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I spent a lot of final week working between conference venues and facet occasions throughout Solana Accelerate in New York Metropolis.
Conferences are usually announcement-heavy affairs, and Accelerate didn’t disappoint, bringing main updates on Solana’s core infrastructure, Solana’s telephone startup and tokenized equities.
And as I pointed out last week, change is in the air. Competitors is heating up, and formerly-hyped areas of Solana’s ecosystem are beginning to lose their luster.
To elucidate a few of that potential change, listed below are 4 big questions I’ve after Accelerate.
1. What’s the cope with Firedancer?
Leap (*4*), a midway model of Firedancer that makes some efficiency enhancements to the current Solana consumer, final September. It started rolling out Jito bundle help — permitting validators to extra effectively MEV — earlier this 12 months.
As we speak, Frankendancer commands simply 6% of Solana’s complete stake (that proportion is up barely from round 5% final week). This from-scratch Solana consumer challenge has been talked about in hallowed phrases for years, however for one purpose or one other, most validators aren’t at present utilizing Frankendancer.
One Accelerate attendee mused to me that Leap and Solana might have overvalued Firedancer an excessive amount of, too quickly, and maybe constructing and rolling the software program out extra quietly would have been the higher transfer.
Frankendancer’s key catalyst may very well be monetary incentives: The consumer’s developer introduced a stake delegation program much like what the Solana Basis gives throughout Accelerate.
2. Has Kraken develop into the Solana-favored trade?
One main information merchandise from Accelerate was Kraken’s launch of xStocks, tokenized equities — together with Apple, Tesla and Nvidia — that may commerce on Solana.
It’s an attention-grabbing growth in worldwide traders’ capability to spend money on US shares, however extra attention-grabbing was the resolution to launch on Solana. Kraken has an in-house layer-2 blockchain named Ink, which might have been a pure match for the new product, however I believe the trade sees enterprise upside in Solanaland.
As a US-based trade working in Coinbase’s shadow, Kraken might spy alternatives in the former trade’s sometimes-contentious relationship with the Solana group, which has expressed consternation over Coinbase’s penchant for nudging customers to make use of its layer-2, Base.
Solana is the hottest blockchain ecosystem of the second, so turning into the favored trade for Solana traders may show profitable for Kraken. In the previous few months, the trade has introduced again staking for US customers, parked some of its personal cash in a Solana treasury car and now will launch tokenized equities on Solana. Kraken seems to be properly on its method.
3. What’s the pondering behind the SKR token?
The Solana Labs-supported cell phone startup Solana Cellular made three big bulletins at Accelerate, which had been:
- A) the Seeker telephone will ship in August
- B) with a brand new decentralized structure to rival Android and iOS, and
- C) it would have a token with the ticker SKR.
I discovered this final announcement considerably shocking. As an entity with some presence in a New York Metropolis workplace, I’m certain Solana Labs needs to be fairly cautious with compliance — and launching tokens can create authorized complications. Simply have a look at some of the fallout from when the SEC deemed SOL a safety.
My guess is that Solana Labs — which at present develops corporations together with Solana Cellular — thinks a friendlier authorized surroundings can defend SKR from an excessive amount of scrutiny, and it is aware of token incentives drove a chunk of the demand round the final Solana telephone.
Disrupting the App Retailer duopoly, as Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko likes to say, might be no straightforward job. Possibly SKR will make issues a bit simpler.
4. Is the Trump-crypto marriage rising strained?
Management at the newly-formed Solana Policy Institute was seen in and round Accelerate, as Solana seems to be to develop its political footprint. To that finish, there’s one political submit from the conference that caught my eye.
“Congressman @RitchieTorres simply bought cheers from the crowd at Solana Accelerate for saying ‘We shouldn’t be promoting entry to Congress or the White Home,’” the journalist Veronica Irwin, previously of Unchained, wrote on X final week.
She went on so as to add: “I used to be stunned by the cheers — disapproval of President Trump isn’t one thing you see typically at crypto conferences nowadays.”
President Trump held a dinner for holders of his Solana memecoin final week, a transfer that raised ethics considerations. As legislation on stablecoins and crypto market construction works its method via Congress, I’m questioning whether or not Trump’s crypto profiteering might price the trade legislative wins if Democrats turn against crypto.
Nonetheless, Trump’s SEC dismissed quite a few burdensome lawsuits towards crypto corporations. If I had been a betting man, I’d say that together with the president’s different overtures to the trade could be sufficient to maintain the union intact.
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