Global Banking On Solana, Solana Visa Cards, New Solana Smartphone & More

Welcome back!

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

• Global Banking: Sphere sets out to facilitate banking on crypto rails. 

• Visa Cards: Sanctum announces Cloud Cards for SOL and stablecoins.

• Solana Smartphone: Solana launches a new Android device — Seeker.

Breakpoint, one of the largest crypto conferences in the world, took place last week — and it's hard not to agree with Frankie. 

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

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Breakpoint Highlights

MakerDAO — now known as Sky — will bring its stablecoin ecosystem to Solana.

In the past, this would have been headline-grabbing. Now, so it seems, the news has been overshadowed by more significant advancements on Solana. 

This became evident at Breakpoint, where the community collectively showcased Solana’s transition from the crypto niche to a broader technology and startup ecosystem. 

Breakpoint is set to move to Abu Dhabi next year, but before we focus on that, let’s first explore some of my personal highlights that came out of this year's conference. 

Firedancer 

Solana is making significant strides in enhancing its infrastructure with the development of Firedancer, a second independent validator client. This initiative goes beyond merely improving network resilience through client diversity; it's poised to dramatically boost Solana's transaction processing capabilities.

Firedancer's potential is already evident through its precursor, Frankendancer, which is currently operational on Solana mainnet. Remarkably, Frankendancer has just recently demonstrated the ability to process an unprecedented 1 million transactions per second (TPS) using standard consumer-grade hardware — setting a new benchmark in the crypto ecosystem. 

For a general overview of Firedancer, watch the video below. And for a more technical deep dive, watch this video. Also, here’s the GitHub repository you’d want to take a look at if you're interested in Frankendancer.

Solana Seeker 

Solana Mobile has launched its latest smartphone, the Solana Seeker (previously known as “Chapter 2”). This new Android device offers significant improvements over its predecessor, including:

• More affordable pricing

• Enhanced camera capabilities

• A brighter AMOLED display

• Extended battery life

• Integrated AI agent features

However, the Seeker's most groundbreaking features lie in its crypto-focused design. The device comes equipped with a completely revamped, crypto-centric app store and an advanced Seed Vault for secure digital asset management.

Seeker is not a vanity project; it's a strategic move to challenge Apple and Google’s app store duopoly. By creating a device that prioritises crypto functionality, Solana Mobile aims to empower both developers and users with greater freedom and choice.

Tokenising Financial Assets

In the past I wrote that Securitize is to traditional financial assets, what pump.fun is to memecoins: An onchain launchpad. 

Similar to pump.fun, Securitize's business model is easily explained: Tokenising traditional financial assets, bringing them onchain, and making them accessible to a broader set of investors. Additionally, tokenisation brings with it an enhanced market-wide liquidity, immediate settlement, and greater transparency — all while reducing costs. 

One of the most recent products Securitize has helped bring onchain is the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund. The fund is backed by U.S. Treasury bills, repurchase agreements, and cash, and is represented by the BUIDL token on Ethereum. BUIDL seeks to offer a stable value of $1 per token and pays daily accrued dividends directly to investors' wallets. Also, investors can transfer their BUIDL tokens to other pre-approved investors or cash them out for USDC via Circle — 24/7. 

And now, Carlos Domingo — co-founder and CEO of Securitize — has announced that the platform will be integrating with Solana, finally bringing battle-tested asset tokenisation standards and processes to the network.

Spherenet

If you’re reading this, you might agree that fiat money is broken. 

Apart from monetary policies, this has a lot to do with the structural limitations of the current banking system. To address this, Sphere has launched Spherenet — a platform designed to reimagine global banking using crypto rails. 

Put differently: Sphere aims to develop a crypto-native version of Wise (formerly TransferWise), leveraging blockchain technology to offer more efficient, transparent, and accessible global financial services.

Money Movement Experiences

Bridge develops stablecoin APIs that enable teams to build new global money movement experiences. 

The platform’s impact is already evident in the Solana ecosystem, where Bridge serves as the backbone for both Fuse Pay and Sphere. 

Sphere, in particular, showcases the seamless integration of Bridge's technology. When users engage with Sphere's on-ramp or off-ramp features, they’ll experience the smooth and efficient processes that Bridge facilitates behind the scenes — further demonstrating the potential of stablecoin-fiat transactions on Solana.

USDC x AI

During his keynote, Circle's co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire shed light on USDC's expanding presence within the Solana ecosystem. 

Apart from that, he emphasised two particularly innovative applications: The interplay of AI agents and USDC, and USDC restaking powered by Jito. 

These developments underscore Circle's continued commitment to pushing the boundaries of stablecoin utility, leveraging Solana's high-performance to create novel financial products and services. 

Solana Money Market Fund

Franklin Templeton, a major player in the asset management industry with $1.46 trillion under management, has revealed plans to launch a money market fund on Solana. 

This move by one of the top 20 asset managers globally signifies a significant step towards integrating traditional finance with blockchain rails on Solana. 

Solana-Powered Financial Applications

Dive into all things Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) with Jarry Xiao from Ellipsis Labs and learn more about Atlas. 

Atlas is built on a custom implementation of the SVM and will be a Layer 2 blockchain — with a focus specifically on financial applications — that settles to Ethereum mainnet.

Numbers Of The Week

News Bites

Embedded Wallets: Phantom just launched embedded wallets. Here’s why that is important: If you want to interact with apps on Solana, you normally have to set up a Phantom browser extension or mobile app first. The benefit of this setup is that you can freely navigate to different apps — always taking along your digital assets. However, traditional wallets can be challenging for newcomers and require a bit of research to learn how to secure and manage seed phrases and private key pairs. Unlike traditional wallets, embedded wallets are built into the user interface of the host app or website and can be set up using an email or social account — no seed phrase required. This makes it easier for non-crypto-savvy users to access and utilise apps without the typical complexities associated with traditional wallets — reducing friction and simplifying user onboarding. Developers can sign up here to get early access to Phantom embedded wallets. 

Global Money Transfers: Users can now send USDC from centralised exchanges (e.g. Coinbase) and Solana wallets (e.g. Phantom) to Sling, convert it to a fiat currency of choice, and send it to a recipient — 24/7, with low fees, powered by Solana.

Cloud Cards: Speaking of global money, Sanctum has joined forces with BasedApp and Jupiter to introduce “Cloud Card” — a Visa debit card set to launch in Q4 2024 — empowering users to seamlessly spend SOL and various stablecoins across more than 100 countries. Join the waitlist here. 

Product Evolution: Jupiter is set to launch v2 of its perpetual futures product, introducing several key enhancements such as limit orders, gasless transactions, and the Doves Oracle — powered by the Edge Price Feed. These upgrades collectively represent a significant evolution, further expanding Jupiter's capabilities in the competitive DeFi landscape.

Social Finance: deBridge is building the infrastructure for SocialFi, with the goal of enabling users to share intricate, multi-platform DeFi strategies as easily as posting on social media — potentially democratising access to sophisticated trading strategies and enhancing user engagement.

Decentralised Science: Molecule, a DeSci platform focusing on longevity, fertility, and the environment, is exploring bringing more cutting-edge scientific research onchain by expanding to Solana. The team was at Breakpoint as well and it will be interesting to see how much they'll be able to push the frontiers of decentralised science going forward. 

Securing The Onchain Economy: As you can see from above, the rapid growth of the onchain economy is evident — heightening the need for enhanced security to protect digital assets across the board. Which is exactly why Squads Labs has announced the development of Squads Protocol v5. The platform is designed to enable the most secure and user-friendly multisig products and services to date — representing a significant step forward in safeguarding the diverse range of participants and assets in the onchain economy.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

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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.}