GM Legends,

Hands down the biggest week in crypto since this week. Shanghai turned out to be BULLISH, $ARB continues to liquidate the bears and Solana released a crypto mobile phone.

And Elon partnering with eToro has seemingly kick-started a mini alt season. There is no other industry quite like it.

Before we talk about Solana, a special shoutout to this Newsletter reader for leaving this feedback. 🦧😄

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Here's what's inside today.

The big topic. 

🏝 Forget Eth, Let's Talk Solana

DeFi insights & project updates.

🖼 Crypto Linn launches her first NFT collection on zkSync
📅 Bonk Swap goes live featuring BonkOrBust
🦧 Degen corner: A look at an $ARB smart money wallet

Hot off the press.

🐮 Elon ignites alt season as Twitter partners with eToro 
🐻 Kraken set to unstake $1bn ETH
👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?! Unemployment claims Wed Apr 19th

Plus Twitter reads from @CryptoKoryo, @CanteringClark and @DefiNapkin!

🔥 The big topic.

🏝 Forget Eth, Let's Talk Solana

Forget Eth, it’s old news.

Let’s talk Solana.

Because something’s definitely happening.

Today we’ll look at why downtime is bullish, the broader ecosystem and the builders.

Aaaaand is the return of FTT the perfect catalyst for a Sam coin Solana Summer? Plus some advice to the Solana OGs.

Being a former Sam coin, Solana has had its fair share of problems. From outages to FUD to a 77% one-day dump during the FTX and SBF fiasco.

But since the lows of $7.85 the Solana bull magnet has been dragging it back to $32 and where it all started before it went so wrong.

What’s holding the network back? Or better yet what's the bullish case for Solana?

Downtime is bullish.

Solana FUDsters: “Dev do something?!”
Devs: “BRB”
- 10 minutes later -
Devs: “Fixed”
Solana FUDsters: …disbelief (again)

When it breaks, it gets fixed. And when it breaks again it gets fixed, again. Pretty simple, right? Each fix will ultimately create a stronger, longer-lasting network that, once the bull run is here, should work effortlessly.

So yes, downtime is, has and will continue to be bullish… until proven otherwise.

The Solana Ecosystem.

TVL might be a 33.5x away from its $10bn all-time high but the ecosystem has rid itself of SBF and his team of farm ‘n’ dumping goblins to leave behind devs, builders and community participants.

TVL (total value locked) is only ever half the story as it doesn’t factor in the value that is held in NFTs… which we all know Solana has been famous for… especially with the likes of Degen Ape Academy (ps, V2 coming soon), Solana Monkey Business and of course the y00ts and degods (before Polygon bought them out).

It’s likely we will see Solana NFTs continue to be the flagship of the network with their latest piece of infrastructure, NFT State Compression, which basically lets compress a large number of NFTs into one account via the Merkle Tree allowing more data to be put on-chain at a fraction of the cost, mint 1 million NFTs for $110.

State Compression has caught the eye of Render Network who might be ready to deploy very soon.

Helium Protocol has made the move to Solana to support the Solana Saga android mobile phone which launched yesterday but I’m not trading my Nokia 3310 in for one just yet. Logic would say this is the gateway for web3 gaming to reach mainstream via the Google Play store.

The Builders.

Ohhh Solana, you make it hard to fade you despite once being a Sam coin. The hackathons put the brightest minds together to duke it out in a battle royale to showcase their tech, win $$$ and earn opportunities. You can check out the winning tech from the Grizzlython here.

We’re good friends with the HXRO Network who never stopped believing and who could be what brings Solana DeFi back to life.

Our take.

It’s simple.

Incentivise usage whilst hiring an elite-level Twitter shiller or shill team (think Arbitrum) to relentlessly build, curate and comment on everything that happens because the community is already there.

Aaaand obviously keep on building cool tech, NFTs and real-life experiences.

Oh and FTT came back from the grave this week so old Sam coins might catch a bid.

👀 DeFi insights & project updates.

The World of DeFi

• AAVE & YFI get exploited for over 755 ETH. (Peck Shield)
  

• Bonk Swap powered by the HXRO Network has launched on Solana offering a dex, liquidity provision and BonkorBust. (Twitter)
  

• Crypto Linn launches her first NFT collection on zkSync. (Mintscan)
  

• Fungify an NFT index and algo lending protocol launch their testnet. Join Discord to get involved. (Discord) (Twitter)
  

• Nansen releases a useful query board showcasing everything you need to know about the Shanghai upgrade including unstaking. (Nansen)
  

• Solana Saga Mobile launched yesterday and goes on sale May 8th (Twitter)
  

• Spool Finance partnered with Halo Wallet, formerly known as KuCoin Wallet. This introduces Spool to over 800k new users. (Twitter)
  

• Tapioca DAO testnet round 2 goes live. (Twitter) (Beta)
  

• Thena Finance begins its migration to Fusion (concentrated liquidity) on Friday with UI being viewable from today. (What is Fusion Medium)
  

• UniSwap’s mobile app launches in the Apple Store… wen Android?! (Twitter)
  

• Wen Llamas releases their official website, minting begins Apr 14th (TheLlamas.io)

Governance Updates

• Pendle Finance proposal to Stargate has passed with the team moving $200k USDT into Pendle Pools on Eth and Arb pool. (Twitter)
  

• Plutus Dao has voted in favour of Arbitrums AIP-1 proposal. (Twitter)
  

• Sushi Swap reached out to the Lido community to discuss the return of the funds lost over the weekend. (Lido Governance)
  

• Yearn Finance proposal to launch yETH a permissionless and self-governing representation of a basket of ETH LSDs. (Twitter)

📊 Degen corner.

$ARB has made a relentless move to the upside over the last 24 hours so let’s take a look at some “smart money” movements from the @LookOnChain team.

With everything happening in the Arbtrium DAO at the moment does this wallet know something that we don’t?

If you want to find your own smart wallets you can check out our guide here.

🗞 Hot off the press.

🐮 Bullish News

• Elon ignites alt season as Twitter partners with eToro. (CNBC)
  

• Gensler gets blasted at lack of information on SBF by Republicans. (The Block)
  

• UniSwap’s coming to Polygon zkEVM as the proposal is set to pass. (Cointelegraph)
  

• WAGMI, the concentrated liquidity AMM by Popsicile Finance get announced as ICE pumps to $1.8. (Medium)
  

• Ethereum Shanghai goes live with Vitalik stating that in 2023 Ethereum will be completed. (YouTube Short)
  

• London Stock Exchange Group Unit is set to offer clearing services for cash-settled bitcoin index futures and options. (Coindesk)

🐻 Bearish News

• Kraken set to unstake $1bn ETH after regulatory complaints earlier in the year. (The Block)
  

• His Royal Excellency summoned along with Soulja Boy and YouTuber Austin Mahone over Tron. (The Block)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

A potentially quieter week from the FED next week, with the unemployment claims to be the main event to watch out for as well as Wallers speech on Wednesday.

🐥 Twitter reads.

@CryptoKoryo TLDR’s the a16z “state of crypto” outlook.

@CanteringClark’s take on why a break of 4200 on the $SPX could be bad news.

@DefiNapkin takes a look at the re-staking narrative

And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...

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