The Solana Renaissance

Firedancer, DePIN, consumer dApps and more

Extreme outlier events typically have 1 of 2 effects on a crypto ecosystem.

Outcome 1 is that they cause the death of that ecosystem–think the collapse of UST and inability of LUNA 2.0 to gain traction since then. Outcome 2 is that the ecosystem adapts to become stronger and more decentralized–think Bitcoin following MtGox or Ethereum following the ICO bust.

When FTX and Alameda collapsed, many observers thought they would take Solana to the dustbin of history with them. However, this year has seen the Solana community rebuil an ecosystem more unique and more resilient than before. Applications for micropayments, decentralized physical infrastructure, and content creation are live and attracting thousands of users.

Like you’ll see later in this article, Solana is making a play for new types of crypto applications. Things that don’t compete directly with Ethereum, but create a new set of experiences for consumers and use Solana’s unique advantages to build consumer applications that would be impossible on traditional blockchains. Will this be enough?

In this article I’ll dive into Solana’s challenges, updates, and ecosystem:

• Has Solana fixed its outage issues?

• Solana 2.0, Firedancer, and scaling

• The new generation of Solana DeFi

• Solana winning the payments war

• Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)

• Consumer dApps for content creators

• My strategy for Solana

On-chain data indicators for paid subscribers will come in a separate email this week.