Squid Game On Solana, Google Promotes Crypto & More

Welcome back!

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

• Squid Game: Blessed Burgers = Crypto’s take on Squid Game.

• Crypto Ads: BTC ETFs are coming to Google Ads near you.

• YC Spirit: Colosseum brings Paul Graham’s idea to Solana. 

In the last couple of days, more than 666,000 wallets claimed Solana’s newest meme coin — $WEN. 

This brought about unprecedented on-chain activity, with priority fees reaching 2 SOL (~$200). 

Simultaneously, the transactions per second (TPS) rate of the network remained healthy and Solana’s incident-free streak since February 2023 remained intact.

And builders are taking note: First Maker considers Solana, then Aave, and now … Uniswap (with the blessing of Taco Bell, of course).

It will be interesting to see where Hayden steers Uniswap in the near future 😏

Now, let’s dive into this week’s edition!

Click on any underlined heading/hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Token Extensions

Before you start reading this, get yourself a coffee, tea, or Celsius — it’s going to be a bit of a technical one today. 

Okay, let’s roll.

Token extensions — formerly referred to as Token-22 or SuperTokens — have been in development for quite some time. 

Just recently, however, the audits of the programme have been completed. So last week, token extensions were officially rolled out!

Alright … but what does it all mean?

Here's the rub. 

In order to create and manage digital assets on Solana — both fungible and non-fungible tokens — developers utilise a collection of on-chain programmes called Solana Program Library (SPL). 

The original Solana Program Library (SPL), however, only gives developers a limited set of tools and functionality — ultimately restricting the number of use cases for digital assets on Solana. 

Token extensions change just that. 

How?

Well, token extensions basically expands i.e. upgrade the Solana Program Library (SPL), ringing in a new era that represents a significant leap forward in what is possible on public blockchains.

At its core, the programme allows developers to choose individual token extensions or combine multiple ones to design digital assets with novel functionalities and advanced capabilities that in some cases were previously not possible on public blockchains.

In total, there are 13 token extensions: 

• Mint Close Authority

• Transfer Fees

• Non-Transferable

• Interest-Bearing

• Permanent Delegate

• Transfer Hook

• Metadata

• Metadata Pointer

• Confidential Transfers

• Immutable Owner

• Required Memo on Transfer

• CPI Guard

• Default Account State 

Having said that, the following token extensions should be highlighted: 

• Transfer Fees: Issuers can charge a fee every time a digital asset is transferred. 

• Non-Transferable: A digital asset is soulbound i.e. cannot be moved/transferred from users’ wallets.

• Interest-Bearing: A digital asset becomes more valuable the longer it is held.

• Transfer Hooks: Issuers can flexibly manage interactions i.e. create permissioned digital assets on a permissionless network (Solana). 

• Confidential Transfers: Payroll, merchant settlement etc. can be carried out without exposing sensitive data such as balances/transfer amounts — all thanks to ZK proofs. 

• Required Memo on Transfer: Short notes can be sent and received with outgoing i.e. incoming asset transfers.

Obviously, Solana developers will have a field day with token extensions.

And it wouldn't be Solana if the first token extensions wouldn't have been seen in the wild already. 

• BERN

BERN, a partner token to BONK, was the first digital asset on Solana with a token extension. As such, the Solana meme coin is leveraging the transfer fees extension, which is structured as follows:

1. 5% token tax on all buy and sell transactions gets sent back to holders 

2. 1% buys and burns BONK 

3. 0.5% burns BERN

• FLUXB 

FLUXB, released by the FluxBeam team, was the second digital asset on Solana with a token extension. FluxBeam is a DEX specialised on tokens with extensions, while FluxBot is Solana’s very own UniBot. In addition to the transfer fee extension, FLUXB includes “Refluxions”. Refluxions come from the built-in token tax of 3% on all buy and sell transactions, 50% of which goes back to qualifying holders, along with 40% of all FluxBot fees. Users need to hold 1,000 FLUXB to qualify for Refluxions.

Additionally, token extensions could also convince enterprises to include Solana in their tech stack to future-proof their operations. 

That’s because token extensions natively enable features that matter to large, regulated enterprises that want to take advantage of the benefits of public blockchains in a responsible way that adheres to their internal compliance obligations and processes. 

As such, companies’ engineering teams can leverage token extensions as a turnkey ready, out of the box solution — sparing valuable development, auditing, and deployment resources.

In this context, Paxos and GMO Trust are paving the way.

Both companies are already using token extensions to issue stablecoins on Solana.

Although the full details are yet to be disclosed, it can be expected that both companies specifically utilise [permanent delegate] to freeze accounts or remove tokens from accounts when fraud or criminal activity occurs, and [transfer hooks] to enforce full KYC for accounts that hold a specific amount of stablecoins.

With token extensions, Solana essentially builds on top of Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard — fundamentally changing the game for what’s possible on public blockchains. 

Things are about to get interesting!

Chart Of The Week

News Bites

On-Chain > Off-Chain: Trading on-chain is not only more fun, but also paramount to the decentralised world we all strive to live in. However, centralised exchanges mostly lack the digital assets most of us wish to trade. With Phantom’s Birdeye integration, you can now discover and trade a vast array of tokens — right from within your wallet.

Bot Proliferation: We've seen FluxBot and BONKBot, now we also have Dialect Operator — the newest Telegram trading bot for Solana. The main differentiator of Dialect Operator is that the bot requires users to sign orders in their wallet for it to execute. By doing so, sensitive user data isn’t stored on AWS or other centralised cloud platforms.

Crypto Ads: Google has updated its cryptocurrencies and related products policy. As of January 29th, advertisers offering Cryptocurrency Coin Trust targeting the United States may advertise those products and services on Google platforms.

Squid Game: Admit it — we all binge-watched South Korea's latest blockbuster series. So it's only fitting that Blessed Burgers bring Squid Game to Solana — with a grand prize of $500,000 up for grabs.

YC Spirit: Matty Taylor, former Head of Growth at the Solana Foundation, recently co-founded Colosseum. The platform is basically a 3-in-1 offering: hackathon, accelerator, and venture fund.

Caught In 4K

Weekly Take

Slow this down to 0.75 speed and enjoy 🫡

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.}