After the wave of Meme frenzy on Solana, what will happen next?
Summary:
Bringing BTC to SOL? A quick look at the architecture of the Solana cross-chain bridge “Zeus” and token economics.
Background:
With frequent cases of fund-raising scams, the “Meme presale money-making” model on Solana is dead?
Table of Contents:
Why Solana is popular
Internal Reasons:
External Reasons:
Inventory of Ecological Hotspots
Meme
Infrastructure
Recently, due to the emergence of BOME, Solana has experienced a wave of speculation, raising over 655,000 SOL in 27 presales and witnessing a surge in on-chain activity.
Source: https://analytics.step.finance
However, as the hype subsides and market sentiment weakens in recent days, most of the Meme projects have experienced a decline. Most of them were short-lived and only a few were able to succeed.
Nevertheless, the future development of Solana cannot be ignored, with some even comparing it to the development of ETH and BSC ecosystems in the previous bull market phase (under 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 examining the ecosystem, let’s analyze why the Solana ecosystem has become so popular:
1) Excellent performance – low cost, low latency, and high throughput. When there is a large influx of traffic, Solana can handle it. The essence of finance is transactions, and the things that truly drive the crypto market crazy are all related to transactions. As a platform, Solana continues to improve its speed and smoothness.
2) Solana itself has performed well in this cycle, rising from a low of $8 to a high of $210, surpassing many others to become the fourth-largest market cap. The rise of Solana has rewarded its holders, naturally leading to resources flowing into its ecosystem.
3) When the overall market heats up, the Solana ecosystem remains strong and performs well. Both the NFT frenzy and the Meme frenzy have produced representative projects.
4) With the continuous influx of hot money into Solana, numerous Solana-based projects have achieved market caps of over $10 million or even $100 million, while in Ethereum, despite some good concepts, many struggle to reach even $10 million. If we compare Solana’s on-chain activity to a simple mode, Ethereum would be considered a hellish mode.
Although Ethereum is the chain with the highest on-chain activity, it recently completed the Cancun upgrade, but it has not made any improvements to the main chain. Moreover, due to the recent market improvement, the price of Ethereum has become more expensive, resulting in higher transaction costs on the chain, which discourages users. The transaction fee for a single transaction can range from tens to hundreds of dollars, which means that 20% of the funds from trading Solana to Ethereum are gone, leading people to turn to other chains. The biggest beneficiary of this shift is Solana.
Recently, there has been a viral spread of memes about Ethereum, reflecting people’s disappointment in Ethereum.
With Solana’s current high popularity, it is believed that the market will not end at this point. Let’s take a look at the projects in the Solana ecosystem that are worth paying attention to. The filtering criteria are: a certain level of popularity or high usage, and the industry prefers new projects over old ones, so we will skip the projects from the previous bull and bear market cycles.
The Meme track is an important track in this market, and some people think that the lack of innovation in this market is why it has turned to the simple and straightforward Meme. In this market cycle, Meme has experienced at least three waves of hype, led by Pepe, BRC20, and the SOL ecosystem.
Although the Meme frenzy in the SOL ecosystem has cooled down recently and is currently at a low point, projects like Pepe and BRC20 have already experienced two waves of hype, so the Meme in the SOL ecosystem is still worth paying attention to. As for specific operations, please do your own research.
1) WIF
At the end of 2019, some KOLs started adding wool hats to various logos and images and used these pictures as their personal profiles on Twitter. The hat-wearing dog image emerged in this context, and the process of WIF token release went unnoticed. According to market data, WIF opened at $0.00016 on November 20, 2023, but the first official tweet was released on December 29. The generation of WIF and its current market value can be described as lukewarm. By the time everyone noticed 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% of the tokens distributed to the Solana community members, including holders of projects such as LamportDAO and Famous Fox Federation. This activity aimed to promote community interaction and reward participants, with the goal of opposing the “Alameda” style of token economics and restoring confidence in the Solana ecosystem and SOL holders after the FTX incident.
3) Bome
Artist Darkfarms launched the presale on March 13, allowing users to participate by sending SOL to a designated Solana address, and token distribution was determined based on the proportion of SOL donated. After raising 10,131 SOL, Darkfarms added all the SOL to the liquidity pool, causing a stir in the market. In just three days, the market cap soared from $4 million to $100 million, and it was listed on BN, creating a frenzy on the chain.
4) Slerf
Slerf is also part of the hype. However, due to operational mistakes by the founder of Slerf, 54,583 SOL of LP and Airdrop reserve tokens were destroyed, resulting in Slerf being completely out of the control of the project team and becoming fully decentralized. This formed a new Meme concept and gained popularity among market users. Recently, the official launched a fundraising campaign to compensate for the losses of previous interactive users. Although many CEXs also launched donation activities, most of them were just riding the hype and did not actually spend money, so the donation campaign is not ideal at the moment.
Similar to the previous BRC20 hype and the recent Bitcoin ecosystem infrastructure, institutions have started investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The popularity of Solana Meme 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 tokens to community members through airdrops and token sales. Among them, 40% of JUP tokens will be distributed to approximately 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 the organic trading volume on Solana DEX, making it the preferred trading platform on Solana.
https://station.jup.ag
2) Pyth Network (Oracle)
Pyth Network is the oracle on Solana. It obtains financial market data by connecting to over 350 data sources, including major CEX/DEX and market makers such as BN, OKX, and Bybit, and transmits this data to 45+ blockchains to provide users with real-time market prices and financial data.
In addition, Pyth Network supports over 230 applications, including DEX, 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 conducted three rounds of financing, with investment institutions including Delphi Digital and KuCoin Labs, and has received 40,000 OP grants from the OP Foundation. The Pyth data consortium includes heavyweight institutions on Wall Street such as Jump, former employer of SBF, Jane Street Capital, SIG, and market maker Virtu Financial.
3) Helium Mobile (Depin)
Helium Mobile is a decentralized 5G operator. It incentivizes individuals to purchase hotspot devices similar to routers through Token Mobile 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.
In simpler terms, 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 solve the AI computing shortage problem. 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 worldwide and allows users to deploy and utilize these resources with a simple click. It provides high-performance computing capabilities for building distributed GPU networks, performing 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 offers a fair pricing mechanism and the ability to convert GPUs into income, 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, with participation from institutions such as Solana Labs, Multicoin 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, making it the first mover in supporting Bitcoin NFTs. Magic Eden has launched a “Rewards Program” where users participating in market 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 financing with a total funding amount of over $170 million, with investment institutions including Coinbase, Sequoia Capital, Polygon Ventures, Paradigm, etc.
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. Initiated by former FTX executives and benefiting from their relationship with FTX executives, the platform has obtained a license issued by 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 commands. It was released by the team in April 2023 and was sold for 6.9 SOL at that time. It has now become the leading NFT project in the SOL ecosystem and has experienced several rounds of airdrops.
Backpack has completed two rounds of financing with a total amount of $37 million, with investment institutions including FTX, Jump Crypto, Amber Group, Wintermute, and Solana founder.
7) Solana Mobile Saga
Solana’s first mobile phone, Saga, allowed early adopters to earn significant rewards through free airdrops. The official Solana Mobile development team plans to launch the second-generation encrypted mobile 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. So far, 118,000 units have been sold, and early participants have received airdrops worth around $100.
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