After the Meme frenzy on Solana, what will be the next development?
Table of Contents
Why did Solana become popular?
Internal reasons:
External reasons:
Inventory of ecological hotspots
Meme
Infrastructure
Recently, the emergence of BOME has triggered a wave of speculation on Solana, raising over 655,000 SOL in 27 presales and significantly increasing on-chain activity.
Source: https://analytics.step.finance
However, as the hype subsides and market sentiment weakens, most Memes have experienced a short-lived surge and are now in a downward trend, with only a few exceptions.
Nevertheless, the future development of Solana cannot be ignored. Some even compare the development of the BTC ecosystem and the Solana ecosystem to the previous development of the ETH and BSC ecosystems (with the assumption that we are still in a bull market and the overall market will continue to rise). Today, let’s take a brief look at the Solana ecosystem.
Before taking inventory of the ecosystem, let’s briefly analyze why the Solana ecosystem has become so popular:
1) Excellent performance: low cost, low latency, and high throughput. Solana has the capacity to handle high traffic. The essence of finance is transactions, and the truly popular things in the crypto market are all related to transactions. As a platform, Solana continues to improve its speed and smoothness through technological advancements.
2) Solana itself has performed well in this cycle, rising from a low of $8 to a peak of $210, reaching the fourth highest market capitalization. The rise of Solana has benefited its holders, naturally leading to resources flowing into its ecosystem.
3) When the overall market heats up, the Solana ecosystem remains active and performs well. Both the inscription craze and the Meme craze have generated representative projects.
4) With continuous hot money flowing into Solana, numerous Solana projects have surpassed $10 million and even $100 million in market capitalization. On the other hand, even though some Ethereum projects have good concepts, they struggle to reach $10 million in market capitalization due to internal turmoil. If we compare Solana’s on-chain activity to a simple mode, then Ethereum’s on-chain activity is like a hellish mode.
As Ethereum is the chain with the highest on-chain activity, although it recently completed the London hard fork upgrade, it has not made any improvement to the main chain. Moreover, due to the recent bullish market, the price of Ethereum has increased, resulting in higher transaction costs on the chain. This discourages users from using Ethereum for transactions. Transaction fees can range from tens to hundreds of dollars, and this back and forth can consume 20% of the funds, leading people to turn to other chains. Solana has benefited the most from this situation.
Recently, there has been a viral spread of memes about Ethereum, which shows people’s disappointment with it.
Given Solana’s current high popularity, it is unlikely that the market will end at this point. Let’s take stock of the Solana ecosystem and highlight some projects worth paying attention to. The selection criteria include a certain level of popularity, usage, and the fact that the industry favors new projects rather than old ones from the previous market cycle.
The Meme track is an important track in this market cycle. Some believe that the lack of innovation in this cycle has led to the popularity of simple and straightforward Memes. In this market cycle, the Meme trend has experienced at least three waves of excitement: Pepe, BRC20, and SOL ecosystem.
Although the Meme craze in the SOL ecosystem has recently declined and is currently at a standstill, projects like Pepe and BRC20 have already experienced two waves of excitement. Therefore, the Meme trend in the SOL ecosystem is still worth paying attention to. As for how to operate specifically, please conduct your own research.
1) WIF
In late 2019, some KOLs started adding knitted hats to various logos and images and used these pictures as their profiles on Twitter. The image of a dog wearing a knitted hat was created in this context, and the process of WIF token issuance was quietly carried out. According to market data, WIF started trading on November 20, 2023, at a price of $0.00016 per token, but the first official tweet was released on December 29. The creation of WIF and its current market value can be described as lukewarm. By the time everyone paid attention to it, it had already taken off.
2) Bonk
Bonk is the first dog project in the Solana ecosystem. On December 25, 2022, the official conducted a large-scale airdrop, with 50% distributed to Solana community members, including holders of projects such as LamportDAO and Famous Fox Federation. The purpose of this activity was to promote community interaction and reward participants, aiming to oppose the “Alameda” style token economics and restore confidence in the Solana ecosystem and SOL holders after the FTX incident.
3) Bome
On March 13, the artist Darkfarms launched a presale, allowing users to participate by sending SOL to a designated Solana address. Token distribution is determined based on the proportion of SOL donated. After raising 10,131 SOL, Darkfarms added all the SOL to the liquidity pool, causing a market uproar. In just three days, the market capitalization skyrocketed from $4 million to $100 million, and it was listed on BN, creating a frenzy on the chain.
4) Slerf
During the frenzy, SLERF also played a role. However, due to operational errors by the founder of SLERF, 54,583 SOL worth of LP and airdrop reserved tokens were destroyed. Since no one had any tokens, SLERF became completely out of the control of the project team and became fully decentralized, forming a new meme concept and gaining popularity among market users. Recently, the official launched a fundraising campaign to compensate for the losses of participating users. Although many CEXs have also launched donation activities, most of them are just riding the hype without substantial spending, and the current donation activities are not ideal.
Similar to the previous explosion of BRC20 and the recent development of Bitcoin’s infrastructure, institutions have begun investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The popularity of Solana Memes will inevitably extend to the entire Solana infrastructure.
1) Jupiter (dex)
Jupiter is an aggregated DEX on Solana. Its goal is to continuously optimize and update to improve the user trading experience and provide the best exchange rates. It achieves this by integrating major liquidity markets on Solana, such as Orca, Raydium, and Serum.
Jupiter has launched its native token, JUP, and distributed it to the community through airdrops and token sales. Among them, 40% of JUP tokens will be distributed to about 955,000 eligible users in the Jupiter Exchange community through airdrops. Another 20% will be distributed through token sales, and the remaining 40% will be reserved for internal personnel and strategic reserves.
As of March 24, Jupiter’s total trading volume has exceeded $120 billion, accounting for over 80% of Solana DEX’s organic trading volume, making it the preferred trading platform on Solana.
https://station.jup.ag
2) Pyth Network (Oracle)
Pyth Network is an oracle on Solana. It gathers financial market data from over 350 data sources, including major CEXs/DEXs and market makers such as BN, OKX, and Bybit, and transmits this data to 45+ blockchains, providing users with real-time market prices and financial data.
In addition, Pyth Network supports over 230 applications, including DEXs, lending protocols, and derivatives platforms. Its infrastructure can achieve over 65 million updates per day, improving the accuracy and security of smart contract operations.
Pyth Network has completed three rounds of funding, with investment institutions including Delphi digital and KuCoin Labs, and has received a grant of 40,000 OP from the OP Foundation. Pyth’s data association members include heavyweight institutions on Wall Street, such as Jump, SBF’s former employer Jane Street Capital, SIG, and market maker Virtu Financial.
3) Helium Mobile (Depin)
Helium Mobile is a decentralized 5G operator that incentivizes individuals to purchase hotspot devices similar to routers (Hostpots) and deploy these hotspots in various indoor and outdoor environments to create a decentralized wireless network. This model reduces costs, expands coverage, and lowers user fees.
Simply put, it is similar to mining. Users pay $20 per month for the service and receive token rewards while providing map data.
Currently, Helium Mobile has surpassed 70,000 users.
4) iot.net (Depin+AI)
io.net is a cloud computing project that provides a decentralized GPU network to address AI computing shortages. It aims to provide users with efficient and cost-effective computing power and simplify the management and utilization of GPU resources.
io.net utilizes GPU resources globally and allows users to deploy and utilize these resources with a simple click. It provides high-performance computing capabilities for building distributed GPU networks, conducting inference and model service workflows, and supports distributed computing libraries for orchestrating and batch training operations.
In addition, io.net supports the deployment of clusters on decentralized physical infrastructure networks and provides fast and secure Solana on-chain payments. The platform also provides fair pricing mechanisms and the ability to convert GPUs into revenue, allowing users to rent out their GPU resources and earn income.
io.net announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round in March this year, with participation from institutions such as Solana Labs, Mult1C0in Capital, Animoca Brands, etc.
5) Magic Eden (NFT Marketplace)
Magic Eden is the largest NFT marketplace on Solana. It currently supports NFT markets on Solana, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Polygon. As one of the early NFT marketplaces to support Bitcoin NFTs, Magic Eden benefited from the Bitcoin ecosystem’s explosion last year.
Magic Eden launched a “Rewards Program” where users participating in marketplace transactions can earn diamond rewards. It is expected that the subsequent token issuance will be linked to diamonds. In addition, Magic Eden recently launched its own wallet.
Magic Eden has completed three rounds of funding, with a total funding amount exceeding $170 million. Investment institutions include Coinbase, Sequoia Capital, Polygon Ventures, Paradigm, etc.
NFT marketplace trading volume market share, source: https://dune.com
6) Backpack Ecosystem
Backpack is a CEX/DEX and multi-chain wallet developed by the Coral team, the developer of the Solana development framework Anchor. The project was initiated by former FTX executives and, thanks to their relationship with FTX executives, the platform has obtained a license from the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), allowing the company to provide crypto services to qualified investors and institutional clients in Dubai. Currently, Backpack has launched three products: Backpack CEX, Backpack Wallet, and MadLads NFT project.
Among them, Mad Lads is an NFT with executable script code, released by the team in April 2023, sold for 6.9 SOL at the time, and has now become the leading NFT in the SOL ecosystem. This NFT can be compared to a gold shovel and has received several waves of airdrops.
Backpack has completed two rounds of funding, totaling $37 million. Investment institutions include FTX, Jump Crypto, Amber Group, Wintermute, and Solana founder, among others.
7) Solana Mobile Saga
Solana’s first mobile phone, Saga, allowed early adopters to earn significant benefits through free airdrops. The Solana Mobile development team plans to launch the second-generation crypto phone in the first half of 2025, with pre-sales starting at the end of 2023. Pre-sales will be divided into three stages, with each stage being more expensive than the previous one. The first stage is priced at $450, and the second stage is priced at $500. As of now, 118,000 units have been sold, and early participants have received airdrops worth around $100.
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