Jack Kubinec

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



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As some of you may know, I host the Lightspeed podcast in addition to writing this newsletter. The conversations on that show often inspire some of the things we cover here, and I want to bring Lightspeed readers in on some of those threads.



So to cap off this holiday week, here are a few recent moments from the show that have been on my mind while writing these newsletters:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>“Execution is the only moat, always.” — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLsSUqQc-N8">Anatoly Yakovenko</a>, co-founder of Solana</li>
</ol>



My co-host Mert Mumtaz recently grilled Solana’s chief architect on looming questions and problems the network could face in the future. It’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLsSUqQc-N8">worth a listen</a>.&nbsp;



At one point in the episode, Mert asked Yakovenko what Solana’s moat could be in a world where new layer-1s and layer-2s come to market that make blockchains fast and blockspace cheap, slimming Solana’s current edge.&nbsp;



Yakovenko’s answer pretty much boils down to: Keep executing. He also talks about hiring at Solana for tech people rather than academics, because the former are better able to work in a pressure cooker and ship features fast.&nbsp;



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“We want to understand the causal connection to things, it’s in our nature to do that. But in a market there is no causal connection it’s literally like, ‘Are there more buyers than sellers?’” — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnQI0KTcxPY">Joe McCann</a>, CEO and CIO at Asymmetric Capital</li>
</ol>



McCann said this while disagreeing with me about the impact of memecoins on SOL’s price, but since I am eminently humble, I’m including it here anyways.&nbsp;



I like what McCann is saying here because despite all the endless market analysis and tea leaves reading you’ll see in the media and online, sometimes it’s ultimately indecipherable why markets do what they do.



When the price goes up, it’s because the market has more buy volume than sell volume. Identifying the buyers and sellers and their motivations are an inexact science at best.



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“Issuance is a cost to non-stakers. They do not receive that [issuance]. Stakers do … there is a value transfer from non-stakers to stakers.” — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FES9-WXxfHc">Dan Smith</a>, data lead at Blockworks Research</li>
</ol>



I’ve been growing increasingly interested in how value flows around the Solana ecosystem. When the price of SOL goes up, and as time passes, different stakeholders are rewarded differently.



Many Solana watchers, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-solana-economics">including this newsletter</a>, have debated if SOL’s inflation should be brought down. Inflation is dilutive, and disinflation can be bullish for an asset’s price, the thinking goes — likely influenced by the Bitcoin halving.



But in Solana, issuance only dilutes non-stakers, because newly minted SOL goes to validators, and validators pass it on to stakers.&nbsp;



<ol start="4" class="wp-block-list">
<li>“I always like that framing which is just create a new category and go after a small market that you think will grow” — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__zw8Z7jqyA">Mert Mumtaz</a>, CEO of Helius</li>
</ol>



The layer-1 wars and endless debates about which blockchain is best become very tiresome after a while. I liked the point Mert made on a recent episode though: To compete in crypto, you need to go after a meaningfully new market or use case.



SOL shouldn’t be cast as an ETH killer. It’s a different blockchain that makes different tradeoffs. And Monad, Berachain, MegaETH, and the rest of them shouldn’t try to be SOL killers. They should pick a different axis upon which they can meaningfully outperform Solana.



<ol start="5" class="wp-block-list">
<li> “I don’t think it’s really workable, sadly.” — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwh7tg3WwV4">Rune Christensen</a>, co-founder of Sky</li>
</ol>



Christensen, the co-founder of Sky (formerly Maker), is referring to futarchy here, which is a buzzy new governance concept in the Solana world.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/metadao-is-making-markets-into-its-government">Futarchy</a> has markets, rather than voters, decide what a DAO should do. I was curious to get Christensen’s take on it because DAO governance has always been a struggle, and MakerDAO is one of the oldest examples.&nbsp;



Christensen is basically bearish on futarchy because he thinks collective wisdom is wrong, and DAOs need someone smart who can decipher the difference between a good marketing initiative and a ponzi scheme, for instance.&nbsp;



This sounded a bit like a pitch for traditional corporate governance to me, but what do I know?



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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Solana co-founder: Execution is the only moat

Jeff Albus

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Howdy! 



We’re trying something a little different today and diving into the world of Solana-centric content creation.&nbsp;



I had a fun time getting the inside scoop from bangerz, whose videos I’ve cringed at from afar for some time now:



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The story behind Solana’s queen of cringe</h2>



The Solana Saga was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-phones-sold-out">in-demand in January 2024</a> as speculators sought to cash in on airdropped tokens that came with the device. Bangerz, a pseudonymous X creator who works at a Solana NFT startup, decided to fake a video of herself microwaving her Saga phone.&nbsp;



Her black hair gel and screen protector <a href="https://decrypt.co/213457/someone-microwaved-solana-saga-phone-now-degens-buying-meme-nfts">fake</a> was convincing enough: it drew hundreds of likes and replies and <a href="https://decrypt.co/213457/someone-microwaved-solana-saga-phone-now-degens-buying-meme-nfts">fooled</a> some in crypto media. She then created a “Microwave” NFT <a href="https://3.land/h/9fCr7fYUAx5pj1TG6SmD6c3kyUBPnkcQciEuXXgB37Wf">collection</a> on her platform 3.land that saw thousands of mints and some secondary trading. Bangerz followed this up with another viral video <a href="https://x.com/bangerzNFT/status/1749540436648120647">explaining</a> the microwaved Saga was a fake.



In the months since, bangerz has continued making Solana-centric content, but rather than continuing to melt phones, she’s settled on a different growth strategy: super cringe-worthy videos. It seems to be working out so far.



“She’s a creative mastermind that understands the crypto audience perfectly,” DRiP founder and CEO Vibhu Norby told me in a text. “What’s more shareable than content so horrifically bad that you can’t look away?”&nbsp;



Bangerz is a creator on DRiP.



One of bangerz’ most popular <a href="https://x.com/bangerzNFT/status/1819473731636314521">videos</a>, a “Barbie Girl” parody where she sings painfully off-key as a “crypto girl,” illustrates how cringe can be a winning social strategy. The replies under the X post are a bloodbath. “You’ve ruined my day and in ways I didn’t think possible,” one user <a href="https://x.com/0x_Imperius/status/1819484830083830137">wrote</a>.



And yet the video garnered over 500,000 views.



“A lot of my content goes viral because it’s very divisive,” bangerz told me in an interview, adding later: “Bad content doesn&#8217;t get seen.”



Bangerz’ attention play is a response to a real problem for Solana creators. On the pump.fun memecoin launchpad, only about 1% of new tokens draw significant investment and “graduate” to the Raydium DEX within 24 hours, according to a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/adam_tehc/pumpfun">dashboard</a>. It’s now free to launch tokens on pump.fun, meaning a huge number of memes are now competing for Solana’s limited attention. The trenches are cooked, as the young people might say.&nbsp;



Before bangerz was a Solana content creator, she worked in other startups, even getting a patent for one product — a cooler using an endothermic chemical reaction to store vaccines in places without electricity.&nbsp;



She was drawn to being an influencer though, and she grew a successful art account on Instagram. She said she became addicted to the “game” of iterating around content that was successful — in that case, art involving aliens, weed, and sex. Now having moved into Web3, she’s once again iterating around what works, which for the past couple months appears to have been musical rage bait.&nbsp;



“Hate is the funnel” that brings in a lot of bangerz’ followers, she told me. This isn’t always a fun strategy: some people do say “terrible things” to her, and it’s not a persona she could pull off without “thick skin.”



The “meta” of bangerz’ strategy is that once repeat viewers come to understand that her videos are akin to rage bait, they get in on a kind of collective inside joke, she told me. This “I know that you know” effect creates an audience that actively encourages the cringe.



“Unfollowed for not being cringe and actually being good,” one user sarcastically wrote under an AI-generated bangerz country <a href="https://x.com/bangerzNFT/status/1811853954604761576">song</a> called “Degen Boo.” This all feels like a strategy that’s tailor-made for Web3, which is filled with copypasta and engagement bait and can at times feel like a large insular inside joke.



There are many ways to skin a cat, and for now, putting out nearly unwatchable videos has become bangerz’ strategy for growing 3.land.



“With a startup, distribution is everything,” bangerz said. “Building the product doesn&#8217;t matter. It&#8217;s ‘how do you get people to use it?’”



I asked bangerz if she finds it hard to watch her own videos.



“Oh, yeah. Oh yeah oh yeah,” she said, recalling scripting and filming a cosplay video where she dressed up as Pepe the frog.&nbsp;



“Horrible. Like I’m sick thinking about that. Hated it,” she said. “Thank God it didn’t go viral.”



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Zero In</h2>



Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s monthly followers gained on X tracks surprisingly well with Solana’s price.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="214" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png" alt="" class="wp-image-90620" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=720 720w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-26.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="720" height="457" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png" alt="" class="wp-image-90622" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=720 720w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=405 405w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=411 411w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=345 345w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-28.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px" /></figure>



There’s a clear cycle in crypto where higher asset prices lead to more media coverage and interest from the general public. Yakovenko’s X account grew most September 2021 and March 2024, months which coincided with SOL’s price nearing all-time highs.



Creators like bangerz can hope this process works in reverse, too: more social media followers could bring more eyeballs to a project, which could possibly lead to more investment.



— Jack Kubinec



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Pulse</h2>



ICYMI this week aboard the good ship Solana:



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Hivemapper <a href="https://x.com/Hivemapper/status/1823774664902226198">announced</a> it has mapped 25% of the world’s roads in under two years, making it the fastest-growing road mapping project globally.</li>



<li>Circle <a href="https://whale-alert.io/transaction/solana/2CRo7ydegKfubDWm4Z7wwEpGKKicj4syZgnHAupR52ZHSTztXyrtcU5uzbVqfbdSM5tyPuWoEZMa7ZzYoeTPM9Nn">minted</a> $250 million USDC on Solana, highlighting the network&#8217;s continued importance in the stablecoin ecosystem.</li>



<li>BONK will be the official presenting <a href="https://x.com/bonk_inu/status/1824169190913122489">partner</a> for Dubai-based Baseball United, the first professional baseball league in the Middle East and South Asia. This partnership marks a significant expansion of BONK’s branding and influence.</li>



<li>Squads Protocol <a href="https://x.com/SimkinStepan/status/1822997279822798978">unveiled</a> the development of the Squads Policy Network (SPN), a new component of its smart account stack on SVM. This network will offer granular transaction policies for smart accounts, enhancing security and compliance for both individual and enterprise users. It will run on Jito’s forthcoming restaking infrastructure. </li>



<li>Jito hit a new <a href="https://x.com/jito_sol/status/1824100116116177206">milestone</a>, securing over 12M SOL in TVL. With a 721% increase in SOL TVL over the past year, Jito is now a dominant player in Solana&#8217;s liquid staking market.</li>



<li>Grass <a href="https://x.com/getgrass_io/status/1823801038467404149">confirmed</a> an upcoming airdrop for more than 2 million beta users as part of its efforts to decentralize AI data collection and management. The airdrop is expected to be one of the most widespread in the Solana ecosystem.</li>



<li>Coinbase <a href="https://x.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1823005008100753637">submitted</a> a letter to the SEC, urging the agency to withdraw its proposed rule targeting decentralized exchanges. Coinbase criticized the proposal for its lack of critical analysis and irrational assumptions, arguing that it could harm innovation in the DEX market.</li>
</ul>



— Jeffrey Albus



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One Good DM</h2>



A message from Vibhu Norby, founder and CEO of DRiP:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="556" height="640" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png" alt="" class="wp-image-90621" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=556 556w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=261 261w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=223 223w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=227 227w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=190 190w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/image-27.png?w=70 70w" sizes="(max-width: 556px) 100vw, 556px" /></figure>



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



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The story behind Solana’s queen of cringe

Darren Kleine

Rest assured, crypto faithful. A massive, dramatic shift, from today’s old-fashioned financial system to blockchain technology will happen in the US, Anatoly Yakovenko says.&nbsp;



Just as soon as Congress passes a stablecoin bill.



“There is just a massive regulatory roadblock right now,” he says. Speaking on the 1000X podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ttue1QmhSxeFvdT121UMV?si=hdBc2O3ZQC68WvfpwBmiWg">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solanas-end-game-with-anatoly-yakovenko-1000x/id1554930038?i=1000632686808">Apple</a>), the Solana co-founder says, “Everyone knows this technology is better. It&#8217;s easier. All the APIs are easier.”&nbsp;



Yakovenko contrasts the merchant experience with crypto-based stablecoin technology versus services like Stripe and PayPal. Setting up in the old system feels like it takes “a pound of flesh and a firstborn to deal with the mess,” he says.



The merchant experience “sucks” compared to the ease of setting up with crypto technology, according to Yakovenko. “I just generate an address with a private key and I’m good to go,” he says.



Yakovenko points to the “bizarre” nature of the credit card system as an example. “When I do a credit card transaction, it&#8217;s equivalent to me sharing my private key with the merchant.”



“Then there’s this massive process to figure out if…somebody stole the private key in the process and did an invalid transaction,” he laughs. “You step back for a second and you’re like, What? Who built this?”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-empire-emerging-economies-user-interface">Stablecoins are ‘a better product’ than local currencies in emerging economies, Carrica says</a>



“If and when we get a stablecoin bill,” he says, “and we can start actually using these technologies, I think it will explode.”



“Your bank accounts will take <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/usdc">USDC</a> deposits across a bunch of networks, just like exchanges do. People will forget about wires and all this other stuff.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">‘There’s just no way that would fly’</h2>



Yakovenko argues that the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> network is best suited for stablecoin usage, primarily because “it’s cheaper and faster” than blockchains like <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>.&nbsp;



“I don&#8217;t see Congress being super supportive of something that increases financial costs for the majority of Americans,” he says. “Something in Solana definitely will decrease it.”



As an example, Yakovenko mentions that a multi-route trade on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-solana-zeta-markets">Jupiter</a>, a swapping aggregator on Solana, costs about $0.05. “It can touch 50 different markets and find you the most liquidity across a bunch of markets for $0.05 without incurring any additional fees.”



Yakovenko mentions Visa as an example of a major financial company that is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-visa-banking-solana-stablecoin-settlement">dabbling in optimization via crypto technology</a>. For any blockchain solution to work at a satisfactory level, credit card checkout times have to be fast — completed in under two and a half seconds — he says.



Cost is a major factor for Visa as well, he adds. Being a “profit-driven company,” Yakovenko suggests that Visa would never choose to implement blockchain services that cause an increase in fees. “There&#8217;s just no way that would fly.”&nbsp;



“Everyone should intuitively agree that finance is moving numbers around computers,” he says. “It&#8217;s a regressive tax on the entire economy. It should be as cheap as possible. Like, that&#8217;s a win for the entire world if we reduce those costs.” 



<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" height="200" scrolling="no" src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=BWG6113793155" width="100%"></iframe>







Still, Yakovenko says it’s going to be tough for crypto technology to “go mainstream” in America until “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoins-battleground-future-money">some actual stablecoin legislation</a>” is in place. But it’s coming, he says.



“They&#8217;ll do everything else before they do the right thing. But eventually, they&#8217;ll do the right thing.”



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Yakovenko critiques ‘bizarre’ inadequacies of current financial system

Sebastian Sinclair

Hoping to shake off the fallout from last year’s collapse of FTX, layer-1 smart contract blockchain Solana is setting its sights on the next five years.



According to Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko — speaking at Blockworks’ annual flagship event, Permissionless, on Tuesday — the years-long value proposition would seek to level the playing field for producing new blocks.



“I think I would love to see us land, from a technical perspective, multiple leaders per slot,” the co-founder said. “And this is something that is a very different roadmap from all the other blockchains.”



The feature, according to Yakovenko, would supposedly bring a new level of “fairness” to transaction processing.



A slot is a period of time during which a new block can be added to the blockchain. Within most chains, there is usually only one leader or validator who gets the opportunity to add a block during that slot.



This can sometimes prove problematic due to issues surrounding scalability, centralization risks and efficiency.



Yakovenko&#8217;s goal is to give validators, even those with as little as 0.001% of staked Solana (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/sol">SOL</a>) tokens, a fair chance to contribute to block production, according to the co-founder.



“To have those guarantees, we actually need competition at the same time for block producers, and something that we&#8217;ve been working on, internally designed by us, is to support multiple leaders per slot,” Yakovenko said.



Such lofty concepts have attracted the likes of Maker, one of the industry’s oldest DAOs, to <a href="https://x.com/RuneKek/status/1697623700013822244?s=20">consider tapping Solana</a> for its Endgame Plan — a <a href="https://endgame.makerdao.com/endgame/overview">proposal</a> intending to “overhaul and improve the governance and tokenomics” of the Maker ecosystem.



Solana also announced on Tuesday that its wallet, Solflare, would be launching on MetaMask Snaps — a feature by the wallet provider to improve functionality and offer wider wallet customization.



With the Solflare integration, users can directly manage SOL and NFTs associated with Solana through MetaMask wallets. Solana&#8217;s dapps can now also be accessed through MetaMask, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/metamask-snaps-solana">Blockworks reported</a>.



“Solana has an incredibly vibrant ecosystem of apps of which many are only possible on Solana,” Solflare co-founder Filip Dragoslavic said in a statement on Tuesday.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Overcoming setbacks</h2>



As the crypto market trudges through its current downturn, the blockchain project, once a top-10 contender by market capitalization and previously considered “Ethereum-killer,” continues to make strides.



Visa announced last week that it would allow its partners to send or receive USDC settlement payments <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/visa-usdc-solana-stablecoin-expansion">via the Solana blockchain</a> in a bid to speed up settlement times for their merchants.



That’s been a positive development for the project, which still faces challenges in overcoming past setbacks.



In the dying days of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ftx">FTX</a> late last year, it was revealed that the exchange’s sister trading desk, Alameda Research, held SOL to the tune of $1.2 billion — its second-largest holding behind FTX’s native token, FTT.



As fears over a market-wide contagion gripped the industry, SOL and by extension, Solana, were swept up in the furor. The development led to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-community-remains-bullish-despite-ftx-fallout">47% sell-off</a> in SOL’s value over a seven-day period. This further compounded the project’s already battered reputation of being unable to maintain <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-shrinks-as-solana-downtime-binance-investigations-weigh-heavily">consistent uptime</a> in its operations.



In the final month of 2022, Web3 software provider Dust Labs disclosed it would be relocating its premier Solana-based NFT ventures, DeGods and Y00ts, to alternative blockchain ecosystems. DeGods eventually transitioned to Ethereum, while Y00ts migrated to Polygon.



The move was seen as an attempt to deviate from what some considered a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/solana-crypto-token-loses-most-its-value-2022-ftx-collapse-weighs-2022-12-28/">fatal blow</a> at the time, following the collapse of Solana-based liquidity provider Serum. Serum, a major contributor to Solana’s DeFi activity, was founded in August 2020 by the Solana Foundation, FTX, and Alameda.



When asked what he thought was the biggest misunderstanding for his chain over the last year, the co-founder said it was the perception of Solana as “just a bunch of open-source software.”



“You don&#8217;t have to fear it,” he said.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



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Rebuilding trust: Solana’s roadmap after a challenging year

Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base&#8230;the list of layer-2 solutions goes on — and seems to be getting longer.



Solana co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, believes that most of the layer-2 chains emerging, primarily on Ethereum, won&#8217;t serve as sustainable scaling solutions in the long term.



“They fragment the user base. So the UX becomes very, very complicated.”



On the Lightspeed podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hBVZ76Ykz4Z3yMvkT9Tl6?si=8MXNvgNAQeG3Q3xE1VWfnQ">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solanas-ultimate-vision-anatoly-yakovenko/id1697548240?i=1000624035386">Apple</a>), Yakovenko gives an example from his experience working in Web2 company, Dropbox. “We had one giant MySQL database for all the folders because as soon as you start fragmenting them, [it] becomes very hard to create links between different users of different folders.”



“Tracking consistency between two different databases is a major pain in the ass. You would have to synchronize everything through the [<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-1">layer-1</a>].”



The fragmentation, at a large enough scale, causes “massive composability” and user experience problems, according to Yakovenko. “You have to re-sync through the [layer-1] and that&#8217;s going to create the same kind of cost.”



“That&#8217;s very, very difficult to deal with,” he says.



Yakovenko uses the example of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts">NFTs</a> to illustrate the problem. “You can&#8217;t have an NFT in every <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/rollups">rollup</a>. It actually can only be bridged to one,” he says. “If I want a specific NFT, the marketplace where it&#8217;s sold is the marketplace that I need to buy in — and it can only exist in one of those.”



By creating different states, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> break up the composability of marketplaces for a particular NFT, Yakoveko explains. “That’s the fundamental challenge with [layer-2s].”



It’s an unavoidable trade-off, he says. “You get a performance benefit because you create this single global lock around a state and then you can work on it asynchronously from everything else, but you&#8217;re creating a very hard composability challenge.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What about just one layer-2?</h2>



Theoretically, a singular layer-2 solution, rather than the current variety that exists in the <a href="http://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a> ecosystem, would simplify the composability problem, Yakovenko says. 



“You take [Solana Virtual Machine] that runs as many things in parallel as it can,” he explains. “It always increases hardware capacity to meet the demand.”&nbsp;



“Then, you take all the data and you dump it into danksharding” which ideally would be, he says, the “perfect implementation of a [data availability] layer that tries to maximize its [data availability] system.”



“So you have one [layer-2], one bandwidth-optimized system. That&#8217;s basically what Solana is,” he chuckles. “<a href="http://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> itself can asynchronously execute all the programs, and then pick forks separately in a separate pipeline from execution of the programs.”



“All the forks are quickly picked,” he says, “but then these bigger systems can execute on the programs. You can then do batch [zero-knowledge] verification, if that&#8217;s what you need. All that stuff is all doable on Solana.”



Yakovenko notes that a “fundamental difference” persists between Solana and multi-layered chain solutions. “There&#8217;s not going to be a demand for Solana to do danksharding because that really breaks that idea of information synchrony across the world.”



“I don&#8217;t want to split the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sovereign-rollups-blockchain-scaling">data availability</a>,” he says. “Even though you might be able to get an improvement in bandwidth there, it actually does still have a trade-off.”



Yakovenko believes in the necessity of a system that actively avoids asynchronous solutions. “When I submit one bit here,” he says, “it&#8217;s equally observed in Singapore and Brazil, everywhere in the world, as fast as physics allow, because that actually creates value for the world.”



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The goal, Yakovenko explains, is to minimize “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/valio-defi-asset-management">information asymmetry</a> between any two players.”



“It allows for fair markets to exist,” he says. “That&#8217;s the one core use-case that you really can&#8217;t optimize away with all these other systems.”



“The idea of having a single rollup that can take up all of the bandwidth of the data availability layer, whether it&#8217;s Solana or <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-goes-modular">Celestia</a> or Ethereum,” he says, “that idea is something that I think a lot of the engineers agree is probably the more efficient design.”



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Launching a bunch of layer-2’s is not a viable solution to blockchain scaling, says Solana’s Yakovenko

Anatoly Yakovenko says, “It&#8217;s really, really hard to build a company.”



He should know. Yakovenko has experienced crypto’s volatile ups and downs more than most, co-founding <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-1">layer-1</a> network Solana and navigating the ship through tumultuous industry storms.  



As an illustration of the challenges of founding a business, Yakovenko cites a few statistics, stating that out of 4,000 investments, only 200 are profitable. Only 15 of 4,000 become companies with revenues of at least a hundred million dollars. “And those represent 97% of all the returns,” he says.&nbsp;



“Your probability of success as a founder in anything, even outside of crypto, is 15 in 4,000,” he chuckles. That would be a “dream success,” he says. Only 200 out of 4,000 companies break even, he says, calling that “a really solid founder story.”



Speaking on the Lightspeed podcast (<a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/6hBVZ76Ykz4Z3yMvkT9Tl6?si=eyuPLk2OSPeRCJYYVq65Jg">Spotify</a>/<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/solanas-ultimate-vision-anatoly-yakovenko/id1697548240?i=1000624035386">Apple</a>), Yakovenko says he still believes the risks are worthwhile. “This is the most transformative, amazing experience.”



“If you seek stress, if you&#8217;re one of those people that has a low heart rate or whatever, it&#8217;s an awesome, very rewarding, very insane experience.”



“You’ll feel like you’re on top of the world or in the depth of despair” from one week to the next, Yakovenko says, adding that the shared startup “trauma” brings people together.



Adding to his advice for entrepreneurs, Yakovenko says “you should be trying to compete against the best version of yourself.” When looking at the industry, founders should ask themselves, he says, “What would the best version of me do, and how do I beat them?”



“When I see competitors do something interesting,” he says, “I try to adopt it in some way.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Applying old models to crypto</h2>



Yakovenko pushes back on criticisms against the Solana network being <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-investor-sues-project-insiders-claims-network-highly-centralized">centralized in nature</a>. “We survived <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-defi-ready-rebirth">the FTX collapse</a>,” he says. “The fact that the network went through that shitshow and just continued running and people continued building it — it&#8217;s the most decentralized thing possible.”



“People have to understand that the protocols are not companies,” he says, noting the misconception stems from applying “old models and concepts to crypto.”&nbsp;



“<a href="http://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a>&#8216;s a bunch of open-source code,” he explains. “Anyone can fork it. Anyone can fork <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>. You can run your own instances of all these networks.”



“The token,” he explains, “is just really representing the spam defense mechanism for these communications networks. That&#8217;s it. It doesn&#8217;t give you voting rights. It doesn&#8217;t give you participation rights.”



“The only reason why all these other things work,” Yakovenko says, “is because we&#8217;re able to coordinate our decision-making power with public keys and quickly come to decisions and build upon that.”



“But it&#8217;s a very network effect kind of thing. It’s not a corporation or a company,” he says. “It&#8217;s like a bunch of open-source staffs that are volunteering to work at a particular thing,” he says, “but anyone can leave at any time.”&nbsp;



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The Solana community, Yakovenko says, has an “awesome founder network,” making for one of the “best places” to start a business.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Podcast host Garrett Harper jokes that the Solana community consists of the type of people who “chew glass,” noting that, despite enduring tough times, the community remains resilient.&nbsp;



“Over the last year or so, it&#8217;s like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vitalik-buterin-on-sec-crackdown">you&#8217;ve been punched in the face</a> a number of times, but you keep coming back. And to me, the community is really stronger than it&#8217;s ever been. That&#8217;s why I think this is so impressive.”&nbsp;



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Solana’s Yakovenko advises aspiring founders: If you seek stress, it’s awesome

Think of the go-to apps on your phone. The ones you navigate with muscle memory. The apps you use so much that you forget you checked them just a minute ago.



Maybe for you, it’s Twitter — or at least it was until Elon took over. Or TikTok. Snapchat? Discord? Instagram? OK, maybe Facebook? Really? Facebook?



Perhaps you take your mobile device more seriously — you’re more into productivity — so it’s Gmail, Calendar and Docs or Office. Or you’re into streaming video with Netflix and YouTube or music with Spotify and Apple. Or gaming with Candy Crush and Two Dots.



Chances are, even if you’re deeply involved in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web3">Web3</a> world, your most frequently-used apps are firmly entrenched in the corporate establishment of Web2.



It’s true, there’s plenty of places to go if you want to be a degen and <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/issue/31217083">trade meme tokens</a> or sweep NFT floors, but where are all the everyday-life Web3 apps?



On the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnKc5IvD88Q">latest episode</a> of the 0xResearch podcast, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Solana</a> co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko bemoans the lack of consumer-level apps living in the Web3 ecosystem. 



“There&#8217;s no application that we can point to and say, ‘This is general consumers using crypto and getting value out of it’” or “‘these are the business models that are creating value for the world.’”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Unlocking value for the consumer</h2>



Yakovenko explains, “We&#8217;re trying to attract folks that have that mindset, that really want to unlock value for the general consumer.” He mentions one app in development that he foresees providing genuine usage on a broader scale.



Hivemapper, an app that Yakovenko says is “competing with Google Street View,” is a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/qa-solana-founders-raj-anatoly">decentralized mapping network that uses a crypto-integrated dashcam</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“People are effectively mining tokens by creating these constantly updated streets,” resulting in rapid updates that he says are “coming in 200 times faster than Google’s.”



“There&#8217;s 60 million kilometers of road in the world. They&#8217;re over a million already.” That amounts to about two percent of the world’s roads, he says, adding, “They&#8217;re moving really quickly.&#8221;



“That could be very substantive technology, built using decentralization that we can point to and say, ‘Hey, look, this is competitive with a two trillion dollar company.’” 



“But it&#8217;s still not consumer stuff,” Yakovenko admits.



Yakovenko goes on to mention apps that he is excited about, like <a href="https://twitter.com/blockworksres/status/1646901463380283393">BackPack</a>, which “can be understood as an operating system for all <a href="https://www.xnft.gg/">xNFTs</a> developed on-chain” and “grants access to decentralized applications built on-chain” and Dialect — a “smart messaging” protocol soon to be launched on the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-launches-saga-phone">Solana Saga app store</a>.



“BackPack and Dialect are new approaches to crypto,” he says. “They&#8217;re trying to basically build something similar to WeChat, where you have social and finance all mixed together.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The meaning of success in Web3</h2>



Yakovenko points out the broad chasm between the meaning of success in the massive Web2 market and Web3. “A moderately successful social network that&#8217;s struggling to raise money in Silicon Valley with 20 million users would be the biggest success in crypto,” he chuckles.



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But it’s something he aspires to see come to fruition: “We can all then point to it,” he says, hoping to soon see an application where “there’s real consumers, they’re doing stuff. They’re making payments. The whole loop works and it’s growing.”



“If we get one of those successes, I think that would be revolutionary.”



“Once you have that many users that are actually using this stuff on a monthly [or] daily basis,” he says, “business models that make sense will just become very obvious and fast to optimize.”



While that one killer consumer app may soon be on the way, it doesn’t seem to be here yet. As of now, “all of that is missing from crypto,” he says. 



“I&#8217;ve been working on this for over five years and we still can&#8217;t point to that one use case.”



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Web3 Has Been Around for a While. So, Where Are All the Apps?

Bessie Liu

Once dubbed an “Ethereum killer” for its low costs and fast transaction speeds, the Solana blockchain has been hit particularly hard by the collapse of centralized exchange FTX and its sister company Alameda Research.



Solana was once <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-community-remains-bullish-despite-ftx-fallout" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">heavily</a> backed by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and Alameda Research <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sam-bankman-frieds-crypto-empire-blur-on-his-trading-titan-alamedas-balance-sheet/?outputType=amp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a> held an estimated $1.2 billion in SOL tokens — its second largest position.



Traders sold their solana en masse once the FTX scandal broke, about a week following details of its illiquid balance sheet. SOL has since plummeted 60%, from above $35 to less than $12. SOL now sits at over 95% below its record high set last November.&nbsp;



Beyond markets, the price crash has also shaken the core of its ecosystem believers. Multiple Solana projects including NFT marketplace MagicEden, crypto wallet Phantom and NFT project DeGods have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/top-solana-nft-projects-are-jumping-ship-to-ethereum-polygon" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">recently shared plans to transition</a> to a multichain world.&nbsp;



It&#8217;s a move Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko <a href="https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1607449836831358981?t=dKm2K7VPMC8lvA3p61H4Iw&amp;s=19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">says</a> is “bittersweet to watch.” 



Still, Yakovenko and co-founder Raj Gokal have not lost hope for the blockchain. In fact, the firm has been actively seeking ways to support projects across its ecosystem.



In a recent conversation with Blockworks, Yakovenko and Gokal discuss what’s next for Solana.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Blockworks: How have things been since the FTX implosion?



Gokal: It’s been a rollercoaster of a month. For the Solana ecosystem, having a strong showing of in-person support and cohesion right before the FTX collapse was quite a stark contrast.



I think the most acute examples are the teams that had their treasury, or a portion of their treasury, on FTX, which I think is an issue that exists across the crypto industry. On Solana, we saw a single digit percent of teams with that impact, and the foundation’s role with those teams was just connecting them with investors. We had an outpouring of support from both traditional [venture capitalists] and those that have been on the sidelines looking for an entry point into crypto.



On the bright side, the other piece of the market volatility during that collapse was that the network was performing. We had a lot of liquidations, record volatility, the volumes for DeFi were 6x what they were before the FTX collapse, and there were no outages and no performance degradation.



So there’s just been a lot of bittersweet [emotions]. We’ve moved past a lot of the old issues and now we’re just dealing with this part of the market cycle, which I think is rough for everybody.&nbsp;



Blockworks: There are concerns that Solana’s decentralized exchange Serum was compromised during the apparent FTX hack. Could you explain what happened?



Yakovenko: During the FTX collapse, somebody started withdrawing funds from FTX and people weren’t sure if it was hacked or if they were real transfers. It seemed like FTX itself was being compromised.



Developers knew already that the Serum program was not controlled by a DAO: It was controlled by keys that were custodied at FTX, so there was a fear that those keys were compromised as well.&nbsp;



People just started working on forking the Serum program — by taking the exact same open source code and re-deploying it under a new address with different upgrade authority to different keys — basically controlling how that program can be upgraded by moving all the projects that were using Serum, including market makers, to this thing called Open Book, which was byte for byte the exact same code used on Serum but now under the control of a DAO.



That moment was like a psychological turning point for me, because it really felt like everything was falling apart. But seeing all the developers come together, I was able to be like: “Okay, there are people that know what they’re doing, that actually understand these very sophisticated systems and how to fix it.”



The people that did this weren&#8217;t big companies. They were a bunch of hobbyists and small teams. It was really cool to see how quickly real decentralized communities can recover from failure when a centralized actor blows up.



Gokal: It was another bittersweet thing. It was a shame that upgrade keys for Serum may have been compromised and that the protocol had to be forked.&nbsp;



But the fact that it happened independently, with multiple DeFi protocols that use Serum all coming together to quickly coordinate the fork…it’s a sign of maturity for the ecosystem. Every system has to have a major “oh shit” moment, like what Bitcoin had with Mt. Gox, and what Ethereum had with The DAO hack.&nbsp;



We saw the same things happen in those ecosystems…and people really had to ask the hard questions about why they’re building in that ecosystem, why they came in the first place and what they want the future of the ecosystem to be.



I think there&#8217;s no other way to produce this outcome.



Blockworks: You mention how this is a time where people come together and build a vision for the future. What does that look like for Solana?



Gokal: I think if you talk to developers, they’ll mostly tell you that we’re just scratching the surface of what can be built using Solana that can’t be built anywhere else.&nbsp;



For example, Teleport was demo-ing a decentralized Uber that actually works, Hivemapper is building a decentralized mapping service and Helium moved over from their own chain. All these projects just couldn’t really exist on any other network.



Blockworks: The price of SOL has tanked significantly since everything that has happened a month ago, what do you think needs to be done within the ecosystem for people to have confidence again?



Yakovenko: We generally don&#8217;t talk about Solana’s price. We&#8217;re in a clear bear market for crypto…but what we saw year over year, and at BreakPoint, is just the difference between a conference last year and this year…we have twice as many people show up.



The number of smart people entering the space and building and creating products is just growing. I would bet that over the next year, the number of products that are going to launch in crypto is going to be more than all the other years combined.



Blockworks: How do you think the regulatory landscape will change following the recent events?&nbsp;



Yakovenko: I’m generally very bullish on US regulation, eventually setting some right lines about what’s okay to build, what&#8217;s not okay to build and how you launch these things. That&#8217;s really what&#8217;s missing right now.&nbsp;



The big fear and uncertainty for founders is that they don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s very expensive to get a very poor answer from lawyers. You can&#8217;t have somebody that raises, let&#8217;s say, $3 million for their seed round, then having to spend 50% of it on lawyer fees just to launch a product. That&#8217;s not sustainable, and it’s causing folks to leave the US because those teams would rather launch their products offshore. I think that needs to be corrected.&nbsp;



But in general, I think the US government moves really slowly, like it did in the 90s. But eventually they passed legislation that enabled all these companies that you see today to have created massive amounts of value for the world. And I&#8217;m pretty certain that&#8217;s going to happen in crypto, too.



Blockworks: Any additional thoughts or comments?



Yakovenko: Stripe recently announced its integration with Solana, and I know many of these companies see crypto as an integral part of their future. These are big companies with millions of users. And that&#8217;s just going to keep happening.&nbsp;



More and more people are going to understand self custody and learn what that means — they&#8217;re gonna know what it means to actually use cryptography. That powerful tool is gonna keep growing, just like the internet did.&nbsp;



That’s the future we’re building for. This is a blip, it sucks, but in the end — four or five years later — barely anyone is going to remember it.



This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.



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Q&A: A Conversation With Solana Founders Raj and Anatoly

Solana, once championed as the “Ethereum Killer” has seen the price of its native token SOL tank by roughly <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/prices/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">47%</a> over the past week dominated by the FTX train wreck.



SOL is the <a href="https://twitter.com/R89Capital/status/1589268233559101440" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">second largest-holding</a> of Alameda Research, and was heavily promoted by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/news/ftx-ceo-bankman-fried-resigns-bankruptcy-proceedings-begin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">resigned today</a>.&nbsp;



According to an earlier <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/11/02/divisions-in-sam-bankman-frieds-crypto-empire-blur-on-his-trading-titan-alamedas-balance-sheet/?outputType=amp" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report by CoinDesk</a>, Alameda held $292 million of “unlocked SOL,” $863 million of “locked SOL” and $41 million of “SOL collateral,”&nbsp; as of June 30, 2022.



Akeel Qureshi, core contributor to Solana-based Hubble Protocol and Kamino Finance told Blockworks that the current crypto crisis ensuing from FTX’s bankruptcy filing is reminiscent of the fall of banks during the 2008 financial crisis.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">FTX contagion effects</h3>



“The fallout from the bankruptcy announcement was immediate contagion, and we’re watching another leg down for assets associated with FTX and Alameda,” Qureshi said. “SOL, the native token of Solana, has taken a further hit due to Sam Bankman-Fried’s past open support of the network.”



In fact, according to a post by Twitter user weremeow, one of the largest challenges that the Solana ecosystem faces is that wrapped Sollet tokens such as soBTC are issued by the now-insolvent FTX.



“These tokens were launched very early in the Solana DeFi cycle to help generate liquidity in the space, and supposed to be backed 1-1 by BTC or ETH,” they tweeted. “But unlike wBTC, there was no formal process and no one knows if FTX still have the underlying assets.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">1/ One of the most challenging and unspoken issue facing the <a href="https://twitter.com/solana?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@solana</a> ecosystem are the wrapped Sollet tokens, namely soBTC, which is used widely across lending and AMM platforms. The problem? These tokens are issued by FTX (or Alameda, no one really knows)&mdash; meow (@weremeow) <a href="https://twitter.com/weremeow/status/1590461628864397312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



As all major Solana-based DeFi platforms have soBTC assets as collateral, if it is revealed that soBTC no longer has any underlying assets backing its value, the contagion effect of all of this could be much worse than expected.&nbsp;



Weighing on the situation, <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockworks Research</a> analyst Spencer Hughes said, &#8220;Solana currently has <a href="https://solscan.io/token/9n4nbM75f5Ui33ZbPYXn59EwSgE8CGsHtAeTH5YFeJ9E" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$271M</a> of soBTC and <a href="https://solscan.io/token/2FPyTwcZLUg1MDrwsyoP4D6s1tM7hAkHYRjkNb5w6Pxk" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$612M </a>of soETH on the network. These assets were supposedly bridged from the Ethereum network. It is unclear who exactly is backing these assets, but many speculate that it is FTX.&nbsp;



As a consequence, he added, “soBTC is currently trading at $13.5K, a steep 25% discount from the price of BTC. At one point, soBTC was trading for $3,400. In the meantime, DeFi lending platform Solend has paused all borrows collateralized by soBTC.”



Earlier this week, Solend struggled to liquidate a whale account which tanked. Although the <a href="https://twitter.com/solendprotocol/status/1590749151980945414?" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">situation was later resolved</a>, Solend&#8217;s head of growth Soju wrote on the <a href="https://discord.com/channels/839224914720325703/1009605878460194897/1039928653427003422" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its Discord </a>that the situation was “looking very bad now.” 



Liquidity crunches are not the only concerns faced by the Solana community. Earlier this week, the Solana Foundation revealed that <a href="https://twitter.com/thedata_nerd/status/1590307325650182144" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">47 million SOL</a> would be unstaked from the ecosystem, a poorly-timed move that was <a href="https://twitter.com/SolanaFndn/status/1590464124827635712" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">quickly reversed</a>.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Community optimism</h3>



Despite these multiple challenges since the FTX fallout, many builders in the ecosystem remain resilient.&nbsp;



Tiffany Huang, the head of marketing at Magic Eden, the largest NFT Marketplace on Solana told Blockworks that, “in spite of these developments, we remain as hopeful as ever about Solana&#8217;s critical role in building a decentralized ecosystem.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“As we pick up the pieces, we are going to keep building from a place of deep belief. We remain bullish on the future of Solana and have seen the community come together to remind each other of the incredible projects that have come to market,” Huang said.</blockquote>



This sentiment is shared by Jules Mossler the chief marketing officer at Metaplex Studios who told Blockworks, “We are now seeing projects support each other and plan the next chapter of reinvestment together, and we’ll be right there with them.”



An outpouring of support from crypto twitter has also been apparent over the past few days.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">this crucible moment for <a href="https://twitter.com/solana?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@solana</a> ecosystem is as difficult as the last one. the difference is, there are 10x more of us to band together this time. next time, there will be 10x more. and each time, we&#39;re stronger. the fundamentals are better. same goes for crypto at large, tbh&mdash; raj 🖤 (@rajgokal) <a href="https://twitter.com/rajgokal/status/1590359525521264640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 9, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly Yakovenko <a href="https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1590348163722145793" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a>, “the builders on Solana are second to none, and the projects they&#8217;re building can often only be built on Solana.”



Adding that, “we launched in 2020 after markets crashed and the world went into lockdown — chewing glass is in our DNA, and we&#8217;ll get through together.”



Qureshi believes that the latest events that have unfolded is a tell-tale sign which echoes the importance of decentralization.



“​​Meanwhile, centralized crypto exchanges and lenders with closed books are in the crosshairs, but decentralized finance (DeFi) is looking stronger than ever due to its transparency and reliance on users custodying their own assets,” Qureshi said.



As the ecosystem works on recovering from the shakeup, it is expected that there will be a lot more quality DeFi projects that will help the ecosystem prevail, he said.&nbsp;



The price of solana is now around $16, down by <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">about 9%</a> in the past 24 hours.



Ornella Hernandez contributed reporting.



Updated on Nov. 16, 2022 at 11:11 am ET: Soju is the head of growth at Solend.



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Solana Community Remains Bullish Despite FTX Fallout

Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_61bb38bef1c56" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Solana is beginning the Thursday trading day up 12%, recovering from prior losses inflicted by a network freeze after it couldn’t handle the demand from a popular IDO</li>
 <li>Solana led the overall digital assets market in gains after the Fed announced it would begin tapering, and, Galaxy Digital</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



SOL is set to begin the Thursday trading day up almost 12.5% as two key and unrelated announcements turned the Solana network’s fortune around after it suffered a series of failures on the back of a popular Initial Dex Offering (IDO) that was based on its network.&nbsp;



Earlier this week, the launch of the anticipated SolChicks Play-to-Earn NFT project ground the Solana network and the Raydium DEX — based on Solana — to a virtual halt due to network congestion.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">(Thread 1/2) CHICKS HAVE TAKEN SOLANA DOWN 🐣 We apologize for the inconvenience of this delay but tens of thousands of people are trying to buy <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24CHICKS&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$CHICKS</a> and the Raydium server has crashed. It appears SolScan is also not loading our contract address right now either. <a href="https://t.co/WX0uqKlgZR">pic.twitter.com/WX0uqKlgZR</a>&mdash; SolChicks (@SolChicksNFT) <a href="https://twitter.com/SolChicksNFT/status/1470399522920493062?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 13, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Data from various Solana block explorers shows that the number of transactions per second over the Solana network fell to about 700 down from an average of around 2000 and full capacity of about 65,000. At one point, SolanaBeach, a Block Explorer, showed that upwards of 50% of transactions were failing.



For his part, Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Labs CEO, chalked this up to growing pains and suggested that this was another case of congestion which frequently happens during aggressive trading events or successful IDO launches.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">same as friday! can&#39;t yolo changes into mainnet-beta, fixes are baking, should be ready soon<a href="https://t.co/TAI1OF6UF0">https://t.co/TAI1OF6UF0</a>&mdash; anat◎ly 🦀🤿🏒 🤙 (@aeyakovenko) <a href="https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1470427941578231809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 13, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Despite all this, institutional interest in Solana remains strong, which is likely driving up the price of SOL.&nbsp;



On Wednesday, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/galaxy-launches-new-institutional-solana-fund-to-track-bloomberg-index/">Galaxy Digital announced</a> that it was launching an institutional-focused investment fund, Galaxy Solana Funds, which tracks the performance of the Bloomberg Galaxy Solana Index.



Generally, most large-cap cryptos opened higher on Thursday after the Fed announced late Wednesday that it plans to speed up its asset purchase tapering timeline and move towards more rate hikes in 2022 on news of record inflation.



Bitcoin has remained above $48,500 since the FOMC meeting results, according to <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en">CoinGecko</a>, while ether and Binance’s BNB have also bounced sharply. In addition to this macro news, SOL also appeared to react favorably to an announcement that Michael Jordan and his son Jeffrey are launching <a href="https://www.heir.app/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">HEIR</a>, what they call a Web3 fan engagement platform built on Solana. HEIR has already raised $10 million and is set to launch in 2022. 



SOL remains almost 30% below its all-time high of $260, set on Nov. 6.




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Fed Decision, Galaxy Fund, and Celebrities Push SOL to Recovery After Network Freeze

<div id="highlights-block_618939a3eec02" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Solana’s growth story is one that’s now defined in the billions, but there’s been some challenges along the way</li>
 <li>Solana Labs CEO says it&#8217;s in the group’s culture to embrace every challenge in the hardest possible way: ‘Eating glass’ while changing the world.</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Breakpoint 2021, Lisbon, Portugal — There’s a lot going right with Solana and its ecosystem: $15.2 billion in total value locked into DeFI projects on the protocol; $2 billion in investment from the who’s who in the crypto ecosystem, and a sold-out Breakpoint conference in Lisbon.



But for everything that goes right with Solana, sometimes things also go wrong:&nbsp;In September the entire network suffered a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-recovers-after-10-hour-outage/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">brutal 10-hour outage</a> with a double-digit fall in the token’s value.



It’s times like this, Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko said on stage in Lisbon, that the team learned to “eat glass,” a metaphor for enduring a tough experience. The global state machine, as Yakovenko calls the Solana network, isn’t without its challenges. But the team, he says, enjoys this head-first journey into “maximum pain.”



Part of the evolving debate surrounding any growing blockchain is the extent to which it realizes the goal of decentralization, sometimes quantified as ‘the Nakamoto coefficient’, in reference to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto. A network with high transaction throughput might be a highly centralized one, or one which is inherently insecure.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">This is how you measure the value of a protocol, not fee revenue <a href="https://t.co/trqxU4K7AX">https://t.co/trqxU4K7AX</a>&mdash; cy (@chasingyield_) <a href="https://twitter.com/chasingyield_/status/1457651159628345348?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 8, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



For Yakovenko, this isn’t a trade-off, as one of his goals is to change paradigms and behavior so that “voting power and the distribution of nodes actually maximizes the Nakamoto coefficient.” It can only go one-way, as he explained on stage. Rather than stress decentralization, for now the network’s success is measured in terms of the nearly 40 billion transactions and 1.26 million active accounts transacting without nagging gas fees.&nbsp;



“The hard part is finding the humans that want to run the network,” he said, giving an anecdote on how there are validators in the middle of Russia that use the country’s naturally chilly temperature as a reason to set up data centers in the middle of barren fields.&nbsp;The <a href="https://docs.solana.com/running-validator/validator-reqs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">technical requirements</a> to run a Solana node are quite steep relative to nodes on Bitcoin or Ethereum.



For the Solana team, the next challenge will be to expand the number of validators dramatically. Currently, there are around 1,150 but as the race to validating 100,000 transactions per second continues, there’s going to need to be a lot more of them.&nbsp;



But finding these next humans might not be quite as much of a glass eating challenge; it could be harder to match Ethereum’s massive lead in developer talent, with tens of thousands of active devs <a href="https://entethalliance.org/ethereum-innovation-cycle-for-business-and-commerce/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to</a> the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. By contrast, there were 100 participants at Solana’s first hackathon. Now, and the most recent one here in Lisbon, that number is closer to 600.



Yakovenko wants more. “1 million is our goal, that’s a 1000x growth,” he said, mirroring the “One Million Devs” initiative for Ethereum <a href="https://media.consensys.net/one-million-ethereum-developers-five-consensys-announcements-from-devcon-5-28520ce63d73" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">undertaken in 2019</a> by ConsenSys.



Solana’s token, SOL, is currently trading for $247 according to <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/solana" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CoinGecko data</a>, up 20% on-week.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



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The ‘Solana Summer’ Never Ends

Macauley Peterson

<div id="highlights-block_6141c830ad668" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Mainnet beta restart completed by 6:00 AM (UTC), restoring service</li>
 <li>$SOL token up 10% off the outage low of $142, but lags $BTC</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The Solana blockchain <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/sol-stumbles-as-solana-struggles-with-technical-issues/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suffered a major outage</a> yesterday, which ultimately forced a network restart following a hurried bug-fixing upgrade, to curtail uncontrollable forking of the chain. 



Although still technically in beta, the protocol&#8217;s growing DeFi ecosystem has amassed nearly <a href="https://defillama.com/chains" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$11 billion in total value locked</a>, and Solana has also tapped into the latest NFT mania, propelling its $SOL token into the top 10 by market cap at over $47 billion.



A patch was released Tuesday afternoon, requiring the community of validators who operate the network to coordinate a software update and restart the chain, a process which <a href="https://twitter.com/SolanaStatus/status/1438020110451609603" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">was completed early Wednesday</a>, according to the Solana Foundation.



Solana is a proof-of-stake smart contract blockchain, one of the few such protocols that is incompatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum suffered <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bug-in-ethereum-interface-causes-inadvertent-chain-split-chaos-on-network/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an unintentional fork</a> on August 27th, after a bug in one of the main Ethereum clients was exploited, but the practical effect on network activity was comparatively mild.



The CEO of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko, <a href="https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437887482897518595" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a> wryly, &#8220;better now then [SIC] when its a billion users&#8221;.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">better now then when its a billion users&mdash; anat◎ly 🦀🤿🏒 🤙 (@aeyakovenko) <a href="https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437887482897518595?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In the aftermath of the blockchain&#8217;s network instability, the $SOL token fell by roughly 16% from its daily open, but bounced sharply once the network restart was initiated. The Solana mainnet needed 80% of the $SOL staked across its <a href="https://solanabeach.io/validators" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">approximately 1000 validator nodes</a>, to successfully restart, which accounts for the length of the outage following the release of the software patch.



The token has rallied over 10% from its Tuesday low in dollar terms, but just 8% when measured against bitcoin.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



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Solana Recovers After 10-hour Outage

Jacquelyn Melinek

<div id="highlights-block_613119828fcde" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>With all these big ideas and growth entering the crypto space, the skepticism is what makes it possible, he said</li>
 <li>A lot of market players view Solana as a competitor to Ethereum’s blockchain platform. Yakovenko welcomes the competition and compares it to playing hockey</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The altcoin solana (SOL) has seen extreme growth in just the past month, climbing from $33.3 on the month-ago date to an <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-hits-ath-oils-choppy-trading-amid-hurricane-ida-markets-wrap/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">all-time high</a> of $130.01 on August 31. But, believe it or not, Solana Labs Founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko is a crypto skeptic.



SOL coin aside, Solana is best known for its decentralized blockchain platform, which is centered on creating the cheapest, fastest and most censorship-resistant network possible, according to <a href="https://github.com/aeyakovenko" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Yakovenko</a>.



The four-year old blockchain platform has grown rapidly since its inception. Its blockchain ecosystem consists of over 400 projects focusing on topics like DeFi, NFTs and Web3. In fact, the platform helps build big-name crypto companies like Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX and quantitative trading firm Alameda Research, as well as other companies.&nbsp;



In addition to those big-name users, Solana has big-name investors that have backed the company with hundreds of millions of dollars. Earlier this year, the company raised <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-labs-ceo-shares-roadmap-following-314m-fundraise/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$314 million</a> in a private token sale led by a16z and Polychain Capital.



The company has no plans to slow down, either. This week, Solana launched its fourth hackathon <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/solana-ignition-hackathon-to-focus-on-defi-web3-gaming-and-nfts/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">event</a> in an effort to expand the ecosystem even further.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A crypto skeptic</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">However, with all this success, Yakovenko told Blockworks in an interview, “I’m a skeptic, I’m probably the biggest skeptic of crypto.”</blockquote>



But, why? Well, the current environment is extremely similar to the 1990s, Yakovenko said. That was a time when huge dreamers, ideas and companies like Six Degrees, popped up, only for them to disappear shortly after, he added. For context, Six Degrees is widely considered the first social networking site. Founded by Andrew Weinreich in May 1996, Six Degrees collapsed in 2000 due to low revenue and internet connectivity limitations.&nbsp;



The 1990s was a time when the US saw rapid innovation and the rise of new technologies, fueled by investments in internet-based companies. Many companies like Six Degrees closed shop, but paved the way for social media platforms that still exist today like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.&nbsp;



“It was really hard to believe that Six Degrees or chainmail letters would end up with a trillion dollar company like Facebook. Just this idea that you can connect people socially over the internet, what was that worth? And in the 90s you would have thought that was crazy to think that it was worth anything,” Yakovenko said. “This idea that people self-custody with just cryptography and a little bit of math, that could create so much value. I think that is just as crazy and ludicrous,” he added.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Far from “Ethereum Killer”&nbsp;</h3>



A lot of market players view Solana as a competitor to Ethereum’s blockchain platform. Yakovenko welcomes the competition and compares it to playing hockey.



“The competition is awesome, I love competition,” he said. “I played hockey my whole life so whatever you can compete at, I’m happy to compete, whether it&#8217;s hockey or building blockchains,” he said.



Although some people have called Solana the “Ethereum Killer,” Yakovenko said that comparison is far from the truth. While he is skeptical about crypto itself, he believes the technologies available on the blockchain will succeed.&nbsp;



In fact, blockchain platforms like Solana or Ethereum are extremely resilient to anyone — or anything — that tries to kill it, he said.&nbsp;



Due to the open-source nature of both blockchains, developers are constantly building and scaling the networks in ways that have given companies like Microsoft the ability to last.



“We have a certain vision which is to build the cheapest, fastest most censorship resistant network and [Ethereum] has a different vision, which is like let&#8217;s build the cheapest way to validate on a very large decentralized blockchain,” Yakovenko said. “Both visions I think are interesting approaches to the same problem, it’s two sides of the same coin. A lot of folks are passionate about both approaches so happy to compete. It only makes both of us better.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">NFTs booming growth&nbsp;</h3>



Although Yakovenko said he doesn’t know what has specifically caused the massive price movements for Solana’s cryptocurrency, he said he hopes it’s correlated to how important it is for people to use the Solana network. He also said that there has been strong growth and demand for NFTs on Solana’s platform in the past month and over 90,000 NFTs have been minted in the past two months, which could possibly contribute to the spike.



Amid the craze of people minting NFTs, Yakovenko said, “I tried to mint a couple, but I’m too slow.” He added that many of the Solanart NFTs were sold out in four to five seconds.



Overall, Yakovenko said he expects to see communities continue to rapidly form around ownership of these NFTs. “The groups are as strong as ones you’d find on any other social media platform, if not stronger,” he added.&nbsp;



“NFTs are almost like a decentralized version of Reddit, you don’t need the messaging side of it,” he said. “What you need is some combination of tokens and/or NFTs to tie together and they will self organize elsewhere on Reddit, Twitter or Telegram,” he added.&nbsp;



But with all these big ideas and growth entering the crypto space, the skepticism is what makes it possible, he said.&nbsp;



“I’m blown away by the success we’ve seen in the past year. We want to see the space grow,” he added. “Evaluating if it&#8217;s real and what we should be working on, we have that big idea in mind: can we get a billion people in the power of cryptography?”&nbsp;



He hinted that only time will tell.