Solana Enters $1 Trillion Beverages Market, Ordinals On Solana & More

Welcome back!

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

• DeFi Ponderings: Ori from Orca shares her post-FTX thoughts.

• In-Wallet Bridge: Phantom releases Cross-Chain Swapper.

• Pyth Airdrop: No hiccups due to multiple network upgrades.

Look, I’m not going to pretend that I’m able to grab your uninterrupted attention while a Brazilian telenovela is unfolding at OpenAI. 

If you just have a couple of minutes, these are the only 3 things you need to know about what happened in Solana last week.  

Let’s dive right in!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Solana DeFi: Escape Velocity

We're off to a great start. But what do we need to reach escape velocity?

Post-FTX, the future of Solana sometimes felt bleak. A year later, SBF is in prison, Solana DeFi is surging, and the future feels brighter than ever. How is this possible?

First, network stability improved dramatically. Features like QUIC and local fee markets went live, improving congestion management and putting the SVM’s parallel processing to work. Despite that, the network has had 100% uptime for the past 9 months, and the upcoming release of the new Firedancer validator client is only expected to increase the resilience of the network.

Second, FTX’s collapse gave the Solana community a chance to show its strength on its own terms, without the support of a billionaire benefactor. Countless users and developers had the opportunity to leave for other chains, but the majority stayed here, continuing to build with the ultimate goal of creating real value for users.

The result is a dramatic increase in trust in both the technology and teams that make Solana what it is, and an influx of people with open minds coming to see what kinds of things are only possible on Solana.

Orca has experienced this first-hand, seeing growth in TVL, and even more importantly, an explosion in trading volume. Much of this activity is being driven by users who are new to Solana, including many from EVM chains. Often, they’ll say things like, “I can’t believe how smooth the on-chain experience is!”. Orca has always been about balancing technical constraints to design the best experience for users, and near-zero transaction fees and 400ms block times make that possible.

For Solana DeFi to continue its rapid resurgence, it needs unmatched technology, experienced developers, and a die-hard community. These three factors are already in place. All that’s needed is more time for people to realise what they’re missing. As an ecosystem, we can accelerate that process by (1) furthering our commitment to open-source, verified protocols and (2) clearly articulating how these protocols solve real problems in a way that is only possible on Solana.

There’s a bright future ahead, and we can’t wait to work alongside the many other incredible projects that have made Solana the revitalised force it is today.

Onwards and upwards!

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

In-Wallet Bridge: Phantom has released its Cross-Chain Swapper, enabling users to effortlessly bridge tokens between Solana and Ethereum within their wallets.

African Frontier: George Harrap, co-founder of Step Finance, has highlighted Be Mobile Africa — a neobank which also supports USDC-SPL services. 

Pyth Airdrop: Yesterday, the Pyth token airdrop went live. As expected, network upgrades such as QUIC and fee markets ensured that Solana ran smoothly throughout the entire process. Speaking of fee markets, it seems as if yesterday was a lucrative day for the network ⬇️

Solana Ordinals: Inscriptions are now live on Solana. Instead of storing NFT components on e.g. Arweave, inscription components are saved on chain and, therefore, have their own unique address instead of just an HTML link.

ID Domains: AllDomains has launched .ID domains, which can be linked to a Web2 property and send/receive SPL tokens as well. Also, the domains can be wrapped as NFTs and traded on marketplaces.

$1 Trillion Market: BAXUS has acquired BoozApp, which has already helped 100,000 users find fair pricing for over 600,000 liquor bottles. 

11% APY Stablebonds: Etherfuse continues to reach new heights with its Mexican tokenised bond offering, which currently stands at an estimated 11% APY yield.

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.}