Solana Mobile And Samsung, New DeFi Use Cases & More

Welcome back!

This is J264G and in this week's newsletter, we'll explore why the Grizzlython sponsors are more important than you think, new DeFi use cases for Solana, and more wallet innovations announced by Backpack.

How we feel?

Let's get into it!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Grizzlython — Sponsor Signalling

By now, you probably heard about Solana's next hackathon — Grizzlython. If you haven't, do yourself a favour and watch the announcement video.

The hackathon is taking place from Feb. 2 - March 14, is being held online alongside IRL co-working stations, and boasts $5 million in prizes and seed funding.

More interesting than the headline facts and figures are the (track) sponsors, though.

Here's why.

Grand Champion | Circle: Solana is positioned well to bring self custody and censorship resistance to the masses. One way to do so is by enabling people from all over the globe, from all walks of life, to gain exposure to the US dollar. The easiest way to do so: buying, selling, and using USDC — a 1:1 USD-backed stablecoin issued by Circle. Circle is the sponsor of the grand champion prize, highlighting the importance of DeFi on Solana. Solana DeFi dApps allow for a fast and inexpensive distribution of USDC — particularly in partnership with Solana Pay. Currently, the USDC supply on the Solana network stands at approx. $5 billion, increasing steadily.

Climate Award | Solana Foundation: The Solana Foundation will give out a 5,000 USDC climate award. As a proof of stake blockchain, the Solana blockchain operates energy efficient and with low-emissions. For example, the yearly energy consumption of the entire network is approx. 4 billion joules, compared to approx. 5 billion joules one single Bitcoin transaction requires. Put differently, the yearly energy consumption of the entire Solana blockchain is only ~11% of the yearly energy consumption of an average US household.

Mobile Track | Solana Mobile: The mobile track is sponsored by Solana Mobile. In June 2022, Solana announced plans to enter the mobile space by introducing a flagship Android smartphone – Saga – and an open source software development kit (SDK), dubbed Solana Mobile Stack (SMS).

The aim of this initiative:

• Make interactions with the Solana blockchain mobile-friendly and seamless.

• Bypass the restrictions of the iOS App Store and Android Google Play Store.

• Put pressure on incumbents such as Apple and Samsung to integrate Web3 native hardware and software.

The strategy seems to be paying off, as David Lee — Head of Samsung Next — will be one of the Grizzlython judges. Samsung Next is an investment group within Samsung Electronic that funds transformative early-stage software and services startups.

Payments Track | Stripe: Currently, most new users to web3/crypto are onboard through centralised exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase or Kraken (more on that here). When users want to leverage DeFi dApps, they first need to transfer their assets from these centralised exchanges to a non-custodial wallet such as Phantom or Glow. Not only is this process cumbersome and error-prone, it also adds an extra step of complexity on the way to self custody and censorship resistance. Additionally, centralised services often delay deposits and withdrawals, and might not operate on sound footing, cue FTX, Celsius and BlockFi. By partnering with Stripe, however, products and services on Solana can directly integrate on and off ramps for both fiat and crypto. Essentially, Stripe allows users to bypass centralised services, which constitutes a significant unlock for DeFi on Solana.

Gaming Track | AWS: AWS is the largest public cloud provider, followed by Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Google Cloud is already active on Solana — the company runs a validator on the network. Also, Google Cloud is currently working on bringing their new service, Blockchain Node Engine, to Solana. The service will enable anyone to easily launch a dedicated Solana node in the cloud. With Grizzlython, AWS is positioning itself more prominently in the Solana ecosystem as well. This allows Solana developers to become increasingly familiar with both the AWS and Google Cloud stack. Subsequently, this will bring about cloud computing redundancies and optimisations, which in turn will make the Solana network and Solana dApps more resilient.

BYOB — New DeFi Use Cases

In our previous newsletters, we mentioned some Sandstorm hackathon submissions that caught our eyes.

Among these submissions were Spire, Crossbow, Bokken, Solana Compass, DisBet, and BYOB — all of which came out on top and won prizes in the hackathon.

We thought it might be a good idea to dive deeper into BYOB, as the project has the potential to unlock several new DeFi services on Solana.

Put simply, BYOB is a web application that allows developers to combine multiple actions into one atomic transaction, which makes advanced DeFi services possible.

BYOB is not an innovation in and of itself, as something similar already exists on Ethereum: Furucombo. Yet, BYOB will have 3 distinct advantages:

• Cheaper (Solana) transaction fees

• More protocol integrations

• Unique features such as trigger-based executions

With the introduction of versioned transactions, the most obvious use case of BYOB seems to be flash loans — which are particularly beneficial when thinking about looping.

Looping is the process of repeatedly supplying and borrowing the same assets, and then repeatedly resupplying the borrowed assets to increase the corresponding APR/APY. In this context, USDC and synthetic USD asset pairs are popular, as they allow for high yields and low risks.

Currently, looping takes a lot of manual work. With BYOB-enabled flash loans, however, looping can be done in one simple step.

Having said that, trigger-based executions might be even more impactful (click on tweet for more details).

Going forward, BYOB will offer a pro and lite version. With the pro version, developers can create transactions and share them via a link or widget. In the lite version, retail users can choose a pre-defined transaction from a catalogue, set a few variables, and execute.

With the composability capabilities of Solana dApps, the use cases for BYOB are endless, and we are intrigued by what unlock it holds for DeFi on Solana!

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

10x Engineer: Previously, we mentioned DisBet — a bot that makes it possible to easily perform on-chain sports bets from within Discord. The project won the sports betting track in the Sandstorm hackathon. Recently, the developer, 0xBolt, shared the origin story of his bot. He's only 16 years old, but might become Solana's next 10x engineer? We’ll let you be the judge of that.

Wallet Innovation: The Coral team has revealed the next innovation for its non-custodial wallet — Backpack. Backpack will allow users to directly mint NFTs within the wallet itself. Currently, NFT mints require a stand-alone website incl. a dedicated wallet connection.

Let's Dance: As of now, validators on Solana only have one client at their disposal. Currently, Jump is working on a second, independent client — called “Firedancer”. Firedancer is newly built from the ground up, barely sharing any code with the original Solana client. Bugs in either client will thus not affect the Solana network as a whole, making network outages unlikely, and improving uptime and reliability.

Vision 2023: Raj and Anatoly have shared their 2023 vision for the Solana community. Their focus is on building a strong framework that will help establish a robust decentralised and permissionless economy.

Securing Solana: Sec3, a Solana security firm that audits smart contracts, has raised $10 million. The company also made their product suite publicly available — offering security solutions to projects before, during, and after their launch.

Ape Games: Degen Ape Academy, one of the oldest NFT projects on Solana, has partnered with Octo Gaming to release a mobile game — Degen Ape Academy: Drop Out. The game is available on both iOS and Android.

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 to you soon!

J264G