NFT x DeFi, Exploding Developer Ecosystem, Fee Markets & More

Welcome back!

Prices are up, vibes are back — nature is healing.

In this week's edition, we'll explore the financialisation of NFTs, Solana’s developer ecosystem, Sandstorm Hackathon projects and more.

Let's get into it!

Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

NFT x DeFi

Solana is increasingly developing into the premier NFT network, and with the financialisation of NFTs, the next big wave is coming.

Here are some of the protocols which have been gaining traction lately:

Hadeswap: The protocol operates the largest NFT AMM ecosystem on Solana. The biggest benefit is that users can instantly sell their NFTs — without the need to wait for a buyer.

RainFi: If users want to long NFTs, RainFi might be a good place to do just that. The protocol launched mortgages, which allows users to instantly purchase NFTs with a 50% down payment — the outstanding amount can be paid later. If you’re bullish on a specific NFT collection, this approach might work in your favour.

Sujiko: Zhe, the founder, is in the process of introducing the first pure-play NFT perpetual futures protocol on Solana. This would allow users to long and short NFTs — just like BTC, ETH, SOL or any other SPL token. That is not all, though, as Sujiko has its eyes set on the entire derivatives stack.

Hyperspace: The protocol has been around for a while, challenging MagicEden’s market dominance. More interesting, though, is the fact that Hyperspace is developing into Solana’s one-stop-shop to buy and sell SPL tokens — regardless of whether users are interested in NFTs or crypto.

The Unwavering 75

Generally speaking, the value creation of emerging platforms can be measured by their respective developer ecosystems.

In this context, Electric Capital released its latest developer report, which evaluates the developer engagement across major blockchains.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Solana has the fastest-growing developer ecosystem of any major blockchain.

• Solana has the 2nd largest developer ecosystem in crypto after Ethereum.

• Solana boasts more than 380 full-time developers and 2,000+ overall developers.

Having said that, the report focuses on OSS. However, most Solana projects are CSS.

This might imply that the developer ecosystem on Solana is magnitudes larger than the report suggests. If you’d like to get a sense of open source projects on Solana, check out this repository.

Read the full developer report here.

Add On: Alchemy also released a report highlighting that developer teams on Solana using the platform grew >1000% YoY in 2022.

Read the full report here.

Sandstorm Hackathon

The community-driven Sandstorm Hackathon came to a close and more than 250 projects were submitted!

Here are some of the most interesting submissions:

• BYOB: A web application that allows developers to combine multiple actions into one atomic transaction, making advanced DeFi services such as flash loans possible.

• AnonPay: A dashboard to make private payments via Elusiv — a privacy solution using zero knowledge technologies.

• DCA On Openbook: A on-chain programme that runs a dollar-cost averaging strategy on any Openbook market.

• Spire: An on-chain data platform built on top of Flipside and Helius that provides in-depth data and insights from the Solana ecosystem.

• Crossbow: Google Analytics for web3, making dApp KPIs such as user behaviour, bot/whale activities etc. more transparent and actionable.

• LiquifyNFT: NFT swap aggregator that allows users to buy and sell NFTs instantly for the best price using any SPL token.

• DisBet: A Discord bot leveraging the Monaco Protocol that makes it possible to easily perform on-chain sports bets from within Discord.

Charts Of The Week

News Bites

• Burgeoning Fee Market: As can be see in the clip from Solflare above, users on Solana greatly benefit from the network’s fee markets. For a better understanding of Solana's fee market as a whole, check out 7Layer’s thread.

• Phantom Startles MetaMask: Brandon and his team have recently sent out the first batch of multichain invite codes. Apart from greater customisation options and features for NFT power users, the more user-friendly interface of Phantom has been making waves.

• The Sagaverse Expands: Solana’s flagship mobile phone — Saga — will ship to 33 countries at launch incl. US, Canada, UK, EU, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Developers have had multiple weeks to tinker with their Saga development kits already, and one notable thing has repeatedly come up — the phone's size.

• Stack In Style: Stacking SOL is crucial to make the Solana network censorship resistant. To help users research the best validator for their specific needs, Marinade has released its new validator comparison tool.

• Highly Unprofitable: The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has followed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and others in filing parallel charges against Avraham Eisenberg, who allegedly orchestrated the multimillion-dollar exploit of Mango Markets.

• Active VCs: The VC ecosystem on Solana seems to be alive and well. Superteam put together a list of 100+ venture capital funds which are actively investing in DeFi, payments, infrastructure and tooling to name but a few.

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

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Talk to you soon!

@J264G