Solana Latest Status: What’s Happening on Solana?

Original title: What's Actually Happening On Solana Now?

Author: Rui, researcher at SevenX Ventures; Compiler: 0xxz@黄金财经

Cryptocurrency and the US stock market have decoupled, making them less sensitive to rate cuts. Now on Solana, memes fade, sandwich robots make a killing, and many people "told you so."

Network stability, base and storage fee flaws, single client reliance, etc. have been criticized, and many people are skeptical and hateful. We all agree that we are in the Age of Exploration - if people haven't lost faith. This is the ultimate warm-up for enthusiasts and haters before the Solana Breakpoit Conference.

"The wider the road, the more congested it is."

Higher TPS leads to "induced demand", which attracts more crazy projects, leading to more traffic and congestion, just like what happened on ORE. Multiple efforts are underway to scale Solana:

• Mainnet level: anza.xyz solves the scheduler problem by avoiding "locks" of conflicting transactions. Clients like Jump's firedancer, Jito enhance horizontal scalability, improve fault tolerance, and reduce latency.

• Rollup level: consistently faster than mainnet with co-located nodes. Batcher (temporary) solutions like magic block maintain smart contracts and liquidity on mainnet while maximizing efficiency.

 “What is the mission of Solana Rollup?”

Ethereum and Solana's L2 services are different. Op and Arb are solving Ethereum's scaling problems. However, on high-performance Solana, simply emulating L2 may be redundant.

Solana L2 can focus on special-purpose runtimes such as gasless transactions, privacy, signature verification, different block times, MEV strategies, etc.

Zeta Markets is developing its perpetual contract DEX, Drift Protocol can reorder transactions one by one, and Grass is used for massive data verification. (Avoiding all the terminology from OG Equilibrium investment partner mhonkasalo, Multicoin founder Kyle Samani here).

 “Will CEXs push LST on Solana?”

I am not a member of the LST fan club. Solana staking is easy and can be unstaked at any time, making native staking with no contractual risk the choice of 93.7% of stakers. Jito has captured most of the remaining market by incentivizing its MEV revenue.

Information from Binance, Bitget, Bybit indicates new players entering the LST market, and it is expected that Sanctum's unlimited LST pool will increase liquidity. However, the real question is how to translate into real user growth. Imagine LST with PayFi: Use the proceeds to pay for your Helium 5G subscription instead of USDC, or follow the example of Santum founder soleconomist staking LST to support creators to earn returns.

In terms of re-staking, Jito and Squads Protocol, Renzo Protocol, Fragmetric started re-staking, and Solayer also joined the competition. I hope someone can provide me with a more powerful AVS as soon as possible.

 "Why do the masses need cryptocurrency?" 

• DePIN. I am a Helium 5G user, it is fully functional and cheap. Now they want to become a "network of networks" - opening up more DePINs to build on existing devices or networks, helping them achieve compliance, operations, etc.

• AI. It’s unknown if exolabs will eventually be implemented on Solana, but imagine end users using edge devices to run your AI clusters — real users, real incentives, real value. Also, expect more AI trading bots to provide easy, smart access.

• PayFi. Using Sling Money and Tiplink on mobile access, Buy Now Pay Never provides an opportunity for the time value of money.

• Prediction markets. Drift brings us election predictions; but who says you can’t predict the price of memes, there are jogojogo; Ratex’s revenue opportunities, etc.

• Memes are not original sins, the other side of the coin is fair launch. We must think about business ideas that are scalable and sustainable, not purely bullying a minority.

 “What is the fair question to ask?” 

• If almost all Solana applications are centralized, what’s the point?

It’s unfair to blame applications for wanting to build moats and achieve privacy. Protocols can’t take all the profits.

• Why is MEV extracting so much unethical value from memes, aren’t sophisticated actors competing to reduce slippage to protect users?

Applications should improve the user experience through fair and (automatically) accurate slippage, perhaps using a validator reputation system based on execution slippage.

• Who is building Solana DeFi?  

Jupiter Exchange serves as an interface, AMMs such as Raydium Protocol, Orca use a permissionless approach to work; perpetual contracts include Drift Protocol, Zeta Markets; exchanges have Backpack; stablecoin infrastructure has Perena; bringing digital assets to more SVMs has Metaplex ; lending has SEND and so on.

 "It's not a sin for a bird not to swim"

Blockchains have different pedigrees. The best globalization is localization - this is what I learned at Tiktokus, which has identified 5 important strategic regions: Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North America, Europe, and China. Different languages, compliance, resources, policies, culture, and atmosphere.

Now, living in New York, I feel two powerful armies.

Base, as an EVM compliance army, has a TVL dominance dominated by stablecoins - thanks to the support of Coinbase and Circle. In addition, cbBTC may be its next big hit.

However, Solana is more like an ordinary army, a real retail carnival. If you think it won’t be the home of RWA, I’ll let you win, but look at the nonstop fighters like Solana labs co-founder Toly, Helius Labs CEO Mert, Solana Foundation Chairman lilyliu, Colossum, hackathons and communities from the US, Singapore, Korea and China where people celebrate, gamble, have fun and live in an efficient and affordable world.  

What the hell is going on with SoLaNa now? Build and make it happen.