Vitalik Bullish On Solana, New Crypto Off-Ramps & More

Welcome back!

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

• Vitalik’s True Belief: Transactions shouldn’t cost 5 cents or more.

• Off-Ramps: TipLink now offers voucher access to 2,500+ retailers.

• Loan Innovation: Texture introduces flexible & adjustable NFT loans.

Value extraction is a real problem in our industry.

However, Solana continues to change that.

How?

With OPOS we have all the tools at our disposal to disrupt global payments and much, much more!

Let’s get into it!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

MetaMask Snaps

I’ll be real with you.

I’m not a crypto OG.

I only started dabbling in crypto in 2017 — and I had no clue what I was doing.

In 2020, I started to look into the Ethereum ecosystem again and stumbled upon Uniswap.

I was hooked!

One thing irked me, though: The high transaction costs.

So I started to search for alternatives.

And that’s when I discovered Solana.

As was the case for many of us, my first Solana touchpoint was the friendly ghost: Phantom.

After using Phantom for a couple of minutes, it became abundantly clear to me that this experience was worlds apart compared to MetaMask and Ethereum.

I never looked back.

Since then, new wallets such as Ottr and Backpack have arrived; while incumbents such as Phantom and Solflare continued to build out their features and developer ecosystems.

Now, most Solana-native wallets can be used on Ethereum as well — making on-chain activities much more frictionless and delightful.

Delightful is the keyword here, as most Solana-native wallets over-index on user experience, which includes beautiful and intuitive UIs and workflows.

Having said that, Solana-native wallets have one major weakness: lack of distribution, resulting in a lack of mindshare.

According to Consensys, MetaMask serves over 30 million monthly active users. Moreover, MetaMask has 1.1 million Twitter followers, and 534,000 unique monthly website visitors — most of whom are from the US, Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, and Germany.

In contrast, Phantom has approximately 3 million monthly active users, 351,000 Twitter followers, and 27,000 unique monthly website visitors — most of whom are from the US, India, France, Columbia, and Nigeria.

Simply put: Regarding MAUs, MetaMask is 10x larger than Phantom, and with respect to unique monthly website visitors, MetaMask is 20x larger than Phantom.

The kicker?

With the introduction of Snaps, the wallet dominance of MetaMask might grow even further.

At the core, Snaps seem to follow a similar approach as xNFTs on Backpack. As such, Snaps are basically plugins for MetaMask developed by third-party developers to enhance the feature set of users’ wallets.

Currently, Snaps are not permissionless — as they still need to be approved manually — and are not available on mobile; things Consensys is still working on.

The most interesting part, however, is that Snaps enable MetaMask to interact with apps from non-EVM blockchains such as Solana.

This means that users can install Snaps from Solana apps and interact with these directly from the comfort of their MetaMask wallet — no need for dedicated Solana wallets such as Phantom, Backpack, or Ottr.

If successful, 30 million monthly active MetaMask users will have instant access to Solana and can experience innovative apps, instant transactions, and negligible fees!

Moreover, Snaps bring about far-reaching second-order effects.

As we all know, wallets mostly earn their shekels through in-wallet swap fees. In order to pocket these, they need to own the entire user journey: buying, selling, swapping, sending, storing, and trading NFTs, tokens, and other financial products such as perpetual futures.

So the question becomes whether Ethereum-native users will mainly rely on MetaMask Snaps to interact with apps on Solana, shrinking the current and potential TAM, as well as profitability, of Solana-native wallets?

Let’s look at the details.

MetaMask Snaps — PROs

• Interoperability: Snaps will allow users to interact with apps from more than 20 blockchains directly from their MetaMask wallet.

• Brain Power: Snaps empower smaller developer studios and independent developers to contribute to the MetaMask ecosystem — making the wallet experience more vibrant and functional.

• Security: Hacks, threats, and exploits are ever-present. With the introduction of Snaps, dedicated security providers can be brought into the fold, bolstering the security of users and keeping them safe.

MetaMask Snaps — CONs

• Auditing: According to MetaMask, the Snaps which are currently available have all been audited and vetted by a group of trusted auditors. However, that’s the only information provided, making this aspect a bit vague and ambiguous.

• User Experience: As mentioned previously, the user experience within MetaMask is not as integrated, refined, and seamless as is the case with Solana-native wallets. Moreover, Snaps might bring about another layer of friction, i.e. complexity, which users tend to loathe.

• Lock-In: Chrome extensions and apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store are not permissionless. So even if Snaps do become permissionless, they still rely on MetaMask, which will always be at the mercy of Apple’s and Google’s policies and guidelines.

As you can see, nothing is set in stone just yet.

Going forward, it will be interesting to see whether Solana-native wallets with their EVM-capabilities can continue to grow, or if they will be outpaced by MetaMask and Snaps.

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

Off-Ramps: Users who receive crypto via a link from TipLink can now use it to purchase gift cards in 50+ countries from 2,500+ retail providers.

Loan Innovation: Texture now allows users to flexibly adjust their active NFT loans on Sharky, Citrus from Famous Fox Federation, and RainFi. The cool part? Users can extend their active loans at the same OR a different lender.

Lift-Off: As of now, DRiP has delivered over 25 million NFTs to 400,000 users for less than $3,000 using state compression.

Joining In: freeCodeCamp, a non-profit organisation that runs an interactive learning platform with over 1 million daily active users, has released its Solana curriculum.

Levelling Up: Calyptus will be launching a Solana curriculum on October 11 which will teach experienced software engineers how to create tokens, airdrop cNFTs, and much more.

Caught In 4K

Is … is Vitalik bullish on Solana? 😯

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.}