MT Capital Research Report: Solana Ecosystem is on the eve of a full-scale outbreak

TL;DR

• The Solana ecosystem is on the eve of a full-scale explosion. After experiencing challenges such as the bankruptcy of FTX, it still maintains strong growth. TVL increased significantly and DeFi Velocity showed very high liquidity utilization. The daily transaction volume has increased steadily, far exceeding other public chains.
• The Solana Foundation takes frequent actions: network stability and decentralization are steadily advancing, the Hyperdrive Hackathon is held to support ecological projects, and the focus is on the Asia-Pacific market.
• Ecosystem highlights emerge frequently: Visa launches USDC settlement functionality on Solana, MakerDAO considers incorporating Solana SVM into its system, and Solana Pay integrates with Shopify.
• Ecological projects are blooming: the largest Solana airdrop season in history is about to begin, and there are star projects in various tracks such as DeFi, LSD, Meme, Inscription, NFT, and DePIN, attracting market attention.

introduction

After Ethereum transitioned from POW to POS, the issue of centralization came to the fore. Competition among Layer 2 has become increasingly fierce, further fragmenting liquidity and leaving little to be desired at the application level.

In terms of Bitcoin ecology, BRC20 led a number of different inscription protocols to trigger FOMO in the community, which reached its climax after ORDI was listed on Binance. Along with the criticism of “no applications, only Meme”, the criticism began to slowly recede.

After the Solana ecosystem experienced the bankruptcy of FTX, the SOL token plummeted to a minimum of $8, a drop of more than 95%. However, after experiencing heavy losses, the Solana ecosystem and community have still maintained healthy development in the past two years. There are more than one million ecological users and more than 2,000 developers. From DeFi to NFT, new projects are constantly emerging. Firedancer, Solana’s second node validator developed by Jump Crypto, has also been officially launched on the testnet.

As the price of BTC recovered, the price of SOL’s token soared by more than 200% in two months. The current premium of Grayscale Solana Trust is about 800%, and the performance of GSOL shows that institutional investors are optimistic about Solana.

The out-of-the-circle effect caused by Stepn in the last bull market is still fresh in our minds. As the benefits come to fruition, the next hot application in the Solana ecosystem will definitely detonate the market.

Overview

Since the beginning of 2023, Solana’s total value locked (TVL) has shown significant growth and now reaches 650M, an increase of more than 200%.

Ian Wu said: “With the recent launch of new assets on the platform, the SOL token plays a core role. SOL is not only the staking currency in the entire ecosystem, but also the margin and underlying asset in transactions. The key underlying asset of the entire platform (native crypto).

In addition, as SOL is used to purchase assets such as NFT to participate in on-chain activity interactions and locking, a large amount of SOL is locked in the market, thus reducing its circulation. This lock-in effect of SOL is expected to promote its price increase, forming a positive growth spiral. With the issuance and listing of new assets in the Solana ecosystem, the amount of SOL tokens locked will gradually increase. This will not only dilute the previous profit taking and selling pressure, but also stimulate more holders to pledge SOL tokens due to the positive impact of the new asset. Therefore, in the future, the number of SOL pledged by Solana’s nodes and the total value locked (TVL) market value will become important indicators that analysts and investors pay close attention to SOL pricing. “

DeFi Velocity (TVL utilization):

• DeFi Velocity, or transaction volume/TVL, is a key indicator for measuring blockchain activity and adoption rate, and has more reference value than just observing TVL.
• In the latest week, Solana’s 7d DeFi Velocity ratio reached 3.17. This means that every $1 of liquidity generates approximately $3.17 of weekly trading volume. Compared to other chains such as Arbitrum, Binance, Base, Optimism, and Ethereum, Solana has exhibited the highest TVL utilization over the past seven days.

Daily trading volume:

• Since 2023, Solana’s daily trading volume has shown a stable trend, especially the number of voting transactions has increased.
• Transactions are mainly divided into two types: voting and non-voting. Voting transactions mainly involve the voting account of the validator.

Comparison with half-year average daily trading volume of other ecosystems

Despite challenges such as network outages and the collapse of FTX/Alameda, Solana has remained operational, demonstrating its ability to improve and adapt.

Solana’s growing TVL, strong DeFi development, and stable transaction data together demonstrate its potential to become a vibrant center of economic activity.

Ecosystem Highlights:

• In September 2023, Visa chose to launch the USDC settlement function on Solana, which is of great significance to the payment architecture and other application scenarios between public blockchains and financial entities.
• In September of the same year, the founder of MakerDAO considered incorporating Solana SVM into Maker’s new local chain as part of its “Endgame” upgrade plan. It is expected that the plan will last 2 to 3 years and be implemented in five phases.
• In August 2023, Solana Pay integrated with Shopify.

foundation

Personnel changes

On April 19, 2022, the Solana Foundation announced leadership changes to its five-seat Board of Directors. First, Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko is stepping down as Chairman of the Solana Foundation Board of Directors to focus on launching new applications on Solana Labs, effective December 2021. Second, to ensure a continuation of high-quality leadership and prepare for the Solana Foundation’s next chapter, the Foundation appointed Leopold Schabel to the Board of Governors. Schabel is the leader of Jump Crypto and co-founder of Certus One, a blockchain consulting firm that provides verification services for the Solana ecosystem and other proof-of-stake networks.

New strategies for finance

The Solana Foundation has announced a new funding strategy that includes convertible grants and investments. These flexible funding options are designed to meet the needs of diverse projects within the Solana ecosystem, from early-stage development to mature businesses looking for financial support. The Foundation’s Convertible Grants Program provides financial assistance to early-stage projects with a focus on development, research and innovation. These grants will be distributed to projects with the potential to have a significant impact on Solana’s ecology. And for projects or startups that are already established and showing a path to success, the Solana Foundation provides investment support that will be used to expand their operations and bring innovation to the market.

Retrospective Public Goods Funding (RPGF) Scheme

The Solana Foundation and OpenBlock Labs innovatively introduce a retroactive funding model to support public goods and open source projects within the Solana ecosystem. RPGF aims to provide sustainable income to the creators behind public goods resources that are widely used by the community. Unlike traditional forward-looking funding, RPGF incentivizes and rewards past contributions that benefit the broader ecosystem. The first round of RPGF received an enthusiastic response, attracting more than 100 project applications, of which approximately 36 were funded. This process not only rewards past contributions but also sets a precedent for community-led support of public goods.

hackathon

The Solana Foundation recently successfully hosted its eighth hackathon event, “Solana Hyperdrive,” an online competition focused on attracting high-impact projects into the Solana ecosystem. The event brought together founders and developers from around the world, with more than 7,000 participants submitting 907 projects, making it the largest in Solana Hackathon history. The activities cover infrastructure, mobile consumer applications, payments, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), artificial intelligence and other fields, and are supported by many well-known companies such as AWS, Ironforge, UXD, Magic Eden and so on. Dan Albert, executive director of the Solana Foundation, said that the nearly 1,000 teams generated from these activities will work in artificial intelligence, finance and payments, physical infrastructure networks, games and entertainment, mobile consumer applications, cryptographic infrastructure, DAOs and cyber states. play an important role in many fields and shape future development trends.

Future plan

At the technical level, the Solana Foundation is focusing on several key technological innovations and expects to show results by the end of the year or early next year.

1. FireDancer goes online on mainnet: FireDancer is an independent Solana validator designed to enhance the robustness and performance of the network. It is a system capable of reaching 1 million TPS in internal testing. Although it may reach 100,000 TPS in actual operation, this is sufficient. requirements for high-frequency trading applications. The aim is to maintain an independent technology stack, thereby diversifying the blockchain network’s supply chain and reducing exposure to single points of failure. FireDancer employs a defense-in-depth strategy, isolating its components into independent processes and implementing strict communication protocols to reduce the impact of potential vulnerabilities. The development team also integrates strong security procedures into its development lifecycle, identifying and mitigating security vulnerabilities through ongoing collaboration between security and engineering teams and the use of fuzz testing and code reviews. The goal is to launch FireDancer on the Solana mainnet and upgrade security measures such as external auditing and the introduction of a bug bounty program.
2. Asynchronous execution/no bank leader: In Solana’s bankless leader model, the leader does the minimum amount of work necessary to produce valid blocks. This design reduces the number of memory operations required before the leader can execute by three times. The leader’s responsibilities include verifying signatures in transactions, ensuring fee accounts have sufficient balances, and managing the balance cache.
3. Quorum Subcommittee: Solana’s quorum structure is critical to its security and performance. The network uses quadratic message overhead to ensure classic Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus. Solana’s design allows the network to maintain high throughput and low fees while ensuring a high level of security. The size of the quorum and the way voting is implemented are key to Solana’s design, ensuring security and performance.
4. Dynamic storage pricing and old state compression:Solana introduces a state compression solution that significantly reduces the cost of on-chain storage. This technique relies on Merkle trees, which compress the verifiability of the data tree into a hash. This compression-friendly structure allows developers to store small amounts of data on-chain and update it directly in the Solana ledger, significantly reducing data storage costs while maintaining the security and decentralization of Solana’s base layer.
5. Dynamic base fee: In Solana, the calculation of transaction fees currently does not depend on the resources consumed by the transaction. Instead, the fee is determined by the number of signatures that need to be verified. Rates (such as lamports per signature) may change from block to block. However, transaction fees can still be calculated with certainty before a transaction is created and signed.

center of gravity

Currently, the Solana Foundation is focused on strengthening and expanding its influence in the Asia-Pacific region. Especially after the FTX incident last year, the foundation decided to increase investment in the Chinese-speaking area and the Asia-Pacific market. The Foundation recognizes the importance of the Asia-Pacific market in terms of both labor market (developer market) and capital market, and is therefore working to establish a more balanced and comprehensive development in the region.

The Solana Breakpoint event is scheduled to be held in Singapore from September 19 to 21, 2024. The selection of Singapore as the venue for the 2024 Breakpoint event highlights the importance of the Asia-Pacific region in Solana’s strategy.

In addition, the foundation is expanding its presence in India, Europe (particularly Germany and the UK).

Recent popular projects

Mad Lads & Backpack

Mad Lads is an NFT project created by Solana framework development company Coral and launched by Armani Ferrante and Tristan Yver. This project marks Coral’s major innovation in the field of blockchain technology and NFTs. Mad Lads will be released exclusively through Backpack, the all-in-one wallet app created by Coral. This choice not only shows Coral’s confidence in its own products, but also highlights Backpack’s advanced technology and market potential.

Backpack’s best feature is that it’s built around “executable NFTs” (xNFTs). These xNFTs are essentially non-fungible tokens embedded with executable programming scripts, and they are actually operational Web3 application platforms. This technological innovation makes Mad Lads not just a digital collection, but a platform that can run code and achieve more complex interactions, thus greatly enhancing the functionality and appeal of NFTs. The xNFT series opens up a new way for program distribution. Game developers can mint entire games as limited-edition xNFTs. A DeFi protocol can distribute early access to new frontends based on wallet addresses. A two-factor verification code can be generated as an NFT and automatically updated on a recurring basis. These are the possibilities available to xNFT users, as Solana’s website explains, adding that artists can create beautiful, immersive 3D experiences that cannot be replicated and run directly from wallets. The possibilities are almost endless.

Mad Lads’ success is due to several key factors. First, its innovative xNFT concept brings new vitality to the NFT market. This new type of NFT is not only a digital asset, but also has the ability to execute built-in code, providing users with more interactivity and utility. Secondly, Mad Lads has a strong presence in the market. Sales in 24 hours exceeded $8.16 million, surpassing Bored Ape Yacht Club in the same period. This remarkable sales performance is largely due to its uniqueness and high market expectations. In addition, the floor price of Mad Lads increased by 200% in two weeks to 160 SOL, making it one of the most valuable in the Solana NFT series and highly recognized by the market.

In terms of technology and market strategy, the Backpack development team also demonstrated its ingenuity and ability to meet challenges. During the Mad Lads relaunch, to prevent bots from manipulating the market, the team created two minting portals that effectively differentiated between real users and bots. This strategy not only effectively prevented malicious behavior, but also aroused widespread attention and discussion among legitimate users, enhancing the community’s interest and participation in the project.

After Solana lost its well-known NFT projects DeGods and y00ts, there was a void in the community. These projects moved to Ethereum and Polygon respectively, leaving a huge void in the Solana community. The launch of Mad Lads coincides closely with the time these projects leave Solana, providing good timing for Mad Lads’ success. We think Mad Lads can definitely become BAYC on Solana.

Nevertheless, with the collapse of FTX, the entire Solana ecosystem also encountered serious challenges, and the Backpack team’s funds were partially trapped in FTX. In this difficult situation, the Backpack team not only managed to stay operational, but also began to look for new directions for development. The success of Mad Lads is seen as a rebirth of the Solana community, undoing the damage done by FTX affiliation and the narrative that came with it. Backpack is currently in public beta, and the long-term goal is to open it up to the community, allowing anyone to build upon it.

In September 2022, Coral completed US$20 million in financing, led by FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, with participation from strategic investors such as Multicoin Capital.

In October 2023, Backpack announced that it would launch a “regulated” trading platform called Backpack Exchange, demonstrating the team’s continued commitment to innovation and adapting to market changes.

Mad Lads and Backpack are stories about innovation, market adaptability, and finding new opportunities in difficult circumstances. This case fully reflects the flexibility and innovation capabilities of the Solana ecosystem.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest aggregation exchange on the Solana chain. Since its establishment in 2021, it has become a key protocol in the Solana ecosystem. As the first trading aggregator on Solana, Jupiter aims to provide users with the best exchange rates by integrating all major liquidity markets on the blockchain. In order to improve user experience, Jupiter continues to optimize and update, integrating more mainstream DEXs on the Solana chain, such as Orca, Raydium, Serum, etc.

Jupiter has also done a lot of work on user experience. In addition to integrating mainstream liquidity pools, it also provides real-time updated exchange rates and quick direct access to the integrated DEX project website. For example, in the process of exchanging SOL for USDC, Jupiter can match multiple transaction lines for users and select the best path and price, saving users time and expenses. In addition, each transaction information provided by Jupiter is very transparent, including transaction speed, price impact rate, the minimum amount that users can receive after transactions, etc., making it convenient for users to plan their assets.

Jupiter has also made significant progress in terms of funding and token plans. It is preparing to launch the native token JUP and announced at the Solana Breakpoint conference that 40% of the JUP tokens will be distributed to the Jupiter Exchange community through airdrops, with approximately 955,000 users eligible. Another 20% of the tokens will be distributed through the token sale, with the remaining 40% reserved for internal staff and strategic reserves. As a community-focused initiative, Jupiter announced a retroactive token airdrop program that will see 4 billion (40%) of the 1 billion Jupiter tokens distributed.

Pyth Network

Pyth Network is hailed as a game changer in the field of DeFi oracles, primarily by leveraging the power of top exchanges, market makers, and financial service providers to aggregate and distribute price data for smart contract applications. As an innovative decentralized oracle, Pyth is able to obtain financial market data from more than 90 information sources (including major exchanges and market makers such as CBOE, Binance, OKX, Bybit, etc.) and distribute these data to more than 40 a blockchain.

Pyth consists of three core parts: data providers (mainly exchanges), the Pyth protocol (designed to aggregate data from different providers to create uniform prices and confidence intervals for each price source every 400 milliseconds) and data consumers ( i.e. end users, such as applications on a Pyth-powered blockchain, read the aggregated price feed and seamlessly integrate the data into their smart contract logic).

Pyth Network raised funds through three rounds of financing, with the latest round completed on January 7, 2022. The token debuted with a market cap of $468 million, with 90,000 wallets receiving the airdrop. PYTH tokens will initially trade at approximately $0.32, with a circulating supply of 1.5 billion, and the remaining 85% of the total supply locked for periods ranging from 6 to 42 months.

In addition, Pyth Network supports more than 230 applications, including decentralized exchanges (DEX), lending protocols, and derivatives platforms. Its infrastructure can achieve more than 65 million updates per day, improving the accuracy and security of smart contract operations.

jito

Jito launched a referral program at the end of August and a points system in mid-September. Similar to Blaze, Jito increases its appeal to users by rewarding JitoSOL holders and increasing their points in DeFi. Jito’s SOL locked value increased by 320% year-on-year during the quarter, reaching 6.67 million SOL. Approximately 35% of JitoSOL was locked in the protocol at the end of the quarter, compared with only 13% at the beginning of the quarter.

What’s special about Jito is that users can earn MEV benefits through it. The Jito staking pool entrusts users’ SOL to validator nodes that support MEV, and MEV rewards are distributed to the equity pool as additional APY. Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana Labs, also spoke positively of Jito.

Jito Labs has raised a total of $12 million in two rounds of funding. The latest round of financing occurred on August 11, 2022, and was Series A financing. Leading the investment were Multicoin Capital and Framework Ventures.

As of November 30, 2023, Jito reached a new TVL high of $400M, with 6.67M SOL currently staked, which has been on an upward trend since launch. Jito is the first staking product on Solana to include MEV rewards.

On November 28, the Jito Foundation announced that it would launch the JTO governance token, which is an important step in the development of the Jito network. JTO tokens will give community members the ability to directly influence the decisions and direction of the Jito network.

In terms of governance, the launch of JTO enables token holders to make critical decisions that shape the future of the Jito network so that it continues to grow and prosper in line with the needs of those it serves and the needs of the broader Solana ecosystem. These decisions and initiatives may include:

• Set fees for JitoSOL staking pool
• Update delegation policies by controlling the parameters of the StakeNet project
• Manage fees generated by JTO tokens held by DAO and JitoSOL
• Contribute to the continued development and improvement of the Jito protocol and products

In terms of token economics, the total supply of JTO is 1 billion, of which 10% will be used for airdrops, 24.3% will be directly controlled by token holders through DAO governance on Realms, 25% will be used for ecosystem development, and 16.2% Allocated to investors (fully locked in 1 year, fully unlocked in three years), 24.5% is allocated to core contributors, namely the founders of Jito and employees of early contributors to the ecosystem (fully locked in 1 year, fully unlocked in three years).

The total amount of airdrop is 10%, which is 100 million JTO tokens. Among them, 90 million JTO tokens will be distributed immediately by the foundation, and another 10 million will be unlocked in the next year, all from the 342857143 million tokens allocated for community growth.

Eligibility for the JTO token airdrop is determined by users’ contribution to the development and growth of the Jito network. This includes long-term JitoSOL holders, users using JitoSOL across various DeFi protocols, Solana validators running the Jito-Solana MEV client, and searchers actively leveraging Jito Network MEV offerings.

This airdrop is based on past behavior, with a snapshot of the qualifying campaign taking place on November 25, 2023. As part of this airdrop, the previously announced points program has ended and points will no longer be updated.

BONK

BONK, as the first Meme token in the Solana ecosystem, has achieved significant performance in the market recently. It initially gained attention through a massive airdrop to the Solana community on Christmas 2022. The purpose of this token is to oppose “Alameda”-style token economics and restore confidence in the Solana ecosystem and SOL holders after the FTX incident. Now, approaching its first anniversary, BONK has become active again, sparking not only comparisons with SHIB but also speculation about its possible launch on mainstream trading platforms.

Binance launched BONK’s 1-50x U-based perpetual contract on November 22, showing support for this Meme currency. BONK is built on the Solana chain, similar to the well-known Shib, and is a new MEME Coin for the public. 50% of the project’s total token supply has been airdropped to Solana’s Degen and DeFi traders, NFT artists, and developers. This large-scale airdrop distribution also injects more liquidity into the Solana ecosystem.

The BONK team began planning the project on December 9, 2022, and actively called on other projects in the Solana ecosystem to interact. As Christmas approaches, they conducted a large-scale airdrop for the Solana ecosystem. As the anniversary of its birth approaches, and as Solana rises again, BONK and related ecological tokens have also seen a valuation recovery. However, although BONK has skyrocketed in the past month, its market value as a meme currency is already relatively high, and has increased more than 12 times in just one month.

Orca

Orca is an important decentralized exchange (DEX) in the Solana ecosystem, recognized for its user-friendly interface and efficient trading experience. As the only DEX platform on Solana with pure automatic market maker (AMM) functionality, Orca also has its own liquidity pool, providing a simple and composable trading experience, which is regarded as an ideal choice for the next generation of DeFi applications.

Orca is described as the most user-friendly DEX on Solana, with pure AMM functionality and a user-friendly trading interface, which allows users to more efficiently use their capital to exchange assets, provide liquidity, and earn income. Orca emphasizes providing users with the best exchange experience, including minimal transaction fees and low latency, while ensuring fair prices.

In terms of technological innovation, Orca continues to innovate according to its development blueprint. For example, Orca began testing Whirlpools, a centralized liquidity active market making AMM similar to Uniswap V3, and officially launched it on April 25, 2021. This is an important step to improve capital efficiency.

Additionally, Orca raised $18 million in a 2021 Series A funding round led by Polychain, Placeholder, and Three Arrows Capital. Sino Global, Collab+Currency, Coinbase Ventures and Solana Capital also participated in the round. These funds are used to enhance Orca as a capital efficient and user-friendly DEX. This investment will help Orca further develop its platform, ensuring it remains competitive and innovative in the rapidly evolving DeFi space.

As for the token market value, the latest price of Orca’s token (ORCA) is US$3.27, with a market value of approximately US$143.8 million, a fully diluted valuation of approximately US$326.8 million, a total locked value (TVL) of US$85.12 million, and a circulating supply of Approximately 43.99 million ORCA tokens. Orca is a key player in the Solana ecosystem for its technological advancement, user experience focus, and strong financial support.

Drift Protocol

As a derivatives exchange on Solana, Drift Protocol’s total trading volume has recently exceeded $1 billion. Its TVL increased to US$17.3 million at the end of the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 87%, and a year-on-year increase of 976%.

Drift Protocol becomes a decentralized derivatives market disruptor on Solana. Drift chose Solana because of its low latency block times and high bandwidth, which enable minimal transaction fees and fast settlement. In November 2021, Drift launched the V1 version, introducing the concept of Dynamic Automatic Market Maker (DAMM) to provide guaranteed liquidity and superior trading experience, with a trading volume of nearly 10 billion US dollars within 6 months. The V1 version introduced the limit order function and Maker Orders, allowing users to become market makers. In December 2022, Drift launched the V2 version to enhance liquidity through “liquidity three-in-one” and become a full-service decentralized exchange. V2 introduced robust security measures and achieved success, with transaction volume exceeding $100 million and TVL reaching $10 million. As of September 2023, Drift’s cumulative trading volume has reached US$1 billion, with a TVL of US$19 million. Drift integrates the Pyth price feed data oracle to provide diversified markets, such as SOL, BTC, ETH, etc., ensuring data quality and low-latency user experience. Pyth’s confidence interval function also helps Drift detect market fluctuations and unusual price distributions in a timely manner, protecting users and funds.

A seed round of US$3.8 million was raised on October 26, 2021, with investment institutions including Multicoin Capital, Jump Capital, Not3Lau Capital, etc.

Zeta Markets

Zeta Markets is a comprehensive cross-margin derivatives protocol based on the Solana blockchain. It specializes in offering a variety of trading options, including options trading, term futures, and, from November 4, 2022, perpetual futures. These services are integrated on one platform.

As a low-collateral derivatives platform, Zeta Markets features a fully on-chain risk engine and a central limit order book (CLOB). This makes it a user-friendly platform that offers all the features needed for traders interested in trading with leverage in a decentralized environment.

On October 27, Zeta Markets announced the launch of Z-Score (the first step in launching the token), which allows users to earn Z-Score based on their trading activity on Zeta. Users will receive 1 Z-SCORE point for every $1 traded. In addition, the 24-hour P&L ranking determines the reward multiplier. Z-Score Season 1 will run until December 20.

Zeta Markets announced in December 2021 the completion of US$8.5 million in financing led by Jump Capital, Race Capital, Electric Capital, DACM, Airtree Ventures, Amber Group, Wintermute, Sino Global Capital, Genesis Block Ventures, QCP Capital, Alameda Research, Solana Capital, MGNR, 3kVC, Orthogonal Trading, LedgerPrime and SkyVision Capital also participated.

Hive folders

Hivemapper is a blockchain-based map network that launched its global network in 2022 to collect and create map overlays through specialized driving recorders and save the data to the Solana-based blockchain network. Drivers can now start using dash cams provided by Hivemapper and be rewarded with the company’s cryptocurrency HONEY by contributing to street-level imagery and adding to the decentralized map of the places they visit.

The Hivemapper project started in 2015 and recently completed an $18 million Series A round of financing led by Multicoin Capital on April 5, 2022. Hivemapper’s native token HONEY is used to reward map contributors who contribute fresh and updated information, while map consumers obtain APIs by burning HONEY tokens. Burned tokens are reminted, increasing the number of tokens rewarded to contributors. HONEY, as the token of the Solana ecosystem, has a total amount of 10 billion, but due to the incentive-based mining mechanism, less than 200 million have been mined so far. In the future, the project team plans to control the release rhythm of token mining to stabilize and increase the value of the token.

Tokens are initially distributed as follows:

• 40% is allocated to contributors as a reward for their participation in building the Hivemapper network.
• 20% is allocated to investors to provide initial capital for launching the Hivemapper network.
• 20% is allocated to Hivemapper Inc. employees to build the technology and operating systems needed to run the Hivemapper network.
• 15% is allocated to Hivemapper Inc. to provide R&D and operational support for the Hivemapper network.
• 5% is allocated to the Hivemapper Foundation to facilitate the ongoing management and success of the Hivemapper network.

The token redistribution mechanism ensures that the number of tokens that contributors receive is not limited to 4 billion HONEY. In order to use data from the network (e.g. via the Map Image API), HONEY tokens must be burned in exchange for map points. The net amount of tokens burned will be reminted and distributed to contributors based on the net emissions model. As more data is consumed, more HONEY is burned and more tokens are redistributed to contributors.

inscription

On Solana, there are two inscription projects that have attracted much attention-Sols and Lamp. Sols inscriptions are created by SPL-20 similar to the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, with a total of 21,000 pieces. Although the minting process is complicated, it is enthusiastically sought after due to its innovation and multi-link effectiveness screening. As of November 28, the trading volume of Sols on the NFT platform Magic Eden reached 114,000 SOL, with a floor price of nearly 6.3 SOL. On the other hand, Lamp inscription is also making waves on Solana, with the smallest unit Lamport being similar to Bitcoin’s Satoshi. The floor price of Lamp is 0.1 SOL, the total transaction volume exceeds 12,000 SOL, and the number of addresses held exceeds 5,400.

Sols was quietly launched on the OKX Web3 wallet trading market on November 22 and has been opened for trading, causing a sharp increase in Sols. The floor price of each inscription has risen from about 5.3 SOL to about 12.5 SOL.

The popularity of Solana Inscription may be related to the strong increase in the price of SOL. With the launch of BRC-20 and the popularity of Inscription within the Bitcoin ecosystem, the market was ignited, triggering an obvious FOMO effect and liquidity spillover. The Inscription Market has attracted widespread participation due to its fairness and the fact that it does not require pre-mining or VC funds.

In particular, the appearance of the Lamp inscription, proposed by Twitter user @babla11001, follows the SPL-20 format and has a total supply of 210,000 pieces. The creation process of its inscription has attracted great attention, including multiple steps such as uploading pictures, setting transfer rules, engraving NFT, and verification. Due to the huge website traffic, minting, engraving and verification pages often crash, resulting in fierce competition among participants and success largely depends on luck.

NFT

Magic Eden, the primary NFT marketplace on Solana, recently announced support for Solana’s compressed NFTs (cNFTs). This initiative aims to provide digital collectibles enthusiasts with an affordable and scalable option.

Unlike traditional Solana NFTs, the data of cNFTs is processed off-chain.compressionand stored. This approach supports mass production because casting costs are significantly reduced.

Technology upgrade: Solana launched state compression technology in Q2, an efficient way to store data on-chain. This technology has been successfully applied to the cNFT standard created by Metaplex by hashing the data into a Merkle tree and uploading its root hash. For example, the cost of minting 1 million cNFTs is approximately 5.3 to 63.7 SOL, which is much lower than the 24,000 SOL of uncompressed NFTs.

Market dynamics: By the third quarter, nearly 45 million cNFTs had been minted, a year-on-year increase of 316%.

Magic Eden believes that cNFT is well suited for mass-produced collectibles in industries such as gaming, music, events, and the Metaverse. Reducing the cost of NFT production may increase the popularity of NFTs and become an ideal starting point for newcomers to enter the world of NFTs. Due to the reduced costs, the financial risk of collecting NFTs is also reduced.

The minting of cNFTs benefits from Solana’s state compression capabilities and costs only about $110.castingUp to 1 million NFTs, far less than the cost on Ethereum.

Solana significantly reduces NFT minting costs by introducing solutions such as state compression and isolated fee markets.

Source: @flipsidecrypto

For example, the cost of minting 1 million NFTs on Solana before and after using state compression is $253,000 and $113 respectively. On Ethereum and Polygon, the cost of minting the same number of NFTs is $33.6 million and $32.8 million respectively.

• DRiP： In the third quarter, DRiP held the majority of the cNFT market share (87.5%). DRiP works with artists to mint large amounts of free NFT artwork. In mid-August, DRiP announced the completion of a US$3 million seed round of financing, led by Placeholder.
• Dialect： A Web3 messaging application that leverages cNFTs, it launched its web app in early September, becoming one of the largest collections of NFTs on the chain.

Other projects:

• Food Lads： is a project adopting the Executable NFT (xNFT) standard, representing a new token standard that can tokenize code. xNFT stands for dApp and is accessible directly from user wallets.
• Crossmint： Provide developers with the infrastructure to build NFT applications.

After large projects such as DeGods and y00ts previously left Solana, Magic Eden chose to support multiple chains, including Ethereum and Bitcoin. Despite the blow, Solana’s NFT ecosystem is recovering and showing new vitality.

Tensor platform

Tensor is a professional Solana-based NFT trading platform that provides fast data processing, batch operations, and advanced order types. Data from the last month shows that Tensor has surpassed the old king Magic Eden and become the leader in the Solana NFT market.

Data source: The Block

Solana Monkey Business（SMB）

SMB is a long-established project on Solana. It launched the third generation of SMB Gen3 and became the top brand of Solana NFT. SMB also launched NFT DAO Monke Dao and investment portfolio Monke Ventures.

Recent NFT trading hot spots have focused on Smart Monkey Business (SMB), a project that generates pixel monkey NFTs by algorithms, and its trading volume dominates the Solana NFT market.

LSD

Comparing Ethereum and Solana:

Compared to Ethereum’s nearly $20.22B of liquid pledges, Solana’s liquid pledge SOL ratio is only 3-4%, revealing its huge growth potential.

Risk vs. reward: At similar risk levels, Solana’s staking rewards are almost twice those of Ethereum.

Current status of liquid pledge:

• Currently, 295.7M SOL is pledged on the network, but the application of liquid pledge derivatives is not yet widespread.
• During the FTX incident, the TVL of liquid pledges fell from a peak of 12.8M SOL to a low of 5M SOL, but then returned to the level before the FTX incident, about 12M+ SOL.

The recently launched Jito staking service has accumulated more than $44.86M (2.3M SOL) of TVL since its launch at the end of November last year. Growth across Liquidity Collateralized Derivatives (LSD) and DeFi use cases has also been significant.

Marinade Finance dominates the Solana liquid staking market with over 5.47M SOL staked, followed by Lido and Jito. Emerging liquidity staking protocols such as Marinade, Socean, Lido, BlazeStake, and Jito are offering various reward programs to attract users to stake SOL.

Marinade Finance

As the project with the highest TVL in the Solana ecosystem, Marinade Finance is a liquid staking platform focused on simplifying the Solana staking process. Its main feature is to provide “liquidity staking”, which allows users to convert pledged assets into liquidity at any time without waiting for the unlocking period.

In mid-September, Marinade launched a rewards program with the intention of catching up with the growth of new protocols. Although Marinade’s TVL on SOL declined slightly throughout the quarter, it rebounded after September 20. Additionally, Marinade Native, launched at the end of July, is a native staking product designed to complement Marinade’s liquid staking service. It is an automated staking platform that allocates pledges to more than 100 outstanding validators with no performance fees and no smart contract risks involved.

Marinade also recently launched the Marinade Native program, which allows users to seamlessly delegate staking rights while retaining withdrawal rights. Additionally, Marinade announced the Marinade Earn rewards program, running from October 1, 2023 to January 1, 2024. Participants will receive a reward of 1 MNDE/SOL during this period. There is also a referral system where referrers can earn an additional 1 MNDE/SOL through unique links.

As a veteran DeFi protocol launched in 2021, Marinade had a TVL of more than $1.5 billion at its peak. Although it has declined compared to its peak, it is still the No. 1 TVL-ranked project in the Solana ecosystem. Its token mSOL has good liquidity and has been listed on mainstream trading platforms such as Coinbase and Kraken.

BlazeStake

BlazeStake is a newly launched liquid staking protocol in 2023 designed to promote the decentralization of Solana nodes. Stakeholders can choose the standard delegation pool or any validator to stake SOL and obtain the liquid staking income of bSOL.

Blaze has been hinting at an airdrop for bSOL holders since last year. In August this year, it launched a points system and its own TokenBLZE, which conducts airdrops based on user points. Blaze’s SOL locked value increased 1,234% year-over-year during the quarter to 678,560 SOL (worth $40 million as of November 30, 2023).

DeFi

Recent quarters have seen significant growth among a number of emerging Solana DeFi protocols, which self-define as “Solana DeFi 2.0.” The term represents a commitment to avoid the predatory and low-circulation token economic models common in previous cycles. Most of these protocols have yet to launch their own native tokens.

MarginFi

As one of the leaders of this trend, lending protocol MarginFi launched a points system on July 3 to reward users for deposits, loans, and referrals. Its TVL increased by 743% year-on-year, rising to sixth place in the Solana DeFi TVL ranking, reaching $22 million. At the end of the quarter, MarginFi also launched its own liquid staking token, LST.

Cypher

Perps trading platform Cypher launched a points system in mid-July. In early August, Cypher suffered an attack worth approximately US$1 million. In order to help users recover their losses, Cypher accelerated its CYPH IDO. In IDOs and airdrops, over 50% of CYPH was allocated to the community.

Solend

In early August, the Solend lending platform launched a points program. Instead of using points for potential airdrops, Solend combines points with its issued SLND token. The first quarter points program lasts for approximately three months, with a minimum reward pool of 100,000 SLND (valued at $54,000). Driven by the points program, Solend’s TVL increased by 43% year-on-year to US$57 million.

Raydium

Raydium was once the first AMM-style decentralized trading platform in the Solana ecosystem and one of the core projects of Solana Summer. However, with the bankruptcy of FTX and the threat to the Serum protocol that shared liquidity with Raydium, as well as the attack on Raydium’s own liquidity pool, Raydium faced heavy losses and its recovery was slightly worse than Orca.

Phoenix

Phoenix is ​​a decentralized limit order book on Solana that supports spot markets and recently completed $3.3 million in funding. Before its official launch at the end of August, Phoenix conducted a test launch. Since going live, Phoenix has performed well on certain trading pairs, with TVL reaching $378,000 at the end of the quarter.

Squads Protocol

Squads Protocol is a newly launched comprehensive multi-signature platform that has protected $6 million in assets and $9.5 million in total transaction volume.

Kamino Finance

Kamino Finance is an automated liquidity solution that earns revenue through market making. In the third quarter, Kamino’s trading volume exceeded $1 billion and generated $1.25 million in revenue for depositors.

DePIN

DePIN, the decentralized physical infrastructure network, is leveraging Solana’s efficient technology across fields ranging from mapping to energy to logistics to provide opportunities similar to the modern gig economy. According to Kuleen Nimkar, head of DePIN at the Solana Foundation, people can earn additional income by contributing hardware to the DePIN protocol.

Helium

Helium Network leverages Solana’s state compression technology to cast network hotspots in the form of NFT, thereby reducing costs. Helium is a typical example of DePIN business, working with Hivemapper to use the Helium network to verify the location of drivers.

Helium, a decentralized wireless hotspot network known as a pioneer in the DePIN space, dates back to 2013 and initially operated as a Layer 1 network. On April 20, 2023, Helium announced its migration to the Solana network (in accordance with HIP 70). Developers prefer Solana because of its vast ecosystem, which integrates many developers, applications and teams, and is superior to other chains in terms of cost and speed.

HNT, the native token of the Helium network, has no pre-mining and the total supply is limited to 223 million. In Helium, the only way to pay for data transfer fees is through Data Credits (DC) earned by burning HNT, which are priced in USD, are non-transferable and are available only to the original owner.

After the implementation of HIP-52, the deployment of hotspot networks will no longer receive HNT rewards, but will be rewarded through two protocol tokens, IOT and MOBILE, for Helium IoT and Mobile networks respectively. The multi-token model allows each wireless network to be governed independently, allowing the DAO to make better decisions. Each sub-network manages its own Proof-of-Coverage rules, data pricing, and hotspot mining reward distribution mechanisms.

The IOT and MOBILE network tokens obtained after deploying or covering the network can be exchanged for HNT, providing a value basis for the network tokens. Currently, Helium has a market value of approximately US$420 million and is the largest DePIN project in the Solana ecosystem.

Teleport

With the emergence of decentralized maps, decentralized ride-sharing applications, such as Teleport, emerged and are now available on the Apple Store. Teleport is a permissionless ride-sharing app that is jointly owned and managed by drivers, passengers and developers. On October 27, 2022, Teleport completed a $9 million seed round of financing, co-led by Foundation Capital and Road Capital.

Founder Paul Bohm pointed out that existing ride-sharing giants such as Uber hold a monopoly in the shared travel industry. To solve this problem, Teleport built the shared mobility protocol TRIP, which aims to benefit drivers, passengers and the local economy while enabling autonomy. This protocol will first be applied on the Teleport platform, and participants who operate and develop the network will receive TRIP rewards, some of which may appear in the form of NFTs. TRIP rewards represent both participation rights and voting rights in the network. Currently, the project has not released tokens, and the official website and Twitter will provide the latest information.

Tekkon

Tekkon is a Japanese project that encourages users to take photos of local infrastructure or report damaged infrastructure to receive token rewards while helping to improve the local environment. The project is launched by the Whole Earth Foundation, a nonprofit founded by Takashi Kato, who previously founded Fracta Inc., a software company that helps identify weak links in urban water networks.

In the Philippines, Tekkon received a warm welcome due to token incentives, forming a group of organizations known as infrastructure hunters. According to Bloomberg data, Tekkon has more than 128,000 active users, 90,000 of whom are from the Philippines, and uploads about 30,000 photos every day.

Whole Earth Coin (WEC) is Tekkon’s reward token and can be redeemed for cash on Line Pay in Japan. The initial circulation of WEC is 300 million, with no upper limit. Tokens are used for a variety of purposes, including rewarding users and in-app actions. Tekkon plans to enhance the token functionality in various ways and build a more complete and sustainable ecosystem.

Render Network

Render Network has expanded its services from Polygon to the Solana blockchain, allowing individuals to contribute idle GPU computing power to assist in rendering motion graphics and visual effects.

Conclusion

Solana has addressed key challenges through a series of technological innovations. The Breakpoint 2023 conference was held in Amsterdam, bringing together more than 3,000 developers, investors, traders, business leaders, and artists to discuss ecosystem innovation and the future planning of the network. For example, the launch of the Firedancer validator client will increase the diversity of validators, which is key to Solana’s long-term resilience and decentralization.

Solana’s economic activities are diversifying. Render Network has successfully migrated from Ethereum to the Solana blockchain, opening up new features such as live streaming and dynamic NFTs that benefit from Solana’s fast transaction speeds, low costs, and vast network architecture.

Solana’s decentralization efforts receive critical support and boost. For example, Nikolay Vlasov, senior solutions architect at Amazon Web Services, announced at Breakpoint that Solana nodes can now be quickly deployed on AWS, which helps expand the experience for users around the world.

Solana demonstrates its commitment to technology collaboration and innovation. Google Cloud’s Web3 Director James Tromans announced that Google Cloud’s BigQuery has now joined Solana data, enabling developers, enterprises and users to query detailed Solana data. This integration emphasizes Google’s existing infrastructure and makes it a future The ideal company for developers to introduce to the blockchain space.

Top Solana protocol plans to distribute tokens via airdrops to its most active on-chain users. As newly acquired tokens circulate on Solana, the resulting injection of TVL will help increase the valuation of the entire Solana ecosystem.

As TVL grows, DeFi project airdrops, and the liquidity staking market matures, DeFi and LSD products on Solana may attract significant capital. NFT projects, especially projects that combine with the metaverse and gaming fields and enable unique user expression and innovation (such as xNFT), may become investment hot spots.

In the long run, with its focus on the Asia-Pacific market and global expansion plans, Solana may become the world’s leading public chain ecosystem, attracting more international users and developers. Solana’s technological innovations, such as high TPS and low latency, will enable it to take a leading position in high-performance blockchain applications, such as large-scale games and complex DeFi applications. With the success of the DePIN project, it may lead to a new blockchain application trend, integrating blockchain technology with various scenarios in the physical world, bringing innovation to traditional industries.

MT Capital

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, MT Capital is a crypto-native fund focused on Web3 and related technologies. We have a global team, and our diverse cultural backgrounds and perspectives allow us to have an in-depth understanding of the global market and to seize investment opportunities in different regions. MT Capital’s vision is to become the world’s leading blockchain investment firm, focused on supporting early-stage technology companies that can generate significant value. Since 2016, our portfolio covers various fields such as Infra, L1/L2, DeFi, NFT, GameFi and more. We are not just investors, we are the driving force behind the founding team. Official website:https://mt.capital/ Twitter:https://twitter.com/MTCapital_US Medium：@MTCapital_US"">https://medium.com/@MTCapital_US

References

https://www.theblockbeats.info/news/43689

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https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/44826

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https://solana.com/news/solana-hyperdrive-hackathon-winners

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