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- Anatoly Is Playing 4D Chess, Bankless Loves Solana & More
Anatoly Is Playing 4D Chess, Bankless Loves Solana & More
Also: According to fees.wtf you’re wasting your money.
Welcome back!
This is J264G and this week I’ve got these titbits for you:
4D Chess: We discuss what MKBHD missed about Saga.
Payments: Helio & WooCommerce to supercharge e-commerce.
Vitalik Drain: We highlight how Phantom helps to avoid wallet drains.
Builders build, and that's why registrations for the Hyperdrive hackathon got off to a scorching start.
I respect the teams that are building in this bear market regardless of our opinions of how things should be done.
Anyone showing up right now is a bet worth making.
— Luca Netz 🐧 (@LucaNetz)
9:07 PM • Sep 9, 2023
This is the time to buckle down and ship an MVP which users can play with asap, giving you enough time to absorb feedback, adjust, and pivot if need be.
sometimes i'm amazed how many teams spend six months perfecting a feature according to what they think users want
instead of just deploying a bare-bones version to get users' feedback to improve it
and to see, you know, if it's something users even want
— david phelps 🐮🏰🃏🐘 (@divine_economy)
8:25 PM • Sep 7, 2023
Mainly, we’d all love to see apps come out of Hyperdrive which abstract away all things blockchain and address real pain points of a vast and global population.
There's kebab shop with more daily users than 10 fig mcap defi protocol
— vxH0rny🦉 (@veH0rny)
5:07 PM • Sep 8, 2023
Hyperdrive will conclude in little over a month — approx. 4 weeks to ship an app that replicates friend.tech’s scaling success outside of web3/crypto (´⊙ω⊙`)
Let’s get cooking!
Click on any underlined heading / hyperlink to learn more.
Spotlight
Payments Reimagined
I just landed in Taipei this morning.
As soon as I set foot on the island, I paid for all my purchases with Line Pay: Starbucks coffee (in-app vouchers FTW), Uber drive, metro tickets, and lunch — gua bao and bubble tee, of course.
Line Pay dominates everyday life in Taiwan: The app does not only allow you to pay at most restaurants, food courts, and street markets, it also allows you to pay utility bills and insurance, take out loans, buy non-essentials at Ikea, shop at Uniqlo online — you name it.
This got me thinking: How can web3/crypto win against the current payment ecosystem, incl. Line Pay, WeChat, and PayPal?
Visa integrating top merchant acquirers with usdc via @solana is a major infrastructure development.
When combined with other major developments, the case for emerging applications to appear on Solana becomes more and more clear.
— kel 🚧 (@kelxyz_)
5:17 PM • Sep 5, 2023
Don't get me wrong, both these developments are seismic for web3/crypto as a whole. However, I can't help but think that they might not ring in a real turning point just yet.
Blockchains make the cost of sending money around the world as cheap as the cost of sending data
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko)
7:58 PM • Sep 6, 2023
Here’s why.
The Solana Pay integration allows Shopify stores to charge and receive USDC for their goods and services. Moreover, Visa aims to leverage USDC on both Ethereum and Solana to optimise the speed and cost of transactions and settlements.
As such, customers need to have USDC in their possession to take advantage of Solana Pay on Shopify, while Visa plans to piggyback USD on USDC to increase its business efficacy and efficiency within a closed loop system.
I want @solana to be so cheap that it saves @Visa money to use it over its own in-house infra, and I want @solana to be so fast that it improves the user experience as well.
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko)
3:30 PM • Sep 5, 2023
My hypothesis: Solana Pay on Shopify will not significantly increase the TAM of web3/crypto as it caters to existing crypto-native users, stablecoin settlements via USDC, however, might just do so on the enterprise level.
The real unlock, however, will come when we're able to address both push and pull use cases:
Push (leveraging web3/crypto): e.g. stablecoin settlement
Pull (using web3/crypto): send, receive, and spend stablecoins/cryptocurrencies
It seems we’re making inroads regarding the push use case.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/f6b44119-c400-4c50-8c80-d03149fa2374/V2dsFyj_RjQe5t_BgJDCXAAz_iGA9Q7TFkKDWeqAPwXdUqrp7v_WX9Z7dECyqWt1rhGLeQT-1z0cPaJ3eFfQcJyxhvA5xCPkLFblObwaPlfoj5MuvotS_DwD-D4gCQpF4i3T9ksZ6aynXEUx5zc2wug.jpg)
But what about the pull use case, i.e. why would people want to send, receive, and spend stablecoins/cryptocurrencies directly?
Simple.
Because it would allow them to surpass high credit card processing fees, price gouging FX transaction costs, and generally slow transactions which might not even go through after 5PM or on weekends (Servus, Deutschland 👋).
However, WeChat and Line Pay already offer these benefits — today. What they don't offer are self custody/censorship resistance, privacy and security, and access to DeFi.
The broadest form of alignment is just self custody. It would sound crazy to exclude people from solana just because they also self custody on ethereum. People with self custody is the foundational network state.
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko)
9:57 PM • Sep 5, 2023
Thus, if we can infuse stablecoins/cryptocurrencies into the existing global payment infrastructure — as incumbents dominate consumer relationships and distribution — and offer the same benefits and more than apps such as WeChat, Line Pay, and PayPal, web3/crypto mass adoption might truly be reached.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/589509b2-ce3e-49eb-8ac0-e33aa6f683b0/6LyxNA9mVSfSHKriJCzyOvDt4s5uanKLsz0e4wJK33UV2rkOXIH2RHyzI_FwZEkIk7sAU8MpTvlw9XhLP0QVsYjtjDvtYizbVHUwH_vhvmGGfSSQHWcP-Ek_rB-Uc4Zphw5X9oDVKO9oavEwJAn-39I.png)
In this context, auxiliary crypto-centric payment services such as Meso, Beam, and TipLink already exist — but they mainly offer crypto on- and off-ramps and mostly lack both crypto-fiat swaps and direct spending options.
Code and Sling, however, might be able to bridge the gap.
We’ve been building Sling to change the way people send money…and we’re ready to share the beta with the world 🚀 download the app () to sign up on the waitlist… Here’s why we think you’ll like it 🧵
— Sling (@SlingMoney)
9:18 AM • May 23, 2023
Sling allows users to send and receive fiat fast and cost-effectively, as transactions are settled via USDC on Solana. Going forward, Sling will also allow for the sending and receiving of stablecoins, giving users the best of both worlds. The biggest driver of adoption for Sling is probably the direct spending option: the service allows users to pay for goods and services through the app or by sending links to payees — retailers or individuals — which don’t have the app installed.
Admittedly, this might currently be a bit bothersome for retailers and their respective POS systems. But if we could integrate Sling with, let's say, WeChat, Line Pay, and PayPal, or neobanks such as Wise, Revolut, and Monzo, we could send and receive fiat and stablecoins/cryptocurrencies, swap among them, AND directly spend them at retail stores … 🤯
The future of payments on Solana is looking bright! ✨
@MKBHD Let’s stop throwing shade on all the other chains. Everyone will run on solana infra eventually
— toly 🇺🇸 (@aeyakovenko)
7:35 PM • Sep 9, 2023
Chart Of The Week
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/8adf7749-5e82-42de-9afa-c4bd006e61a4/Screenshot_2023-09-12_at_17.22.22.png)
News Bites
4D Chess: One of the biggest YouTubers, Marques Brownlee, released a video review of Saga — Solana's flagship phone. Generally, his take is fair, yet some strategic and tactical aspects — e.g. that the SDK is open source and can be extended to support any blockchain — are not mentioned. If you’d like to get a more holistic view, read our Saga spotlight here.
NEW VIDEO - I used a "crypto phone" so you didn't have to. Full video here: youtu.be/hRSMJGs0YMg
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD)
10:32 PM • Sep 7, 2023
Ive seen a lot of buzz about the recent @MKBHD review of the @solanamobile Saga. My own thoughts surrounding the review & criticisms:
🧵1/14
— MarkCavallo.sol📱🇺🇸🇩🇴 (@MarkCavall0)
6:08 AM • Sep 8, 2023
Global Payments: You’ve heard all about the Shopify and Solana Pay news. Up next: Helio partners with WooCommerce to enable merchants who run their website on WordPress — 3.5 million stores globally; making up 24% of the top 1 million e-commerce websites — to integrate decentralised payments powered by both SOL and USDC.
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/c9aaca6a-5bb8-445f-97dc-75e31414a9a6/image.png)
Vitalik Drains: Hackers gained access to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s X account and posted a malicious link falsely promoting a free NFT. Victims who clicked on the link got their wallets drained and suffered losses exceeding $691,000. Here’s what Phantom is doing to prevent this from happening to you ⬇️
Todays a good reminder that @phantom is deeply committed to protecting users.
Every month, we prevent thousands of users from signing wallet draining transactions.
— Brian Friel (@bfriel_)
2:12 AM • Sep 10, 2023
Fees.wtf: As we all know, transaction fees in the EVM ecosystem can be steep. But how do EVM transaction costs compare 1:1 to Solana? Well, head over to fees.wtf to find out 😏
Getting Bread: Lancer, a platform for freelancers, has officially launched. Initially, the focus will be on matching contractors to developers. What’s unique is that developers will be able to get paid in either fiat or crypto.
Caught In 4K
To our subscribers
~ Ryan & David ~
💜
Sincerely,
Solana Community 🫰
![](https://media.beehiiv.com/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,quality=80/uploads/asset/file/84136209-357d-4d4f-bd67-0724ca922a9a/kqo-47P2o6uooXqY2uyXU-3mlrF_nnjc236Wh9y1eMj5gTh0bqivJMDGCvScLufR3V9PVa2Z6Sxl--s9h7dbqjJx3KZGmeLBqQvM-eNoPvaM26gTwi0UTPnsPPfPJvV2pnKla40bvxe-efkXJJe1KHQ.png)
Weekly Take
spent a week going and back and forth with an entrepreneur on an international wire distribution
my bank rejected it, his bank had no answers
we decided to go with stablecoin
transaction completed in 5 minutes
crypto is so unbelievably obvious and inevitable
— Mike Dudas (@mdudas)
12:14 AM • Sep 6, 2023
Keks & Giggles
You can’t make fun of L2’s when they’re down you can only dunk on solana
— Size Chad (@SizeChad)
10:21 PM • Sep 5, 2023
And that's a wrap!
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Talk soon!
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.