The rise and fall of Solana $SOL

https://typefully.com/CharlieXYZ_/V6DhnuX

I am usually a positive person, but Solana somehow triggers my nerves. Many people don't know the facts so let me enlighten you. I will cover these topics: - Lies that brought $SOL to the top - Solana's inflated metrics - Current situation & where do we go from here

Let's start with the lies. The Solana team said the total circulating supply was 8.2 million tokens in April 2020 - but an independent 3rd party found a wallet with 13 million more! If you think this is OK, now it is time to stop reading.

The 11.3 million of those tokens, according to Solana, were lent to a "market maker." Now we know the market maker must have been Alameda Research & FTX, respectively Sam and Caroline.

This is the first time Solana showed their true character.

I highly recommend reading this thread from @Justin_Bons. He explained it perfectly.

The second lie that I call 'the biggest DeFi con' happened in 2021.

Long story short - $SOL dramatic rise to the top was 'Fugayzi, fugazi'... or also called FAKE.

All orchestrated by two brothers. Allegedly - of course.

It's no big deal, you might say, but let me explain:

The main Solana protocol at the start of $SOL rise was Saber Protocol.

With DeFi popularity last year, TVL became key metric for investors.

Macalinao brothers knew it and decided to do something about $SOL TVL number.

What did these 'masterminds' do?

They created 11 separate identities of independent developers who seemed to be working on different projects. Their web of interconnected protocols caused billions in double-counted value to appear on Solana.

70% of $SOL TVL at its peak.

Well - DeFi world including myself had no clue until summer 2022.

Mix up this con with brilliant marketing, some extra CT hype, VCs involvement, and the famous market maker.

And the result of it?

$SOL price went to over $250 - back in Nov 2021.

But not all investors care about TVL, right? Well - it is a 'great' thing Solana has been known for inflating even other key metrics: - TPS - TXS count - Developer activity.

You know how some traditional companies are using adjusted EBITDA in their favor? We all hate it, right? Well, Solana is using adjusted TPS metric. The pink colour is the real TPS, the rest are validator votes.

The same applies to transaction counts.

Somehow Solana believes putting inflated numbers is a good strategy. In this case including validator votes (approx. 90%).

And lastly, the most recent 'problem' - developer activity.

You could have seen @tokenterminal updating their chart and acknowledging their mistake. Kudos to them. The numbers simply did not make sense.

The updated version states that $SOL has 72 active devs.

But how Solana reacted honestly surprised me.

They claim Solana has 2053 total active developers on projects with a Solana integration, 1654 of them focused on Solana only, and 120 full time active devs.

I will leave the conclusion up to you.

This all was part of the fall of Solana. I could dig way deeper and mention these topics:

- SBF & Caroline

- Serum

- USDT mystery mint

- Censorship

- Network 'outages'

But let's focus on present time.

Solana has been struggling and has currently TVL around $200M.

I often read on CT that $SOL is due for an upside...

Oh boy - let me tell you something.

Your tokens have been overpriced since the inflated TVL & people's perception of them.

Result? The highest MC/TVL out there for the past year.

And right now at its peak.

Solana has been known for its diverse & booming NFT scene.

Well - two days ago the two biggest NFT collections decided to leave to $MATIC and $ETH.

- @DeGodsNFT

- @y00tsNFT

It's no big deal, you might say once again.

But I kindly disagree.

This post is directed to $SOL leadership.

The $SOL community is one of the strongest out there and now is the time to get back to work. Let's prove everyone, including myself, that $SOL belongs to the top.

Let's start by presenting honest numbers.

Although it will be extremely hard.

I am not trying to dunk on Solana here, but I absolutely agree with this:

When I was researching more info about this topic, I stumbled across an article & TW thread from @tomiwa1a.

It is insane that he created this masterpiece back in January without even knowing about the inflated TVL.

Kudos to him.

If you would like to read more about $SOL controversies, I also recommend reading this recent thread from @Justin_Bons.