🏖 Solana Surges: 5 Reasons Why

GM Legends,

Bitcoin hasn’t done much. Ethereum also hasn’t done much and major altcoins just keep chopping. Bit boring really.

But what’s this?! Solana's active addresses, daily transactions and NFTs are pumping as MadLAD sells for 955 SOL! Hmmm some thing is happening here.

Today we take a look at the Solana ecosystem including 5 reasons to be a Sol’Bull.

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Need to know.
If you’ve only got 2 minutes.

The big story.
🏖 Solana Eco Surges: WDF is going on?!

DeFi insights.
🖼 Ben.Eth reveals controversial “psyopeth”
📅 HXRO Network brings defi to Solana NFT community ft/ Degenerate Apes
🦧 Degen corner: The latest from The Good Morning Degen Podcast

In the news.
🐮 Tether’s commitment to Bitcoin
🐻 Crypto is gambling, according to British Lawmakers 
👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?! The current state of the Financial System

Plus Twitter reads from @dz1036, @FroyoFren and @twobitidiot!

🔥 The big story.
To make you think.

🏖 Solana Eco Surges: WDF is going on?!

Daily active addresses pump past Bitcoin, Ethereum and Arbitrum, Solana meme coins get exchange listings…

… AND Co-Founder @rajgokal gets air time on Bloomberg.

Something’s definitely happening here ANON.

We’re not Solana maxis but we were impressed at what we saw at Break Point ‘22 and wrote about Solana back in April in anticipation of a Solana summer which might actually be a thing.

So let's look at WDF is going on with Solana and why you should be bullish.

Arbitrage Spam Transactions

Jaredfromsubway.eth, the sandwich King of Arbitrage on Ethereum, generates ungodly profits and frustration for traders who get “sandwiched”. It also costs A LOT to spam Ethereum transactions as gas ain't cheap!

Whereas Solana is cheap… like… really cheap.

It costs roughly $0.000125 per transaction which equates to 8,000 transactions costing just $1 vs the recent 64 ETH gas fee transaction (lol whoops!).

Cheaper fees mean cheaper arbitrage opportunities for the bots without caring about network fees.

So we can take daily transactions and active addresses with a pinch of salt for now. But that doesn't mean Solana isn’t becoming ever more bullish.

5 Reasons to be Sol’bullish

1) NFT Ecosystem

The Solana NFT ecosystem is always buzzing with the likes of The Degenerate Ape Academy, Solana Monkey Business and the recent launch of MadLAD with 4506 being sold for 995 $SOL.

Anatoly is Sol’bullish that in 2022 he said that “the next Marvel or Disney will come from NFT IP.”

Whilst farfetched it isn’t out of scope the way the Bored Apes, Degen Apes are evolving and the recent collaboration between Iconic hip hop record company Def Jam and Catalina Whale Mixer.

2) The Solana Saga Mobile

Ello Motto! Now I'm not giving my Nokia 3310 for this just yet BUT the way I see it is that Solana can be the gateway to the adoption Game-Fi. The Saga runs on Android which hosts the Play Store which could mean we see Solana Game-Fi projects get easy access to the marketplace.

This is just speculation BUT Solana is acting big here.

3) Let’s Bonk

Solana memes are gaining traction. Raj shilled Bonk Inu live on Bloomberg saying that “Bonk is stress testing real financial infrastructure that supports very real use cases” which might be what this Tweet is hinting?

And anyway… every chain needs a leading meme coin, right?

Bitmart is also cashing in on Solana’s Sweetcoin with a recent listing which might be late for the recent meme szn but it's a step in the right direction for a Solana sh*tcoin scene.

4) Solana Embraces AI

Trad-Fi big tech is aping hard into the AI revolution and so is Solana with a recent open-source ChatGPT plugin that lets users interact with the network, kind of like having your own sidekick.

The Solana Foundation also launched a $1m grant scheme for those building in AI using Solana.

Imagine a Solana NFT project being fully developed by AI… from the animation to the lores to the “what happens next” part of the road map as voted for by the community.

That would be pretty cool.

5) Big projects migrating over + Firedancer

Helium essentially dumped their own blockchain to migrate over to Solana to integrate their 1.5m + decentralised hot spot 5g network into the Saga mobile whilst Render is in the process of moving over.

If you missed it, here's why the Solana community is hotly anticipating “Firedancer” by Jump Trading.

BONUS: FUD be gone!

Yeah yeah, stop fudding about network outages… even Ethereum went down last week! So let’s ignore that part for now because every outage Solana has had has been bullish because they patched it making the network stronger (yeah gotta look at the positive here!)

SBF and his cronies are gone giving the $SOL token some time to breathe, reset and slowly climb its way (naturally) back to its all-time high (hopefully).

Will we reach pre-SBF fud at Breakpoint 2023?

Our Take

That being said, here is what Solana needs now:

• An increase in TVL with fewer spam transactions dressing up the numbers

• A defi ecosystem that isn’t stuck in the stone age

• And more Solana native memes (because memes run the world)

Luckily our friends at the HXRO network might just be one of the innovators who will bring Solana defi back to life as more and more protocols are building on the network.

👀 DeFi insights.
Project updates, governance reports and industry secrets.

The World of DeFi

• Axie Infinity - Apple grants Axie access to the Apple iStore. (The Block)

• EquilibriaFi - Public sale IDO begins May 22nd 6AM UTC. (Twitter)

• GMX - V2 is live on testnet. (Twitter)

• HXRO Network - bringing defi to the Solana NFT community featuring the Degenerate Apes. (Twitter)

• Mayan Finance - Enables cross-chain swaps, bringing memes to Solana listing Guacmole, King and Sweetcoin. (Twitter)

• Obscuro - Partner with omnichain synthetics protocol Synthr. (Twitter)

• Origin Protocol - Launch Origin ETH $OETH, available on Curve and Uniswap. (Twitter)

• Pepe Analytics - An AI-driven analytics platform for memecoins releases first look thread featuring a “rugability & apability” score. (Twitter)

• Pudgy Penguins - Pudgy Toys go live today. (Twitter)

• Rage Trade - V2 perps platform sneak peek. (Twitter)

• Sparta Dex - Developers diary update including airdrop, new features and more. (Twitter)

• UnshETH - Is live on Arbitrum. Users can bridge tokens across Arbitrum, BSC and Ethereum. (Twitter)

• Vertex Protocol - Reveal their game-changing UX features including one-click trading, fiat-to-crypto functionality and more. (Twitter)

• Psyopeth - The controversial psyops game by Ben.Eth gets a teaser.

Governance Updates

• Aave - Offboard BUSD part 2 is now in voting, ending May 19th. The plan is reduce BUSD liquidity and encourage users to other stablecoins. (Snapshot)

• BitDAO - Brand and tokenomics update is now in voting ending May 19th. (Snapshot)

• UnshETH - The proposal (voting ends May 22nd) is to suggest an unshETH Whitelisting Proposal (UWP) introduction, voting, and implementation process to enable LST protocol teams to request to be added to the unshETH Index. (Snapshot)

📊 Degen corner.
Charts, smart money or a degen idea.

Check out todays show “Good Morning Degen” from the team. Giving a TLDR on what’s been happening in the crypto markets. Tune in on Spotify or YouTube below!

🗞 In the news.
The important bits.

• Jump Trading move $7.5m $LDO tokens, community responds with a governance proposal to increase the utility of Lido’s native governance token through a stake and buyback program. (CoinDesk)

• Crypto is gambling, according to British Lawmakers and should be treated as such due to “significant consumer risks.” (Cointelegraph)

• Tether's commitment to Bitcoin stated that they would be using up to 15% of their realised net profits to add Bitcoin to their excess reserves. (Twitter)

• UniSwap on Base? Uni contributors propose deploying the dex on Coinbase’s layer 2 Base. (The Block)

• Voyager payouts may start June 1st as the approved liquidation plan begins. Depending on how the FTX litigation progresses, almost 64% of deposits may be reclaimed. (Cryptoslate)

• BancorDAO’s impermanent loss protection promise lands them a class-action lawsuit. (Cointelegraph)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

A look at the current state of the financial system beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and memecoins.

🐥 Twitter reads.
In case you missed it.

@dz1036 gives a run down on “how to go multisig” in light of Ledger’s recent update.

@FroyoFren, wait a minute… that means… I’m exit liquidity

@twobitidiot gives a message to leaders in crypto because crypto is more than just an animal-derived meme.

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

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

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