Solana Powers Global Finance, SPL Tokens In Robinhood Wallet & More

Welcome back!

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

• Solana Revival: Robinhood Wallet now fully supports Solana.

• Global Financial Infrastructure: Explore the Solana-powered Finternet.

• Solana LSTs: Binance, Bybit, and Bitget have listed Sanctum-powered LSTs.

Founder mode this, founder mode that … the only thing you need to remember is this ⬇️

Now, let’s jump right into this week’s newsletter!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Cheat Sheet

Mark your calendars!

Korea Blockchain Week, TOKEN2049, and Breakpoint are all taking place in the next couple of weeks. 

The Solana ecosystem will have a significant presence at all these events, giving you a chance to immerse yourself in its innovative landscape.

While sceptics may dismiss Solana as an online memecoin casino, the reality is that the network has been a hotbed of technological advancements and groundbreaking projects.

I’ve compiled a list with some of these, giving you a cheat sheet with talking points for engaging discussions throughout Korea Blockchain Week, TOKEN2049, and Breakpoint.

Infrastructure

Firedancer: Jump is developing an independent Solana validator client called "Firedancer." This ground-up redesign shares minimal code with Solana Labs' original validator client, further enhancing network resilience. Firedancer recently achieved a significant milestone by successfully deploying on Solana Testnet and producing its first accepted block.

Agave: Anza, a team comprising former Solana Labs executives and engineers, forked the current Solana Labs validator client. Named "Agave," this new validator client is designed to better complement Firedancer, further strengthening Solana's overall network resilience.

Mithril: According to crypto 𝕏, one of Ethereum’s biggest moats is the ability to verify the network — even from home — using cheap hardware. This is where Mithril from Overclock comes into play. It's a light, protective, radiant full node client that can verify Solana with lower hardware requirements, thus furthering the decentralisation of the network.

Tinydancer: With Tinydancer, the first foray into light client for Solana have been made. Light clients provide an efficient way to interact with blockchains, offering improved accessibility, faster synchronisation, scalability, privacy, and decentralisation.

Restaking: Solana's restaking ecosystem is gaining momentum, with Jito and Solayer leading the charge. Solayer's recent $12 million funding round, led by Polychain, underscores the growing interest in this area. Unlike Ethereum's restaking model, Solana's approach is expected to have unique characteristics, making it an exciting space to watch for innovative developments.

L2 Rollups & Appchains

SVM Expansion: Rome has secured $9M in funding to expand the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) codebase to new execution environments, enabling L2s and applications to use Solana as their shared sequencer.

Onchain Games: Speaking of SVM, Sonic has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round to propel its vision of fast onchain game experiences forward. By doing so, Sonic aims to further extend player-owned economies — similar to Ronin and Redstone.

Real-Time Games: Sonic is not the only game in town. Just recently, MagicBlock showcased the first real-time onchain game incl. 50ms latency, elastic TPS, and full state/composability — all without relying on rollups.

Solana On Ethereum: Eclipse is the first SVM L2 on Ethereum, creating an environment where developers can tap into Ethereum's established user base and asset-rich ecosystem while leveraging the SVM's battle-tested performance and user experience.

Decoupled SVM: Most rollups use a single-threaded runtime, which causes network congestion during high demand — resulting in delays and higher fees. SOON stack, however, enables teams to leverage a decoupled SVM — improving performance, bringing costs down, and unlocking new use cases.

Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)

People-Powered Network: Helium, a decentralised wireless infrastructure, has demonstrated remarkable growth. Not long ago, two large US carriers initiated tests to offload their traffic onto the Helium network — things are about to get interesting!

Mobile Carrier: DePIN on Solana is going from strength to strength. XNET — a network that expands mobile coverage by using radios and access points placed in stores and businesses — has emerged as the next groundbreaking Solana DePIN project.

Decentralised Broadband: Just recently, DAWN secured $18 million in funding to develop the first DePIN protocol to offer affordable, decentralised broadband with multi-gigabit wireless technology on Solana.

Environmental Monitoring: Speaking of fundraising, Ambient — a Solana-based DePIN project focused on collecting environmental data — raised $2 million and acquired PlanetWatch's network.

Solana AI: Kuzco, a distributed GPU cluster for LLM inference on Solana, enables anyone with a GPU to get paid for serving inference requests for models such as Llama3.1 or build AI-powered apps.

Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

Crypto Bonds: Etherfuse has broadened its offering beyond Mexico and now offers US and Brazilian onchain bonds as well — demonstrating the growing global appeal and adoption of onchain-based financial instruments.

Onchain Shenanigans: Sandwich attacks exploit the victim’s trade to generate profit for the attacker, often at the expense of the victim's trading outcome. You can now take a real-time look at sandwich attacks on Solana here.

Enhanced AMM: Ellipsis Labs has unveiled a new design for a sandwich-resistant AMM. If successfully implemented, it could represent a substantial enhancement over existing AMM models on Solana and decrease the incidence of sandwiching by over 95%.

Disincentivising Frontrunning: Solana developers, in collaboration with teams at Anza, Firedancer, Solana Foundation, and Solana Labs, have launched Paladin — a decentralised MEV bot designed to disincentivise frontrunning by Solana validators.

Cross-Chain Swapper: With the Cross-Chain Swapper, users can easily convert or swap tokens between different networks, such as Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, directly within their Phantom wallet.

Payments

Solana Backbone: Industry giants such as Shopify, Stripe, and Visa are leveraging Solana's technology to enhance their payment solutions and streamline operations, signalling an interest and growing confidence in the network’s capabilities.

Transaction Juggernaut: Sphere continues to simplify online money transfers, with their Offloader Wallet gaining particular popularity among users for its ease of use and efficiency.

Global Money: Fresh from a $15 million Series A funding round, Sling is poised to scale its app and leverage its stablecoin infrastructure to offer instant, affordable global money transfers.

Grab Integration: The super-app Grab, serving 38 million MAUs across ride-hailing, food delivery, and digital payments, now supports USDC-SPL — providing a convenient on- and off-ramp to and from Solana.

Solana Debit Card: BasedApp and Sanctum's collaboration is set to introduce the first liquid staking token (LST) powered debit card by year-end. The Solana debit card will convert cardSOL staking yields to USDC for real-world purchases, eliminating the need for off-ramping.

TapTo Pay: Apple's recent decision to open up the iPhone's NFC chip to third-party payment services marks a significant shift in the company’s ecosystem strategy. Interestingly, Jeremy Allaire — co-founder and CEO of Circle — has announced that tap-to-pay functionality leveraging USDC on iPhones is on the horizon. The combination of Solana's high-speed, low-cost USDC transactions with the widespread use of iPhones could create a powerful synergy, potentially accelerating the mainstream adoption of crypto and solidifying Solana's position in the finance landscape.

Blue Flame Thinking

• MetaDAO: The world's first decision market platform. 

• Actions & Blinks: Turning any website into a Solana frontend/app.

• FORMA: The first-ever Solana Economic Zone in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

• Chapter 2: Solana Mobile’s second device after Saga, designed to break up the app store duopoly.

• ORE: Proof of Work (PoW) on Solana. The ORE token can be mined on any device — no advanced hardware required. 

• On-Chain Identity: The Republic of Palau is planning to implement a digital identification system built on Solana. This initiative aims to empower citizens with greater control over their personal identities while facilitating swift and secure verification processes.

Essential Reading 

• The need for multiple concurrent leaders on Solana

• Brazil is about to launch the world’s first Solana spot ETF

• Squads Policy Network (SPN) — powered by Jito Restaking

• Visa expands stablecoin settlement capabilities to merchant acquirers

• Hamilton Lane becomes the first institution to launch a fund (SCOPE) on Solana

• Google has updated its cryptocurrencies and related products policy — opening up Google platforms for crypto advertisements

I hope this cheat sheet enhanced your understanding of Solana's potential and increased your excitement for Korea Blockchain Week, TOKEN2049, and Breakpoint! 

And if you were on the fence about attending Breakpoint until now, I might just have piqued your interest — so secure your Breakpoint ticket here and check out the TOKEN2049 side events here and the geocoded TOKEN2049 side event map here.

Numbers Of The Week

News Bites

Global Financial Infrastructure: The team behind UPI, India's leading digital payment infrastructure that handles $240B+ in monthly payments volume, has launched a new project: Finternet. It's a global financial infrastructure that allows for the tokenization of any asset on a unified ledger such as Solana. 

Solana Revival: Solana is now fully supported on Robinhood Wallet, enabling users to self-custody, send, and receive SPL tokens — broadening the network's accessibility to a wider user base.

Frictionless Bridging: Bridges have historically been unable to guarantee rates, exposing users to significant slippage and price impact (especially on 6 or 7-figure orders). By using a private liquidity network, deBridge enables bridge users to tap into deep liquidity with fixed quotes and thin spreads.

Developer Tools: The new Build Verifier provides an open framework for Solana developers to verify their programs — increasing transparency and trust within the Solana DeFi ecosystem.

Solana LSTs: Major exchanges including Binance, Bybit, and Bitget have listed Sanctum-powered LSTs, signalling growing institutional interest in Solana's staking ecosystem.

Solana Incubator: Solana Labs is accepting applications for its second New York-based incubator cohort, running from January to April 2025. The program offers developers a unique opportunity to grow their projects alongside the Solana Labs team — apply here!

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Keks & Giggles

And that's a wrap!

If you'd like to reach me, respond to this newsletter or reach out to me on 𝕏.

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.}