Source: Blocklike
"Some signs indicate that Solana may have a chance to regain its former glory."
After the collapse of FTX for more than half a year, news of the reboot of FTX 2.0 has emerged, and this reboot plan may have attracted the interest of large companies such as Nasdaq, Ripple, and BlackRock. With some failed crypto companies reentering the market (such as 3AC and the founder of PayPal Financial have launched new products in the market), there are increasing discussions about whether FTX has a chance to make a comeback.
At the same time, Solana, an important member of the FTX "family," has also received widespread attention recently.
On one hand, the co-founders of Solana have been very active in expressing their views on Solana, sparking community discussions. Whether they believe Solana can become the Apple of the crypto field, or they are not afraid of the pressure from emerging blockchain networks such as Scroll, Base, and Linea, or they think Ethereum can become Solana's L2 solution, these ideas all demonstrate Solana's ambition to regain its past glory.
On the other hand, hot events surrounding Solana continue to add heat to Solana.
In April, the decentralized IoT wireless network Helium migrated to Solana, and SOL rose from $20 to $25;
In May, the popularity of BRC-20 and Meme tokens resulted in high gas fees, and many users turned to Solana for transactions;
In June, the US SEC classified SOL and other tokens as unregistered securities, attracting the attention of the market and many industry insiders, including Vitalik;
In addition, according to relevant data, in May, the daily active addresses of Solana reached a record high of 490,000, which is almost equivalent to the 500,000 daily active addresses on November 11 last year when FTX officially filed for bankruptcy.
Solana, once widely expected by the market, experienced a sharp decline in token price, a significant reduction in TVL, and many FTX-related projects in its ecosystem suffered heavy blows, almost falling into obscurity.
Returning to the mainstream is the urgent task that Solana wants to accomplish. So, can Solana regain its former glory?
From "Highly Anticipated" to "Dim and Gloomy"
As a public chain deeply connected with FTX, Solana was pushed to the forefront in the FTX incident.
Before the collapse of FTX, Solana Foundation was revealed to hold a large amount of FTX-related tokens, including FTT valued at approximately $107 million and SRM valued at $83 million on the day before FTX assets were frozen. This asset holding revealed the close relationship between Solana and FTX, and voices of pessimism about Solana emerged one after another.
On November 11, 2022, with the official bankruptcy application of FTX, Solana suffered a heavy blow from its reputation to its ecosystem.
The Solana platform token SOL dropped from $36.72 to over ten dollars, and by the end of December 2022, SOL even fell below $10, evaporating billions of dollars in market share in just over a month.
As the first DEX on Solana, Serum dominated the liquidity of DeFi on Solana, but its trading volume and liquidity dropped to zero due to the impact of FTX. Other FTX-related platforms and non-FTX-related platforms either faced a liquidity crisis or were forced to close due to a shortage of funds.
Prior to the collapse of FTX, the total value locked (TVL) in the Solana ecosystem dropped to below $1 billion, and it has not exceeded $300 million to this day.
"Ethereum killer," "next-generation blockchain," "high-speed public chain," and "DeFi king" were all titles given to Solana by the market, reflecting recognition of Solana's technology and ecosystem, as well as expectations for the rise of new public chains. Prior to the FTX incident, Solana faced a PR crisis due to frequent outages and large-scale asset theft events, and the collapse of FTX directly brought Solana to the bottom.
The once highly popular new public chain in the previous cycle no longer seems to be the "darling" of major media and capital. The landscape of L1 new public chains has changed, and Solana has been forced to fade out of the historical stage for a period of time.
Is Solana "dead"?
Some believe that in the L1 public chain space, Solana has lost its competitive position. Without the attention from the outside world and the past glory, Solana now seems to be struggling.
However, there are also many voices that believe the most direct impact of FTX's collapse on Solana is the price of SOL, which actually allows Solana to "break free from financial speculators" and return to true technical development.
Is Solana really "dead"?
SOL price rebounds, on-chain new address count surges
According to data from CMC on July 10, the price of SOL is $21.2, ranking ninth in market value. Compared to the $9 during the FTX crash, the price has rebounded significantly, with an increase of over 130%.
According to The Block data, the number of daily active addresses on Solana saw another increase in May. On May 17, the number of active addresses on Solana reached 493.1K, an increase of nearly 55% compared to the lowest daily active address count in the first half of the year.
It is worth noting that the number of new addresses on the Solana chain also experienced a significant increase in May, with an increase of over 300,000 addresses.
Some analysts believe that the surge in Solana's address count in May is related to the rise of meme coins and BRC-20. The popularity of meme coins and BRC-20 has resulted in high Bitcoin and Ethereum network gas fees, prompting many users to switch to Solana, which offers lower gas fees and faster transactions.
Developer Count Remains High
For a public blockchain, the number of developers is an important indicator of its popularity and a crucial component for ecosystem development. The combination of Rust's favorable features and Solana's high performance continues to attract developers.
Despite some developers choosing to "abandon ship" after the FTX fallout, the overall number of active developers on the chain remains relatively stable and remains at the forefront.
According to the latest data from developerreport.com, Solana ranked fourth in terms of monthly active developers as of June 1st, with a total of 363 developers. This data still represents a certain advantage compared to other public chains. Additionally, looking at the most followed repositories under Solana on Github, the number of contributors reached 455, while Polkadot, Polygon, and Avalanche had 261, 51, and 82 contributors, respectively.
Source: developerreport.com
Liquid Staking Performs Well
With the popularity of the liquidity staking trend, the Solana ecosystem has also seen a surge in liquidity staking, bringing Solana back into the mainstream market. According to StakingRewards data on July 10th, SOL is currently the second-largest staked asset, with a staked market value of over 8.3 billion USD and a staking rate of 69.64%.
NFT Sales Enter Top 3
According to Cryptoslam data, Solana NFT sales in the past 30 days rank third, just behind Ethereum and Bitcoin NFTs, surpassing Polygon, which ranks fourth with a NFT sales volume of around $40 million in the past 30 days.
Opportunities and Challenges
Both L1 and L2 networks are facing fierce competition currently, and Solana is also "making efforts" to attract users and developers:
In early April, Solana announced a new method of storing data called "state compression" to significantly reduce storage costs. According to official reports, this method can be used to store any type of data on the chain, with the first use of compressing NFTs. Users can mint one million NFTs at a price of approximately $110.
On April 13th, Solana released the Saga mobile phone in an attempt to attract more crypto users through Web3-centered Android smartphones.
Continuing to host Solana Hacker House events in multiple cities to embrace developers from around the world and enhance the value of the Solana chain itself. Solana Hacker House will be held in Taipei in May, and in November, the event will also go to Hong Kong.
Launching the "NFT Showdown" competition to promote the development of the NFT ecosystem.
Launching a $10 million grant program for Solana-based AI-focused projects.
In addition, optimism in the community about Solana seems to be growing. KOL @CryptoKaleo, with nearly 600k followers on Twitter, recently expressed his views on Solana, believing that Solana's continued building after the FTX collapse may bring it back to its level before FTX went bankrupt. This view has also received support from some users.
These are the opportunities for Solana, but it still faces challenges.
Faced with the rapid expansion of other public chains, Solana still needs to take more measures to expand its ecosystem. In addition, the trust crisis caused by the collapse of FTX still exists, so strengthening the connection with the community and enhancing community confidence is also a key focus for Solana.
Can ambitions be realized?
Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana, recently stated that Solana has the potential to become the Apple of the crypto world, aiming to achieve 10 to 100 times growth through partnerships with small businesses and infrastructure.
Raj believes that it took Apple nearly ten years of research time for the iPhone to come out, and the Apple application ecosystem has reached today's level, all starting with "relentless focus on simple interactions that must work perfectly", which is also the focus of Solana's core engineering and ecosystem. This analogy seems to imply that Solana's silence is actually a process of accumulation, with the potential to make a big move without making a sound.
In addition, with the launch of new products by Three Arrows Capital and the co-founder of PayPal Financial, the concept of "bankruptcy reboot" is receiving widespread attention from the crypto community. If FTX 2.0 is relaunched, it will undoubtedly once again gain interest from users and institutions, and projects led by Solana in the FTX ecosystem may have the possibility of regaining their past glory with this opportunity.
