Decentralised Science On Solana, Solana Mobile Expands To SUI & More

Welcome back!

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

• SUI Mobile: Saga successfully signs a SUI transaction.

• Decentralised Science: Molecule is looking to expand to Solana. 

• PYUSD Acceleration: PayPal’s stablecoin now has a $1B market cap.

Granted, we’ve been in a bit of a choppy week — so I’ll keep it short: If anything, make sure to take these two posts to heart ⬇️

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Fragile Foundation

In Germany, we have a notorious hairstyle: Vokuhila. It means as much as “short in the front, long in the back”. Figuratively, the hairstyle describes “business in the front, party in the back” — exactly what I want to talk about today. 

In crypto, we’ve mastered the “party in the back” part: We’ve got a rich tapestry of lore, a strong cypherpunk ethos, crypto 𝕏, and countless tightly-knit communities. But when it comes to the “business in the front” part, we're not as sophisticated. 

Why?

Well, we still primarily operates on platforms such as Telegram (900M MAUs), 𝕏 (550 MAUs), and Discord (200 MAUs). While impressive, these numbers pale in comparison:

• Google Search: 4.3B+ users

• YouTube: 2.5B+ users

• Instagram: 2.2B+ users

• Gmail: 1.8B+ users

• TikTok: 1B+ users

Also, not only do Google, Meta, and ByteDance’s product suites have a wider reach, they’re also home to platforms with the most user traffic in the world — all while being geared towards discoverability. In contrast, Telegram, 𝕏, and Discord excel at retaining users and creating communities through continuous engagement, real-time communication, and social interactions — but they are less effective at helping users discover new information or solutions. 

The crux of the problem is that we’re building the onchain economy on platforms that are optimised for retention, and mostly neglect the fact that we need to focus on platforms that optimise for discoverability.

As far as I can tell, however, the lion share of onchain companies and teams don't share this view — apart from Pudgy Penguins and Claynosaurz, which are strategically building out their presence on Instagram and TikTok. Crypto-native offchain entities, on the other hand, have clearly identified Google, Meta, and ByteDance’s product suites as growth engines, and are executing their strategies and tactics accordingly. 

To paint a more vivid picture, let’s look at Google Search and YouTube metrics. 

To analyse Google Search performance (i.e. organic traffic), we'll focus on unique monthly website visitors. This metric counts one IP address as a single visitor, regardless of how many sessions or pageviews they generate in a month. It's important to note that I'm using third-party tools, as I don't have access to proprietary website traffic data. While the numbers may not be exact, they provide a valuable basis for comparison and help us understand the relative performance of different websites — allowing us to draw conclusions about their visibility and reach. 

In terms of organic website traffic, PayPal leads the pack with an impressive number of unique monthly visitors. While not a crypto-native company, PayPal's growing involvement in the onchain economy through PYUSD makes it a relevant benchmark. 

Among crypto-native platforms, Binance stands out as the top performer, drawing in 13 million unique monthly visitors to its website. Other centralised exchanges such as Coinbase, Bybit, and Kraken are also excelling in attracting substantial organic search traffic — highlighting a significant gap between centralised and decentralised platforms in terms of online visibility and user acquisition.

Only Uniswap and PancakeSwap come close to matching the traffic levels of their centralised counterparts. Beyond these two, the drop-off in organic traffic from other onchain entities is stark, underscoring the challenges faced by crypto businesses in attracting and engaging a broader user base.

YouTube tells an even bleaker story. Here, Binance leads the pack with an impressive 1 million subscribers, while PayPal maintains a solid presence with 149,000 subscribers. PancakeSwap, the best-performing onchain representative on YouTube, has 14,000 subscribers — less than 2% of Binance's subscriber base. 

As mentioned above, the onchain ecosystem has mastered community building and engagement but is losing the battle for new user acquisition.

To bridge this gap, we need to reallocate resources from retention platforms to discovery platforms, build dedicated teams for Google, Meta, and ByteDance platforms, and learn from crypto-native offchain entities that are currently successfully leveraging these channels. 

If we don't adapt our growth strategies, the divide between offchain and onchain ecosystems will widen, jeopardising our shared vision of a widespread onchain future.

So if you’re an onchain brand, try allocating 1–2 people to Google, Meta, and ByteDance platforms — the growth potential beyond the 𝕏verse may just surprise you.

Number Of The Week

News Bites

PYUSD Acceleration: Stablecoins on Solana are experiencing rapid growth, with PYUSD recently surpassing a $1 billion market cap. Discover the reasons behind PayPal's choice to build on Solana and the driving forces behind PYUSD's adoption here.

European Stablecoin: Coinbase has enabled send and receive support for EURC on Solana, furthering the multi-network availability of the first widely adopted European stablecoin.

Decentralised Science: Molecule, a DeSci platform focusing on healthcare and the environment, is exploring bringing more cutting-edge scientific research onchain by expanding to Solana. 

SUI Mobile: Solana Mobile's Saga device has successfully signing a SUI transaction using its Seed Vault, showcasing its versatility and cross-chain compatibility.

Solana Data: Blockworks has made its comprehensive Solana dashboards publicly available, offering insights into TEV stats, validator and staker cash flow, transaction activity/segmentation, and more. 

Community Hackathon: SEND has announced Blinkathon, a community-driven Solana hackathon focusing on Actions and Blinks, scheduled for August 26-31. If you haven't heard about Actions and Blinks just yet, make sure to read my previous newsletter.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

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

Talk soon!

J264G

_{DISCLAIMER
None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research. Lastly, please be advised that we discuss products and services from our partners from which our team members may hold tokens/equity.}