Solana Breakpoint Round-Up

Compared to most layer-1 blockchains, Solana has had a dizzying accent over the last year. SOL was valued just $0.22 during its April 2020 ICO. At the time of writing, SOL is valued at $227.50. With the platform’s ‘Breakpoint’ conference coming to a close in Lisbon, we’re taking a look at some of the highlights of the event and some of the most exciting aspects of the blockchain’s development.

The Solana (SOL) Ecosystem is Booming

Solana’s COO, Raj Gokal stated:

The Solana ecosystem has been exploding across every vertical and every use case.

Since March this year, the number of platforms built on Solana has more than doubled and adoption is expected to continue to increase. Gokal also revealed that the platform now has roughly 1,750 developers and that the TVL (Total Value Locked) in Solana now sits at $15.23B as of November 7th.

The road ahead is not defined by a roadmap, but by the builders - the entrepreneurs building the future.

- COO of Solana, Raj Gokal

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/RZszqxOIn4I

Brave Announced Integration With Solana

CEO of Brave Software, Brendan Eich(left) with Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko(right)

Brave browser seems to have identified Solana as the blockchain that will facilitate the next generation of the web.

That to me is the really exciting part of it. There’s now an opportunity to have cryptography power the next generation of web-monetisation. Whether it’s through advertisement or through direct payments and micro-payments.

- Solana CEO, Anatoly Yakoveko

CEO of Brave Software, Brendan Eich announced that dApps which are Solana-compatible will utilise Solana by default when using Brave browser. Eich stated that Brave wants its users to be able to earn using Solana “without having to be an expert”.

By the early half of 2022, Brave aims to have integrated Solana NFT galleries and marketplaces directly into the Brave browser rewards wallet.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/P-5fs-E1yyc

Render Network is Making Solana the ‘Metaverse Blockchain’

Founder of Render Network, Jules Urbach

Developers were quick to emphasise that the speed of Solana’s network would be conducive to establishing the ‘metaverse’. Render Network’s founder Jules Urbach spoke on how Solana could ‘superpower’ its cloud-based graphical rendering platform.

Urbach stated that as a result of its comparatively centralised structure, Solana has fast speeds without compromising on the platform’s security, (nodes are still sufficiently distributed for Solana to be considered a ‘decentralised’ platform) .

Solana solves so many problems at once. We want to be able to write high-performance code and that needs to be able to run on GPUs - but also on chain. You can do that with Solana. It can take the C++ or Rust code and turn it into a smart contract.

- Founder of Render Network, Jules Urbach.

With 3D-rendering bound to be a critical component in manifesting the virtual worlds of the metaverse, fast speeds as a result of semi-centralisation might make Solana the perfect home for the graphical processing power required to do so.

Check out Render Network.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/mVFeohWusPU

The Transfer Layer: Bridging = Scalability

CoFounder of DeBridge, Alex Smirnov

The issue of blockchain interoperability was a recurring theme at the conference. While Solana currently has slightly fewer bridging platforms than some other layer-1 blockchains, Solana bridging protocols do exist and developers are keen to develop more.

Ultimately, cross-chain interoperability will be all about the user-experience. As a user - I don’t even want to know what a bridge is. I just want to open a wallet like Phantom or Metamask and swap from one asset to another. I don’t care whether it went through wrapped-assets or liquidity pools - I just want to receive the desired asset.

- CoFounder of DeBridge, Alex Smirnov

Check out DeBridge

Other Platforms such as Wormhole allow for token-bridging which facilitates seamless transition of NFTs from Solana to other chains such as Ethereum and vice versa.

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/tSN5Oax4p5k

Decentralised Social Media is On the Horizon

COO of Solana, Raj Gokal(left) with CoFounder of Reddit Alexis Ohanian(right)

CoFounder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian announced that in partnership with Solana Ventures, a $100M fund for Solana-based decentralised social media projects would be launched.

What I love about ‘web 3.0’ broadly is that we get a chance to think about how we can architect better and more representative systems. This kind of experimentation will ultimately reward the most egalitarian means possible because it’s not controlled from the top down.

- CoFounder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian

Gokal and Ohanian agreed that the future of social media is “fluidity”, and that decentralisation will allow for users to engage with content in the way that they want to.

It doesn’t have to be winner takes all. There will be hundreds of successful social media companies that are protocols and clients to those protocols. Choices will be made about programmable modular communities - in some ways like sub-Reddits!

- Solana COO, Raj Gokal

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/8BLUd2yCpEw