me was the disciplined approach Rhodus described for his DePIN project.&nbsp;



Rhodus said Pipe will be “ruthless” about tokenomics.&nbsp;



“We’re emitting tokens when useful work is done,” Rhodus said. “While we want a lot of nodes, we also want to coordinate them into areas that customers will find useful.” This could look like focusing on business deals where Pipe supplements existing CDN infrastructure in low-performing areas and presumably uses its token to incentivize node operation in those areas.



DePIN is hailed as one of Solana’s most useful business sectors, but the bottom line has proven tricky for these companies so far.&nbsp;



Businesses like Helium and Hivemapper promise to wrest power from legacy infrastructure providers and give control to everyday people, but noble as that goal may be, the economics don&#8217;t always make a ton of sense.&nbsp;



A Messari <a href="https://messari.io/report/state-of-depin-2024">report</a> from the end of 2024 found that 350 DePIN tokens had a collective $50 billion in market capitalization. However, this class of startups has struggled to find mass market adoption and justify that collective valuation.&nbsp;



That’s partly why Rhodus advised potential founders to “go as long as possible” before adding crypto elements to a business.



“Don&#8217;t focus on crypto at all until you&#8217;ve got users and revenue,” Rhodus said.



The days of simply plugging in some kind of mining device and getting lucrative token rewards regardless of a node’s value to the larger network may need to end if the DePIN sector is going to mature past hype and create sustainable businesses.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



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DePIN

Solana-based Pipe Network aims to be ‘ruthless’ about tokenomics

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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As the Solana community descended on Pier 36 in New York for the Accelerate conference, the feeling in the air was one of reset expectations.



Propositions about Solana’s tech and investment prospects that seemed like consensus just six months ago have now gone out of style.&nbsp;



For one, there’s the muted impact of Firedancer. The Jump-developed client was once spoken of in quasi-religious terms by Solana fans. The software’s launch was going to let Solana <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-blockchain-tps-testing">hit one million</a> transactions per second — a nice and round, if meaningless, figure.&nbsp;



A partial Firedancer implementation called Frankendancer is live but so far has struggled to gain adoption. Just 5% of Solana stake currently <a href="https://reports.firedancer.io/?tab=versions">runs</a> on the client. Firedancer is launching a stake <a href="https://delegation.firedancer.io/delegation-program">delegation program</a> similar to what the Solana Foundation offers for Agave, perhaps in hopes of growing its slice of the pie.



Jump’s head of R&amp;D, Kevin Bowers, gave a talk to kick off Accelerate, but it was overshadowed by a talk from a different client developer: On Monday, Anza’s head of research Roger Wattenhofer gave a talk announcing Alpenglow, a major overhaul of Solana’s consensus protocol that could greatly <a href="https://www.anza.xyz/blog/alpenglow-a-new-consensus-for-solana">reduce</a> Solana’s latency.&nbsp;



In short, some in Solana’s validator community are finding, to paraphrase Taylor Swift, that the client they’ve been dreaming of has been here the whole time — in Agave.&nbsp;



I ran into Anza’s lead economist, Max Resnick, at Accelerate. He said the developer shop had to spend time pruning and ironing out bugs in the original Solana client’s code — longtime readers will remember last April, when it became <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-bug-patch-zero-knowledge-proofs">difficult to land</a> transactions on the network at all — before it could test out more frontier ideas like Alpenglow.



It also used to seem obvious to many in Solana-land that ETF approval was going to prove a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-ceo-solana-ncredible-emerging-asset">major tailwind</a> for the asset. That no longer seems to necessarily be the case, as MicroStrategy-like companies make major SOL <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/smallcap-stocks-solana-treasury-buys">treasury purchases</a>.&nbsp;



Some investors made a lot of money by taking a non-consensus bet on SOL following the FTX collapse. Now, as the Solana network looks more consensus than before, conventional wisdom within the ecosystem is starting to be turned on its head.



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



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conference

Solana Accelerate Day 1: Time to challenge assumptions

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Keep your hands and arms inside the rocket ship for the duration of our flight, ladies and gents.



Bitcoin surged to a new <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-hits-new-high-109000">all-time high</a> of $109,400 today, just nine days after the US and China reached a 90-day trade truce, cooling off global jitters. That&#8217;s a rather major macro signal, yeah?



The sort of crypto bellwether that deserves front-row attention, especially because SOL has held steady across a choppy weekly chart instead of ripping in tandem. That says something about current flows and investor focus, methinks.



Solana&#8217;s price is essentially unchanged on the week, sitting at $167.34 (-0.3%) with a volatile but range-bound seven-day chart.



BTC&#8217;s breakout, meanwhile, caps a pretty remarkable macro pivot. Just six weeks ago, reciprocal tariff threats from el presidente de los Estados Unidos rattled the US equity markets. Now, with a temporary trade deal in effect, traditional markets are stabilizing and capital is flowing back into high-beta assets.



Bitcoin, the ultimate crypto liquidity sponge, has responded promptly, pushing past its December 2024 highs to confirm a fresh leg higher. But while the biggest of dogs rallies on macro clarity, Solana&#8217;s setup remains more idiosyncratic.&nbsp;



The network <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana">remains a hive of activity</a>, with daily active addresses rebounding above five million, and over 30,000 new tokens launching per day. DEX volumes remain anchored by serious flows, with SOL-USDC still the top traded pair and Raydium and Jupiter handling the bulk of liquidity.



Meanwhile, liquid staking tokens like mSOL and jitoSOL continue gaining TVL, and reverted transactions (failed txs) — often seen as noise — are increasingly concentrated among mid-sized wallets. To my eyes, though, that&#8217;s a decent sign of rising speculative experimentation rather than any dysfunction.



Staking yields on Solana remain high (7.82% APY), and over 65% of the supply is staked, including almost $2 billion through Marinade. And don&#8217;t forget to toss in that we&#8217;re looking at around $5 billion weekly DEX volume, immaculate stablecoin transfer strength and progress within the network&#8217;s ever-maturing validator ecosystem.



What I&#8217;m getting at is that Solana seems to be consolidating a different kind of high: regulatory progress, institutional trust and infrastructural maturity. Will the price of SOL have its turn? Sure. Probably. Something something, altseason. Don&#8217;t quote me.



But for now, the network continues to sugar ball its metrics, waiting its turn, with eyes mostly on BTC&#8217;s next move to $120,000 (Please? Thanks) and beyond.



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<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thebreakdown">The Breakdown</a>: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.</li>



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<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Forward Guidance</a>: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/0xresearch">0xResearch</a>: Alpha directly in your inbox.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Lightspeed</a>: All things Solana.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/thedrop">The Drop</a>: Apps, games, memes and more.</li>



<li><a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/supplyshock">Supply Shock</a>: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.</li>
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Bitcoin hits all-time high while Solana holds steady

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">subscribe</a>.



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Starting in June of 2022, Solana Spaces operated a brick and mortar store for Solana-branded merchandise and user onboarding in New York’s Hudson Yards development. The venture’s biggest financial backer then was FTX, and it (along with a second store in Miami) <a href="https://decrypt.co/121863/solana-spaces-closing-stores-in-nyc-and-miami">folded</a> in early 2023 following the exchange’s implosion.



This week at Solana’s Accelerate conference, Solana Spaces returned as a pop-up store with a new core team. The project doesn’t have FTX backing, but the reboot began with a very “2025” source of funding — a memecoin.&nbsp;



Solana Spaces season 2 has more limited ambitions than the original, running pop-up stores for crypto merchandise alongside crypto conferences. For the faithful who descended on the New York pop-up, there was a general sense of pleasant surprise that a memecoin team pulled off a brick-and-mortar store activation.



The lower east side pop-up was bustling with crypto natives on Tuesday morning. Merch was on sale from a variety of Solana-based projects and NFT collections. I purchased a mug and checked out by paying with stablecoins from the Phantom app on my iPhone.&nbsp;



When another customer came up to check out, Amol Gharte — a Solana Spaces core team member who was working the register — didn’t have the item’s price handy and joked that he could make one up.



“It’s all made up anyway,” the customer responded, and Gharte and I shrugged and nodded our heads at the vague declaration. A second customer stepped up to pay but somewhat sheepishly pulled out a credit card, explaining that he wanted to get credit card points from the purchase.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeguOGCVPG75tSFwgJsfh0IiJacxE54B_7EJLZ12By9nBeX9kIadmIP3vYLi4lsT4RQ7Icv3BFgwjDCLp28-Xds-lF-A8bScXcYVwA9tl9U-H1hTGgRqS-fJZIOBZ-F9mQKJOHP?key=-IwutMucqNNqfC1Y2f6sRg" alt=""/></figure>



A fan of the old Hudson Yards store launched a memecoin called STORE in January which briefly eclipsed $12 million in market capitalization, according to DEX Screener data. Some early buyers of the token — which is now closer to $3 million in market cap — came together to try and revive Solana Spaces, Gharte told me. He added that the Solana Spaces team hasn’t sold its tokens and has self-imposed a vesting period.



The project is partly self-funded but also has inked sponsorship deals and received grant funding from the Solana Foundation, Gharte said.



The vision for Solana Spaces is to continue running pop-ups during crypto conferences, where Spaces gives crypto teams a place to sell their merchandise, and Solana Spaces collects 20% of the profit, Gharte said. He estimated 70% of sales volume is paid with credit cards compared to 30% in stablecoins.



I found Vibhu Norby, who was founder and CEO of the original Solana Spaces before building a Jupiter-acquired NFT app named DRiP, steaming a cloth banner in the back of the store. He told me he was “skeptical” when he saw a memecoin community crop up around reviving his deprecated business, but he gave the team some initial capital, support and introductions, and he hoped they could figure it out.



Norby told me he was initially drawn to starting Solana Spaces by a belief that blockchain communities can form network states, a Balaji Srinivasan-coined term for digital communities forming their own real-world communities. Norby added that in crypto, traditional identity markers tend to be replaced by things like profile pictures or merchandise.&nbsp;



“To me, there is a higher meaning to it. It’s not just a merch shop. Here you come and you find your home, and you walk away with a piece of that,” Norby said.



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Solana Spaces comes back to life in NYC

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If you want to build in Web3, you&#8217;ve pretty much always needed to know how to code. Not necessarily at an elite level, but at least a baseline understanding. That plus lots of late nights, semicolon-heavy syntax, compiler errors, and a burly stack of ever-open documentation tabs.



The technical barrier was part of the “chewing glass” culture.



Gatekeeping, maybe, but also a necessary filter in an ecosystem where one misplaced line in a smart contract could drain a treasury.&nbsp;



That filter is eroding fast these days, however.



Brace yourselves, friends. We&#8217;ve now entered the era of vibe coding. The term, coined by computer scientist Andrej Karpathy, refers to a novel AI-native coding style where developers (and perhaps more importantly, non-developers) describe what they want and, at the click of a button, an LLM generates a working iteration of their request.



Tools like Cursor, Dev.fun and Poof.new are already lowering the floor, turning ideas into dApps with a few lines of stumbling prose. A Poof co-founder told Lightspeed that vibe coders have created over 2,000 apps on the platform since its open beta started on Thursday.



But, of course, there&#8217;s a dark side to every moon. Because if it&#8217;s easier than ever to build something legitimate, it&#8217;s also easier than ever to build something that only has the appearance of legitimacy.



The ICO boom of 2017 gave us a glimpse of this dynamic. Once the profit motive was clear, hundreds of anonymous teams emerged from the woodwork to spin up faux white papers and (usually crap) landing pages. They promised revolutionary tech, launched tokens, raised millions&#8230;and vanished into vapor.



Now imagine that, but times infinity. 



Imagine some clown throwing up an LLM-generated codebase, a slick AI-generated branding package, wholly-believable GitHub activity, a world-class website UI with Web3 login, and then getting his fake chatbot founders to do some live AMAs.



Honeypot contracts with backdoors phishing sites that buoy authentic functionality as an indicator of legitimacy…Mint buttons that seed approvals you don&#8217;t notice ‘til your wallet is drained…The potential for bad actors runs deep.



Once things really get going, reputation systems and persistent identities will likely be the only hope we have of ever trusting another product. Proof-of-humanity systems, social graphs and third-party attestations will form the backbone of trust in an AI-coded world in Web3 and beyond.



We&#8217;ll need open auditing tools built for non-coders, and sandbox environments that simulate contract behavior before anything hits mainnet. Smart contract registries could begin to mirror app store models, with verified publishers, community ratings, and AI-generated trust scores.



The responsibility won&#8217;t just fall on users — it&#8217;ll sit with platforms, protocols, and indeed, the vibe coders themselves.



But even with those risks, even with the inevitable rough edges, something big is happening here. We&#8217;ve spent years saying Web3 is about empowering creators. Now it actually can be. Not just for the technically-minded or the crypto-native.



The poet, the game designer, the high school kid with a better idea for an auction format or voting platform — they can actually build. And if we establish proper protection early enough, the best ideas may finally have a chance to win. Not because they raise the most capital but because they exist — functional, forkable, live.



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The rise of vibe coding on Solana

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The Breakdown

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Kraken announced last week that it would soon list Solana-based tokenized equities, in what looks partly like the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/4-big-questions-following-the-solana-accelerate-conference">exchange’s latest step</a> to lure Solana investors.&nbsp;



This forthcoming xStocks product was developed in tandem with a startup named Backed, and Backed’s ambitions don’t end with Kraken users or the Solana ecosystem.



“The vision is that you can buy an xStock on Kraken, you can withdraw it, and then you can deposit on Coinbase or you can deposit on Orca, you can leverage it on Kamino,” co-founder Adam Levi told me in an interview. Levi said separately that xStocks would be launching on other centralized exchanges, and the product would be available on other blockchains “at some point.”



Levi said Backed originated when he and his co-founder examined crypto’s product-market fit surrounding stablecoins — which are currently basically tokenized US Treasurys — and wondered what asset class could be tokenized next. Four years ago, Levi says, they concluded the answer would be public equities.



Granted, others are asking this same question, and not all are reaching the same conclusion. The buzzy tokenization firm Securitize, for example, has set about tokenizing a private credit fund — essentially offering exposure to elevated yields created by riskier private loans — offered by Apollo Global. The product will be onboarded to Kamino, it was <a href="https://x.com/KaminoFinance/status/1924902594968699179">announced</a> last week.



Still, Levi told me he thinks the upside for tokenized public equity is significant.



“I think it’s going to be bigger than stablecoins, and volumes are almost in a way going to compete with TradFi,” Levi said of the sector. He said demand could primarily come from non-US residents who want easier access to American securities and young people for whom trading tokens may feel more intuitive than opening a brokerage account.



Throughout our interview, Levi cast Backed as being having a similar business model to a stablecoin issuer insofar as it creates and ostensibly collects revenue on a tokenized product that is then exchanged on other venues.&nbsp;



Kraken, which has a large base of crypto users Backed could not easily acquire on its own, becomes the first such venue. Think USDC-Coinbase but for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kraken-tokenized-stocks-tradfi-crypto">tokenized stocks</a>. This also fits into a broader narrative that growth-minded crypto exchanges may begin to offer more traditional bank-like features over time, especially given the friendlier <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-crypto-round-table-execs">regulatory environment</a>.



As for the Solana of it all, Levi told me: “Tokenized equities is a very kind of retail game, and I think Solana is a very retail chain.” He added that the Solana Foundation — which has gone all in on “Internet Capital Markets” branding recently, was very supportive.&nbsp;



“They really want this to succeed,” Levi said.



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kraken

Tokenized equities will be ‘bigger than stablecoins’: Backed CEO

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Not many of crypto’s top 15 tokens by market capitalization were first issued after FTX’s collapse. Two exceptions are SUI, which began trading in mid-2023, and HYPE — which has risen to over $11 billion in market capitalization since being airdropped in November 2024.&nbsp;



HYPE, which is the native token of the Hyperliquid layer-1, has more than tripled in price since a local bottom on April 6, outpacing SOL’s roughly 70% gain over that time span. For crypto investors seeking the next layer-1 token that could capture Solana-like returns, HYPE is generating a lot of hype. Even Galaxy’s Mike Novogratz is <a href="https://x.com/stevenyuntcap/status/1923368561671606595">on board</a>.



Hyperliquid’s core layer-1 appchain, called HyperCore, is purpose-built for Hyperliquid’s order book exchange, which generates fees and leads to token buybacks. This product is very popular: Hyperliquid accounted for 77% of onchain perpetuals trading volume in April, <a href="https://app.artemisanalytics.com/sectors">according</a> to data from Artemis. Hyperliquid also has an Ethereum Virtual Machine network called the HyperEVM, but its adoption is so far more <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/hyperliquid-not-done#valuation">muted</a> than HyperCore.



So, there is some confusion on HYPE: Should it be valued like a perps DEX that is maxing out demand in the perps DEX market, or like a layer-1 that could compete with the likes of Ethereum and Solana?



HYPE is priced somewhere in the middle. Ryan Watkins of Syncracy Capital — which has positions in both HYPE and SOL — posted a chart showing in early March how Hyperliquid was trading at a lower fee multiple than other L1s, including Solana.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXftPe5-9rbUN50TMy8G-KUgjTgJB6AKVge5iklezPSJoAXt8p9d5RyxtESy329JFuPrjQE45aE_mJN3AfUfWIOX4qrVpGtOadRoApRcQ3cO3djv1bhWxRjHtpnuk-T5RsDVlbk_?key=ec3LIWV_Fs75WjSNR7Pdyw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://x.com/RyanWatkins_/status/1897302205327401167">Ryan Watkins on X</a>.</figcaption></figure>



But as Blockworks Research analyst Boccaccio <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/research/hyperliquid-not-done#valuation">has pointed out</a>, Hyperliquid trades at a higher fully diluted valuation (FDV) to fees ratio relative to competitor perps DEXs in Drift and dYdX, indicating it is more valuable to investors compared to simple perps DEXs.&nbsp;



Bitwise Research analyst Danny Nelson said Hyperliquid aims to create a vibrant blockchain economy like Solana’s, but it’s “not quite there yet.”



“That said, the ecosystem’s flagship perpetual contracts exchange has become an industry juggernaut. The market is pricing HYPE accordingly, and, I would argue, attempting to account for a future where Hyperliquid hosts yet more winners,” Nelson added.



There are other idiosyncratic factors at play as well. Hyperliquid’s validator set is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hyperliquid-decentralization-validator-put">not as decentralized</a> as some other L1s. Hyperliquid does not require know-your-customer (KYC) checks, and most centralized exchanges such as Binance do, and maybe that’s a valuable feature to some traders that is being priced in as well.



For dopamine-deprived token investors, HYPE may look like the kind of opportunity that has been fewer and further between in recent years, but it’s likely too soon to call it the next SOL.



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Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid valued between layer-1 and perps DEX

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I spent much of last week running between conference venues and side events during Solana Accelerate in New York City.&nbsp;



Conferences tend to be announcement-heavy affairs, and Accelerate didn’t disappoint, bringing major updates on Solana’s core infrastructure, Solana’s phone startup and tokenized equities.&nbsp;



And as I <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-accelerate-day-one-etfs-firedancer">pointed out last week</a>, change is in the air. Competition is heating up, and formerly-hyped areas of Solana’s ecosystem are starting to lose their luster.&nbsp;



To elucidate some of that potential change, here are four big questions I have after Accelerate.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. What’s the deal with Firedancer?</h2>



Jump <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-firedancer-testnet">released Frankendancer</a>, a halfway version of Firedancer that makes some performance improvements to the existing Solana client, last September. It began <a href="https://x.com/whosknave/status/1894134153446031532">rolling</a> out Jito bundle support — allowing validators to more efficiently MEV — earlier this year.



Today, Frankendancer <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/solana?dashboard=131">commands</a> just 6% of Solana’s total stake (that proportion is up slightly from around 5% last week). This from-scratch Solana client project has been talked about in hallowed terms for years, but for one reason or another, most validators aren’t currently using Frankendancer.&nbsp;



One Accelerate attendee mused to me that Jump and Solana may have hyped up Firedancer too much, too soon, and perhaps building and rolling the software out more quietly would have been the better move.



Frankendancer’s key catalyst could be financial incentives: The client’s developer announced a stake delegation program similar to what the Solana Foundation offers during Accelerate.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Has Kraken become the Solana-favored exchange?</h2>



One major news item from Accelerate was Kraken’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/kraken-crypto-exchange-stock-tokens-e4fc1bb9?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAgyoeZEozJQPCzOiVx9Ta6nVeJba4g_rjkkAHNtpnkllIWhV6juu0nX1eeMX2U%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68360099&amp;gaa_sig=wHrVyKYN3BI0rBGsrl6J2vapDwzPavSgAl9B751UK0uhotgqYLUM7wWH0UJr1C-ZBKd6vUEYctiviq1qRDn3XA%3D%3D">launch</a> of xStocks, tokenized equities —&nbsp;including Apple, Tesla and Nvidia — that will trade on Solana.



It’s an interesting development in international investors’ ability to invest in US stocks, but more interesting was the decision to launch on Solana. Kraken has an in-house <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kraken-ethereum-layer-2-superchain">layer-2 blockchain</a> named Ink, which would have been a natural fit for the new product, but I think the exchange sees business upside in Solanaland.



As a US-based exchange operating in Coinbase’s shadow, Kraken may spy opportunities in the former exchange’s sometimes-contentious relationship with the Solana community, which has <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/solana/comments/1h1m4ut/coinbase_is_intentionally_making_solana_look_bad/">expressed</a> consternation over Coinbase’s penchant for nudging users to use its layer-2, Base.



Solana is the hottest blockchain ecosystem of the moment, so becoming the favored exchange for Solana investors could prove lucrative for Kraken. In the past few months, the exchange has brought back staking for US users, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/janover-to-receive-kraken-staked-sol">parked some</a> of its own money in a Solana treasury vehicle and now will launch tokenized equities on Solana. Kraken appears to be well on its way.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. What’s the thinking behind the SKR token?</h2>



The Solana Labs-supported mobile phone startup Solana Mobile made three big announcements at Accelerate, which were:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A) the Seeker phone will ship in August</li>



<li>B) with a new decentralized architecture to rival Android and iOS, and&nbsp;</li>



<li>C) it will have a token with the ticker SKR.</li>
</ul>



I found this last announcement somewhat surprising. As an entity with some presence in a New York City office, I’m sure Solana Labs has to be reasonably careful with compliance — and launching tokens can create legal headaches. Just look at <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bakkt-delist-cardano-polygon-solana">some of the fallout</a> from when the SEC deemed SOL a security.&nbsp;



My guess is that Solana Labs — which currently develops companies including Solana Mobile — thinks a friendlier legal environment can shield SKR from too much scrutiny, and it knows token incentives <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-phones-sold-out">drove a chunk</a> of the demand around the last Solana phone.&nbsp;



Disrupting the App Store duopoly, as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko likes to say, will be no easy task. Maybe SKR will make things a bit easier.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">4. Is the Trump-crypto marriage growing strained?</h2>



Leadership at the newly-formed <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-policy-institute-ceos-political">Solana Policy Institute</a> was visible in and around Accelerate, as Solana looks to grow its political footprint. To that end, there’s one political post from the conference that caught my eye.



“Congressman @RitchieTorres just got cheers from the crowd at Solana Accelerate for saying ‘We should not be selling access to Congress or the White House,’” the journalist Veronica Irwin, formerly of Unchained, wrote on X last week.



She went on to add: “I was surprised by the cheers — disapproval of President Trump is not something you see often at crypto conferences these days.”



President Trump held a dinner for holders of his Solana memecoin last week, a move that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/22/trump-meme-coin-dinner/">raised</a> ethics concerns. As <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senate-advances-genius-act">legislation</a> on stablecoins and crypto market structure works its way through Congress, I’m wondering whether Trump’s crypto profiteering may cost the industry legislative wins if Democrats <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/legislative-speed-bumps-genius-act-sec">turn against</a> crypto.



Still, Trump’s SEC dismissed a number of burdensome lawsuits against crypto companies. If I were a betting man, I’d say that in combination with the president’s other overtures to the industry would be enough to keep the union intact.



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