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Rediscovering the value of Solana: growing quietly in the backlight

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Solana is more often developed quietly in backlights that receive less market attention. At that time, Solana’s annual ecological conference “Breakpoint” was in progress.

Original Title: "Solana Value Rediscovery: Quietly Growing in the Backlight"

Original Source: Odaily Planet Daily

When writing this article, Solana (SOL) is experiencing its strongest rebound after the bull market, with a price of around $43.

As one of the most stunning projects in the last bull market (perhaps without "one"), Solana once wore the halo of "Ethereum Killer" and, with the help of a certain explosive head, briefly rose to the top three in the Crypto market value rankings.

However, with the sudden collapse of the FTX empire, Solana, which was deeply involved, was also hit hard. The price of the coin fell by 90%, ecological projects fled, and some unexpected downtime incidents. Solana gradually fell from grace, and the thousands of attention once focused on it have quietly dissipated.

In the current era where Ethereum's dominant position is becoming more and more solid and Layer 2 narratives are prevalent, Solana, as a representative of "other" Layer 1, has been quietly developing in the "backlight" with relatively low market attention. However, the recent consecutive bullish trends seem to be declaring to the market that it has emerged from the old shadows and is about to open a new chapter.

Regarding the past story of Solana, interested readers can listen to the podcast "HODLong 后浪" episode 22 by STEPN's Chief Revenue Officer Mable, titled "Solana 沉浮录：很多的偶然与少许的必然". The episode details how Solana went from a less-funded Layer 1 to the top of the track, how it completed the 0 to 1 launch, how SBF became associated with Solana, and how Solana, the "big shot", perfected its growth flywheel. Please click here to access the content.

Odaily has the text version of this podcast available on their website. For those who are unable to listen, you can read it directly by clicking on the link.

As a former partner of Multicoin Capital, another major investment institution in the Solana industry, Mable predicted the future development of Solana at that time: Solana is unlikely to die, but it will no longer operate in the same way as before.

Looking back now, without the key words such as "exchange", "market maker", and "big players", Solana's development seems to be more pure.

- In April, Solana launched a new feature called "state compression" for NFT storage, which can reduce the cost of minting NFTs on Solana by 2400-24000 times. The cost of minting 1 million NFTs will be reduced from $250,000 to $110.

- In July, Solana released the GameShift API, aimed at empowering developers to create Web3 games on Solana and simplifying the development process.

- In the same month, Neon, an EVM-compatible solution based on Solana, was officially launched on the mainnet. Subsequently, Solana also released a Solidity-compatible smart contract compiler, aiming to further bridge the connection with the EVM ecosystem.

- At the end of August and beginning of September, Shopify and Visa announced their integration with Solana, expanding Solana's payment services in the Web2 world.

- It is still September, and Rune Christensen, the founder of Maker, an OG project on Ethereum, publicly praised Solana, believing that Solana has the most promising codebase and can serve as the foundation for Maker to build a new chain.

- In October, the Firedancer client developed by Jump Crypto officially launched its testnet. In addition, Syndica is also leading the development of another client, Sig, and the development of the lightweight client TinyDancer is also actively underway.

除了网络层面的开发改善之外，Solana 亦在积极推进其生态建设。仅在刚刚过去的第三季度内，Solana 已与其他生态合作伙伴共同举办、赞助了 OPOS、Hyperdrive、Hacker Houses、PlayGG 等多场黑客松活动，向多支优秀团队提供了上百万美元的早期资金。

Translation:

In addition to improving development at the network level, Solana is also actively promoting its ecosystem construction. In just the past third quarter, Solana has jointly organized and sponsored multiple hackathon events with other ecosystem partners, including OPOS, Hyperdrive, Hacker Houses, PlayGG, and provided early funding of millions of dollars to multiple excellent teams.

Currently, the annual ecological conference "Breakpoint" hosted by Solana in Amsterdam is about to enter its third day. However, just like Solana, which has long been in the backlight, the exposure of this conference on social media (especially in the Chinese-speaking community) seems to be not as satisfactory as Devconnect half a month later.

Former investment assistant Alexander Golding at Solana Labs' Delphi Digital made some brief notes on the content of the conference two days before, mentioning that the actual number of attendees was more than last year, and many new faces were met. Interested users can follow his social media account for more information.

In simple terms, this is more like a grand event for developers.

Jump Crypto announced the launch of Firedancer's testnet on the first day of the conference and received praise from a group of technical experts. Georgios Konstantopoulos, Chief Technology Officer of Paradigm, expressed his liking for the client; Raoul Pal, founder of Global Macro Investor, stated that this is a great leap forward for blockchain technology; Justin Bons, founder of Cyber Capital, even claimed that he has changed from a critic of Solana to a supporter because of this.

除了备受关注的 Firedancer 之外，许多 Solana 生态项目们也都在「Breakpoint」公布了最新进展，Pyth Network 昨日公布了追溯性空投计划，看起来 Jupiter 似乎明天也官宣些什么。

Translation:

Aside from the highly anticipated Firedancer, many Solana ecosystem projects have also announced their latest developments on "Breakpoint". Pyth Network announced a retrospective airdrop plan yesterday, and it seems that Jupiter will also announce something tomorrow, according to their official Twitter account.

It is worth mentioning that Golding emphasized in his Day 2 record that there were almost no VC investors with exchange backgrounds present at this "Breakpoint" event, except for Coinbase Ventures and OKX Ventures. However, this allowed the Solana team and community developers to have more time for close communication. Perhaps, this is exactly what Solana wants.

In short, the original intention of this article is not to promote Solana or recommend buying SOL. In fact, I personally do not suggest taking any action at the moment because with the imminent closure of "Breakpoint", it is foreseeable that the short-term traffic peak of Solana will pass, and there will be some uncertainty in the subsequent market.

The reason for writing this article is to hope that everyone can objectively view the development of Solana today (referring to the post-FTX era) and understand the specific direction of Solana after stepping out of historical shadows.

It was not knocked down by the black swan, just as it stood out and was recognized by SBF in the past. Many of its advantages still exist and will continue to be extended.

It is not perfect, but it is getting better.

It is not called "FTX Chain" or "SBF Chain" ... in the past, present, and future, it is only called Solana.