Klarna For NFTs, 8 Seconds For New Solana Tokens & More

Welcome back!

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

• Solana x Move: Solana devs continue to integrate the Move language.

• Klarna For NFTs: Hyperspace launches buy now, pay later for NFTs.

• Ultrasound Money: New tokens on Solana can be created in <8sec.

Granted, I started off last week’s newsletter with a bit of a sombre tone.

That, however, is over now — we’re back to getting efficiently liquidated *chef's kiss*

In this week’s spotlight we’ll look at “perpetual projects” and how we can move forward building real web3 businesses for people in countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Ukraine, India, and beyond.

Let’s get this bread!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Perpetual Projects

I've spent the last couple of weeks talking to numerous teams building on Solana.

And one thing became abundantly clear: It seems as if many teams are optimising for seed rounds instead of building real, sustainable businesses — nurturing what I call “perpetual projects”.

Perpetual projects are operations that are disguised as businesses, but they're really not more than protocols — used by a handful of users — that are powered by Twitter clout.

If you have doubts about the existence of perpetual projects, here are some questions from my consulting cheat sheet that most web3/crypto teams — pre- or post-seed — can't give crystal clear answers to:

1. How big is your TAM?

2. Can you explain your customer acquisition strategy?

3. Tell me more about your marketing funnel?

4. What role does content marketing play in your marketing funnel?

5. Regarding multichannel marketing, how do you leverage Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and Quora?

6. Do you have an idea on how to increase user stickiness?

7. Have you thought about localisation to swiftly onboard non-English speaking users and developers? If so, how do you go about it?

8. As documentation is key in an OSS ecosystem, how do you deploy it in the context of an overall developer experience?

9. What's your new customer growth rate; and CAC, Churn Rate & CLV?

10. How's your profitability: monthly, quarterly, and annually?

If you know a team that can answer these questions holistically and succinctly, send me their details — I'd like to write a case study!

Jokes aside, running a sustainable company requires effective business management.

Effective business management involves setting a clear strategic vision, as well as well-defined and measurable strategies and tactics. The absence of these can result in short-term focus, ad-hoc decision-making, and inadequate resource allocation.

I get it, cash grabs and “securing the bag” are enticing. But if long-term strategic objectives — such as the mass adoption of self custody — are our shared goal, we're currently going about it all wrong.

Why is self custody important?

Just look at the countries that scored the highest on Chainalysis's Global Crypto Adoption Index.

There's a reason why the adoption of web3/crypto is so high in countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Ukraine, and India.

• Financial Inclusion: Some of these countries have a significant unbanked population. Cryptocurrencies and DeFi offer an opportunity for financial inclusion, allowing individuals without access to traditional banking services to participate in the global financial system.

• Remittances: Vietnam, Philippine, Ukraine, and India all have a large diaspora — remittances are a cornerstone of their societies. In this context, cryptocurrencies and DeFi offer a faster and cheaper way to send money across borders compared to traditional finance.

• Economic Instability: Unsurprisingly, Ukraine has experienced economic instability and currency devaluation in recent years. Cryptocurrencies and DeFi can provide an alternative store of value and a means to protect wealth during times of economic uncertainty.

Solana innovations such as local fee markets, xNFTs, Saga incl. Solana Mobile Stack (SMS), and Token 22 can all play an integral part in serving these markets and beyond.

The tools are there.

The devs are building.

The only thing we need is better operators that can build highly performant and sustainable business machines.

You need some motivation to build your business machine? Say less ⬇️

Numbers Of The Week

News Bites

Solana x Move: While Rust is a versatile language suitable for a wide range of applications, Move focuses on secure and reliable smart contract development. As such, Move and Rust are designed for different purposes and target different domains. Having said that, this hasn't kept developers on Solana from integrating Move, and the project is coming along smoothly.

Klarna For NFTs: Hyperspace, a NFT aggregator, has launched Buy Now, Pay Later — allowing traders to buy NFTs with only a 10% downpayment. At the core, Hyperspace’s BNPL is based on technology provided by Sharky.

Ultrasound Money: The developer experience on Solana is getting better by the minute. Now, it's possible to create a wholly new token on the network in less than 8 seconds — wowzer!

Floodgate Effect: As the key liquidity aggregator on Solana, Jupiter offers the widest range of tokens and best route discovery between any token pair. In an effort to increase the DeFi composability on Solana, the Jupiter team is starting to ramp up its open source initiative.

Go On, Lad! The UK has been strategic in its web3 approach, reaching out to multiple businesses, groups, and teams. The aim is to learn and to craft web3 regulations that can help foster the British economy. Will the UK become one of Solana’s main hubs?

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