Original source: OKX

The Solana network and its ecological trading tools have become an important foundation for driving this round of "Memecoin super cycle". The Solana network was created by Anatoly Yakovenko and Greg Fitzgerald in 2017 and officially launched the mainnet in March 2020. It has achieved high throughput, low latency and low fees through its unique technical architecture, and has quickly emerged as one of the leaders in the blockchain field. It has not only attracted the attention of many developers and traders, but also gained widespread attention in the community, making important contributions to promoting the popularization of Web3.0.

This issue is the 04th issue of the "Developer Story" column. From the perspective of Matt Sorg and the OKX Web3 technical team, we will better understand the Solana world. The questions in this column cover multiple topics such as Solana network market hotspots, technological innovation, ecological development, community governance, developer construction, etc., aiming to gain in-depth insights and plans from Solana developers.

How to view Solana and the Memecoin craze

Matt Sorg:There is no doubt that Memecoins are a zero-sum competition. In traditional zero-sum competition games, the platform has a higher commission. But most Memecoins platform fees are very low, and anyone can participate at will. This may mean that DeFi projects can customize services according to user preferences, or individual users find ways to contribute to the project. I don't know exactly how Memecoins will develop, but I don't think it's right to deny them.

OKX Web3:Now many users trade Meme tokens on Solana, which puts higher requirements on the basic performance of the wallet. We have also made a lot of product optimizations:

1) For Meme transactions, OKX Web3 wallet users can choose the ultra-fast transaction mode to trade. The underlying principle is the same as the current mainstream trading robots. They are all connected to the services of third-party transaction channels such as Jito. Among the wallets currently on the market, OKX Web3 wallet is the only wallet manufacturer that has connected to Jito, meeting the needs of Meme users for transaction speed.

2) For Meme prices, we have made special treatment for Meme-type token assets, because the price of Meme coins is ever-changing, and Meme users are very sensitive to the fluctuations of Meme asset token prices. Therefore, the OKX Web3 wallet displays the most real-time prices on the chain for Meme-type assets, and users can perceive the changes in Meme token prices in real time in the OKX Web3 wallet.

From the perspective of long-term development of the industry, we believe that Solana and Memecoin need to be viewed neutrally. At present, Solana has gained a huge number of users and transaction volumes through the Memecoin wave, which is closely related to its high performance, low handling fees, and strong Meme community atmosphere. However, Memecoin still lacks practical applications and is more like a high-volatility game. Looking at the development of Web3 from a long-term perspective, while supporting Memecoins, Solana should still land on more valuable technological innovations and applications to ensure the sustainable development of the ecosystem.

Solana network data Q2 ushered in huge growth and a large number of innovative applications. What is the underlying technology?

Matt Sorg:Solana is a truly differentiated technology. Each component in the network optimizes performance while maintaining decentralization. We currently have thousands of verification nodes around the world. Many organizations contribute to the Solana protocol through multiple client teams, and many commercial organizations are interested in the Solana network, including RPC services, infrastructure, DeFi, etc. Solana's culture is to continuously improve every part of the technology stack, even if they remain ahead today, but one day they will become a bottleneck. Other ecosystems have just begun to discuss some Solana has proposed efficiency as the core since its early days. This approach ensures that all parts of the technology stack are optimized, and the Solana system processes an average of more transactions per day than all other public chains combined.

OKX Web3:We highly recognize Solana’s underlying technology. From the perspective of our wallet, OKX Web3 currently has several differences in terms of support for the Solana network compared to other networks:

· In terms of transaction mode, users can choose to use a third-party transaction channel provider such as Jito to package their transactions on the chain faster. Other networks currently do not have this service.

· In terms of asset analysis, Solana is currently the only network that can perform real-time asset analysis and display all assets. As long as users have newly added token assets, the OKX Web3 wallet can display them in real time.

According to the general market situation, the transaction failure rate on the Solana chain is generally higher than that on the EVM chain. The OKX Web3 team has made a lot of efforts to reduce the transaction failure rate when users use Solana:

· In terms of priority fees, OKX adopts a dynamic pricing method. To expand, because the priority fee on Solana is determined by two factors, Unit Price and Unit Limit, in order to achieve the best effect of the priority fee and prevent users from blindly paying more SOL as the goal, we have analyzed nearly 1,000 transactions on the chain in terms of Unit Price pricing, and can only recommend the best Unit price to users. At the same time, when calculating the Unit Limit, we will not blindly set too high a Limit number. Setting too high a Limit is not conducive to the packaging and chaining of transactions. Therefore, we will calculate the estimated Limit consumption of this transaction as a reference, saving priority fees while ensuring that the transaction is faster and easier to successfully chain.

· In terms of broadcast strategy, we adopted a multi-node broadcast solution and selected the top node service provider on Solana for multi-node broadcast. At the same time, we also connected to third-party transaction channel manufacturers such as Jito, which can broadcast transactions to the chain faster. And the success rate is higher.

The transaction failure rate has been reduced from a maximum of 70% to a minimum of 0.8%. Compared with the transaction failure rate data on the chain, we remain ahead.

Will the Blinks protocol and Solana ecosystem mobile phone promote the large-scale adoption of Solana?

Matt Sorg：Good products start with meeting a pressing need for users and iterate from there. One of the main benefits of decentralization is not just the idea, but the ability for businesses to operate in a permissionless, self-interested way. Blinks extends this permissionless integration to Web2. Users don’t have to wait for other platforms — Solana’s wallets and apps can iterate and create products that users love.

The beauty of Blinks is that its infrastructure was originally launched as part of Solana Pay. The API spec takes in a wallet public key and returns a serialized transaction, but its prototype was limited by its name to payment scenarios. Solana Actions officially expands the application scenarios of this spec beyond just payment functions. With Actions, blockchain protocols can be turned into services, making them actions that can be shared anywhere (via Blinks). On Solana, Actions and Blinks enable any website and app on the Internet to become a distribution point for on-chain interactions, further driving mainstream user adoption. If you combine this with all of Solana’s strengths, you can create a whole new economic model.

In short, Solana has achieved a diversified economy in a shared state in a unique way. Payments, DePIN, games, RWA, etc. all run in the same shared state and are connected to each other through highly liquid DeFi protocols. I believe that as time goes by and the Solana network effect continues to grow, large-scale user adoption will gradually be achieved, bringing an experience that is difficult to match with closed Web2 applications.

OKX Web3: Solana has burst out enough creativity in ecological expansion, which not only enriches native Web3 use cases, but also increases the exposure of Solana and even Web3 technology in Web2, which is bound to promote Solana's ecological prosperity. From the perspective of the three parties, whether it is the Blinks protocol or the Solana ecological mobile phone, the emergence of these new applications will greatly lower the technical threshold and attract more mainstream users, especially those who are not familiar with Web3 technology and applications, to enter Solana. At the same time, these new tools, new platforms, and possibilities will also attract more developers to participate in building the Solana ecosystem, and ultimately drive the long-term growth of the Solana ecosystem's user base and transaction volume.

Solana Development Environment, Network Security, and Cutting-Edge Technology

Matt Sorg:In terms of the development environment, SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) separates executable code and state, allowing programs to be easily reused in different configurations. Many applications do not need to deploy code on the chain, creating an environment where both front-end developers and on-chain developers can play their respective roles and play an important role in the DApp layer. There are many incentives here to enable other application developers to build code in a large interconnected ecosystem. In addition to the basic execution environment, developers can also collaborate extensively in hackathons, Hacker Houses, training camps, and even long Twitter/X discussions. The first hackathon "Renaissance" held on the Colosseum platform in the first half of 2024 attracted more than 8,300 participants and received 1,071 project submissions. The second hackathon "Radar" saw an increase of more than 36% over "Renaissance", with more than 11,000 registrations. The upcoming "Electric Capital" report will show the significant growth of Solana developers.

In terms of network security, Solana has maintained extensive audits and active security programs, including bug bounty programs. As the blockchain industry matures, many professional security organizations have emerged, such as the Blockchain Industry Information Sharing and Analysis Center Crypto-ISAC, Security Alliance (SEAL), Immunefi, etc. The Solana Foundation is also actively working with these organizations to strengthen the security of the ecosystem. Good engineering design requires attention to detail, while making gradual improvements and continuous learning. While Solana is referred to as a monolithic chain, technically its codebase is quite modular, which is driven by the Solana Foundation. Additionally, as mentioned above, there is a lot of redundancy between clients and parts of the stack, and the Solana Foundation also plays a coordination role, including the Solana Improvement Document (SIMD) process.

In terms of cutting-edge technology, Solana is a rethinking of the way blockchain processes and disseminates data. It is at the forefront of throughput and speed, processing more transactions than all other public chains combined. For more detailed data, you can click here to view.

OKX Web3: Our team has been committed to providing a good wallet solution service provider for Solana developers. We will soon launch Solana support on OKX OS, providing a complete wallet solution for Solana ecosystem builders. At the same time, the OKX Connect product launched on Telegram will also soon support Solana links, thereby helping Solana ecosystem developers focus more on building products in their own fields and building communities together.

At the same time, we will regularly invite Solana developers online and offline to discuss the pain points of current community users and the direction of building the Solana community in the future. We hope to achieve a complete closed loop in supporting the Solana ecosystem. Contribute OKX's own strength to the construction of the Solana ecosystem.

For example, at present, one of the characteristics of the Solana chain is that many project parties will directly airdrop tokens to users without actively claiming them. This causes ordinary users to have a large number of non-actively acquired tokens or NFTs of different values on Solana. The OKX Web3 team has done a lot of construction on asset display: Currently, Solana users can experience the display of full assets and real-time asset analysis on the OKX Web3 wallet. If you are importing your wallet address into the OKX Web3 wallet for the first time, you can view all the assets with balances on your address. If you purchase new token assets on Solana, you can see your purchased assets in real time on the OKX Web3 wallet homepage, without having to add additional token contracts to view your newly added token assets.

Talking about applications, the PayFi narrative on Solana, the re-staking narrative, and the new standard "Token Extensions" for SPL tokens

Matt Sorg:In my opinion, PayFi is programmable money. Blockchains are used to buy, sell, and pay for commercial purposes, all of which can be customized and use DeFi to reduce friction and improve liquidity. Whether it is Web2, Web3 or other systems, Solana is the best performing and lowest-threshold system in the world.

Solana functions very similarly to Ethereum’s staking track, and there are currently multiple applications that benefit from Solana’s infrastructure, leveraging Solana’s economic security to secure some applications that are not directly through consensus. The difference between the two is similar to the L2 discussion above, with the main technical difference being SWQoS,

Token Extensions are fully audited on-chain codes that developers can use to configure tokens to their liking without deploying on-chain code. They provide ready-made options to unlock important use cases, such as:

· Confidential transfers conceal the amount of tokens transferred in a compliant manner, as the sender and recipient addresses of the transfer are known and issuers can register as auditors.

· Transfer hooks allow for the use of customizable logic to attach conditions to transfers. Developers can trigger certain processes and even create a permissioned ecosystem around tokens, even on a permissionless blockchain like Solana.

· To learn more, you can click here to view.

OKX Web3: Token Extensions allow tokens to come with different functions, such as freezing, destruction, transfer restrictions, etc., which greatly expands the complex application scenarios of tokens. The expansion of this type of basic capabilities gives Solana DApp developers great development freedom. For example, Transfer hooks limit the execution of specific logic when transferring, which has many applications in DeFi, games and other compliance scenarios. For example, stablecoin developers can ensure that the recipient account meets specific KYC (know your customer) or AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, and only qualified accounts can receive tokens.

ZK Compression technology sparked heated discussions in the community. Does the Solana network need L2?

Matt Sorg: In order to achieve Solana's goal of synchronizing global status at close to the speed of light, it needs to flexibly adapt to multiple configurations. ZK compression makes it possible to verify any amount of data on the mainnet with a small memory footprint, which is data expansion. Entities like Light Protocol and Helius are developing technologies such as ZK compression that allow expansion in multiple dimensions. Other projects focus on tasks with high computational requirements, including machine learning (ML). Some off-chain calculations will be embedded in blocks, and others may be similar to L2 solutions.

· The Solana mainnet doesn’t care about the naming of submitted transactions, its job is to connect these transactions as frictionlessly and permissionlessly as possible.

· Solana demonstrates the ultimate in on-chain performance while remaining sufficiently decentralized. Often, solutions exist because some configuration is incompatible with the mainnet.

· Geolocked verification, KYC, and localized performance (not trying to sync global state) are some examples of configurations that may differ.

What is your vision for the future development of Solana? And how long do you think the crypto industry will exist?

Matt Sorg:There are extremely diverse communities within and outside the Solana ecosystem, and many companies are happy to support these communities and developers. The role of the Solana Foundation is to do things that are difficult for any one institution to do. We facilitate conversations, communicate with those who want to engage with more formal ecosystem organizations, and help provide content that anyone can use to introduce users and developers to great upcoming projects in the ecosystem. We are actually excited about the foundation becoming less important over time. Super teams, in-person communities of builders, community-hosted conferences, etc. have truly taken on a life of their own.

Technical development often involves multiple parallel leadership. People make many wrong assumptions about technological development, especially as it relates to Solana. The "Blockchain Triangle Dilemma" comes from a blog post by Vitalik that describes broad considerations of common trade-offs, but it is not a rule. Some people seem to think that Solana is at the limit of the "Triangle Dilemma" as long as bottlenecks occur, which means that drastic trade-offs must be made. The reality is that even on current hardware, Solana's development may only be 2% complete. This may sound worrying, but remember that Solana has already processed more transactions than all other public chains combined. This is excellent, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.

I am sure that the use of mathematics on bits will far exceed human existence.

OKX Web3:Solana's ecological construction is one of the core projects of OKX Web3. We hope to build a friendly multi-chain wallet for Solana ecosystem users. Especially in terms of underlying capabilities and ecological support, we have established a Solana project to focus more resources on building the Solana ecosystem.

In terms of underlying capabilities, due to the surge in transaction volume on the Solana chain at the beginning of the year, the transaction failure rate suddenly increased. After in-depth research on the characteristics of the Solana chain, we have done in-depth research and support on the optimization of transaction speed and transaction success rate. It has become the first wallet on the market to access Jito's third-party service, and has also built the best priority fee solution with the Solana community. The transaction speed has increased from 10 s to 2s. The transaction failure rate has been reduced from a maximum of 70% to a minimum of 0.8%. In terms of Solana asset analysis, OKX has also made great changes. Currently, the three terminals can support real-time analysis of assets on Solana, and there is no need to manually add token contracts to view your newly added assets.

In terms of ecological support, Solana's latest Token 2022 protocol, we have deeply supported the analysis and trading of this type of tokens at the beginning of the year, and will continue to explore more functions derived from the Token 2022 protocol. With the explosion of Blinks in the middle of the year, the OKX Web3 wallet also integrated Blinks as soon as possible. You can buy Crypto shared by Blinks through the OKX Web3 wallet, and you can also create Blinks in the OKX Web3 wallet and share it on your Twitter. At the same time, we have also launched Meme mode for Meme users, which can achieve transaction speeds that are completely comparable to the fastest trading robots on the market, and you can also view the most real-time token prices in the OKX Web3 wallet. For Sonic, the most popular wallet on the SVM in the current Solana ecosystem, we have also recently completed the integration and became one of the earliest wallets to try out the Solana L2 and Gamefi ecosystems. We jointly launched exclusive activities for Sonic and OKX, which gained a lot of participation and exposure from Solana users.

Solana is one of the important communities of Web3. We hope that Solana will continue to maintain its technological leadership in the future, expand the ecosystem, promote user growth and community building, promote Web3 to mainstream users, and allow more Web2 users to enter the world of blockchain and experience the innovation brought by encryption technology. We believe that the crypto industry will exist for a long time, which depends not only on the development of crypto technology and application scenarios, but also on innovation and integration with the real world.

About the "Developer Story" column

Web3 developers have made important contributions to the development of the crypto industry. Their innovative spirit and technical capabilities have injected lasting vitality and momentum into the development of the entire industry, not only improving the technology itself, but also providing support for future application scenarios and business models. But although they are active, they are rarely paid attention to. The "Developer Story" column launched by OKX Web3 and Chain Catcher aims to understand the development context, technical insights, latest developments, market changes, hot comments, etc. of different public chains from the perspective of developers through dialogues with core developers of different public chain ecosystems and the OKX Web3 technical team, enhance the voice of Web3 developers, approach these most active and interesting people, and provide them with the greatest support.

Disclaimer

This content is for reference only and does not constitute and should not be considered as (i) investment advice or recommendation, (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold digital assets, or (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) are subject to market fluctuations, involve high risks, and may depreciate or even become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation and risk tolerance. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professional for your specific situation. Not all products are available in all regions. For more details, please refer to the OKX Terms of Service and Risk Disclosure & Disclaimer. OKX Web3 Mobile Wallet and its derivative services are subject to separate terms of service. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with local applicable laws and regulations.

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