New Solana On-Ramps, Global Micropayments & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and this week we’ve got these titbits for you:

• Building Bridges: David from Bankless was on the Validated podcast.

• Crypto On-Ramp: Deposits to the Ottr wallet are now free of charge.

• Going Global: DRiP rolls out zero fee global micropayments.

Did you know that Open AI runs its operations on Microsoft Azure? Or that Twitter leverages the cloud infrastructure from AWS, and PayPal chose Google Cloud as its cloud provider?

No?

That’s because consumers don’t tend to care about the infrastructure layer, it's all about customer delight — delivered by a product or service.

In web3 and crypto, however, this concept has been turned on its head: It's all about the infrastructure layer, i.e. blockchains, and not about products and services — much less about customer delight.

If we want our industry to be successful, this needs to change.

This and more is at the core of this week’s newsletter — let’s get into it!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Building Businesses That Matter

Your mom knows about it, your friends can't hear about it any more, and VCs will fund anyone and everyone that only whispers these two letters.

Yes, we're talking about “AI”.

Everyone's favourite AI solution, ChatGPT, boasts some impressive numbers:

• Over 100 million users

• Surpassed 1 million users in just 5 days

• openai.com gets approximately 1 billion visits per month

• Over 60% of ChatGPT's social media traffic comes via YouTube

• Over 15% of ChatGPT's users are American

While global AI venture funding is on the downturn, Silicon Valley in particular has experienced an AI investments rebound — mainly due to generative AI mega-rounds spurred by OpenAI's success.

As such, we'll probably see more generative AI unicorns such as Anthropic, Adept, and Character.AI being minted going forward.

But do you know what we won't see?

A discussion about what cloud providers these AI companies are and should be using.

While every other industry has internalised that it's all about user growth, teams in web3 and crypto are still building products and services nobody needs, and wasting time discussing which blockchain the tech gods have chosen as their favourite child.

** I know this is hard to hear, but the majority of people doesn't care **

The world's population has reached 8 billion. India has surpassed China as the most populous country in the world, the fastest growing populations are in Africa — spearheaded by Nigeria. Indonesia and the Philippines are sleeping giants, and Brazil's population potential is still being slept on.

These and other populations have tangible needs which constitute massive market opportunities.

Yet, we're here discussing technical intricacies.

Really?

Some of the brightest minds are working in web3.

Conversely, it boggles my mind why we're unable to stop bickering among each other and start building self custody products and services the world really needs.

Vihaan in India needs more cost-effective cross-border transfers, Ade from Nigeria needs an efficient on and off ramp to the US dollar, Bagwis from the Philippines wants to receive his gig payments without the hassle of traditional banks, and João from Brazil doesn't want to lose an arm and a leg when swapping for Euros on his trip to Paris and Rome.

These are some of the many things we should be building and optimising for.

Everyone in web3 likes to say “building this, building that” and “bridging the gap this, bridging the gap that”.

How about building products and services that can significantly improve the lives of people and bridging that to the real world?

If I need to read another 20+ tweet thread, or any thread for that matter, about why this blockchain tickles your fancy, and this one doesn't make your cookie crumble, I'll lose my marbles.

My brothers and sisters in Christ — please — let's stop mucking around and start building real businesses, with real users, that really matter.

Excelsior! **Stan Lee voice**

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Building Bridges: David from Bankless was on the Validated podcast and discussed all things Ethereum. He's also been involved in a lot of Twitter banter with the Solana community and has shown openness to engage with the wider Solana ecosystem. David and Ryan, as both of you read our newsletter, we wanted to give you a shoutout and props for building bridges and uplifting web3 and crypto as a whole!

Crypto On-Ramp: Ottr, a self custody wallet on Solana, has launched Ottr Bank Connect that allows users to fund their Ottr wallet from their bank account with zero fees.

Global Micropayments: Normally, building out payment infrastructure requires months of engineering. Additionally, most payment services tax transactions with up to 3% in fees. DRiP, however, rolled out global micropayments in 2 days and takes $0 in fees.

Zero Friction: TipLink has demonstrated how to claim Solana NFTs with the click of a button — without the need for any downloads or a wallet.

Apex Predator: The new Orca is set to launch this Thursday – June 1 — with a host of improvements. Take the closed version for a spin (password: whalewatching23)! 🤫

Backpack & xNFTs: After Mad Lads and Rogue Sharks, SMB has become the third established NFT collection on Solana to upgrade to xNFTs. The xNFT movement seems to be taking flight and is in the process of ushering in new NFT-powered experiences that are only possible on Solana.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

If you'd like to reach us, respond to this newsletter or reach out to me on Twitter.

Talk soon!

J264G