Solana Weekly: #6 Solana and Web3

Gm, Gm all! It’s a bear market, fud is all around us, crypto market is down, Solana is down, NFT’s are mostly sideways, but still tons to go over. I’ve been debating the idea of how we move the space forward and have actually come around to the Web 3 narrative and think we should all get behind it. Why? It rebrands crypto, gives a much more positive connotation and also puts together all these different factions of crypto communities giving us one big central idea to push. All the different communities and coins and protocols are too much and the infighting does nothing. I normally cover what’s the biggest fud, and it’s the internal fighting. It’s Eth vs BTC, it’s Eth vs Sol, it’s Solana NFT projects bickering about royalties. It’s actually the biggest users and biggest bulls that aren’t doing themselves any favors. I think a lot of these discussions aren’t meant for the public and are boring af. A lot of this is arguing about the wires that power the internet, not the beautiful applications of the innovation that we can cheer on. I don’t know how we go about changing this, but we gotta start with ourselves and choosing positivity over fud. Solana is a positive add to the web 3 space, and we need to be promoting digital assets that are fun and can be wholly owned and secured. * Solana Price - We’re sitting at $12.19, we had a high of $14.70 and dumped to $11.70. The crazy part about this is that I can’t even tell you why. It got scary on the lows, we recovered, but you know everyone is out there calling for sub $10. * Sol/Eth - nothing burger - sitting at .0100, still down bad.* NFT News - Mara’s minted out yesterday, strong community and dope art from Near, Knittables are minting today and it looks like they are having some issues with the mint page being down. I gotta bring up the Trump drop. He dropped his trading cards and it was a smash. On Polygon. 45,000 individual pieces and they 10x’d before dropping. How do you bring about mass adoption? Bring in the niche communities and show them they can make money. Maga hit a 10x. They are a powerful community with 45 million votes for Trump as president. A former president (whether you like him and his politics aside) launched an NFT project and you’re not bullish on the space? Come on! The way it was done was smart, it was a digital trading collectible. Easy to digest, pay $99, use a credit card if you want, and you get a digital card. Whether they will be able to actually find their wallet is yet to be determined. This proves that the more that we can simplify the wording, narrative, process, the better off we are. Growth is growth. * Defi news - Drift Protocol version 2 is live to everyone. I tested it out and it’s clean AF. I think we need more of these and hope to see them succeed. I also got red pilled on Lifinity and their Flare NFT project as well as their defi protocol. I love everything about this, lock up your NFT for 6 months, earn yourself some tokens, lock those tokens, earn more. Also while you do that you are earning some of the revenue of the defi protocol. So it’s not actually a ponzi, it’s distributing profits. The team seems solid, community has been super welcoming. I also have to bring up some conversations that Toly has been having. He’s been advocating for building out a CEX on Solana. I don’t really know how this would work, but the idea would be something like a centralized organization having all reserves and addresses on chain so that you never have another FTX. I could see this being huge because the centralized experience is generally so much better. I watch Toly’s Twitter debates like an avid sports fan that doesn’t fully understand the sport, like it’s rugby or something but it’s my college so I’m rooting regardless. One of the main guys at Orca actually chimed in saying this is something they will do. Bullish. I tried pinging him in MonkeDao’s Defi channel in Discord but haven’t heard anything back. They also discussed this on the Unchained Podcast in the Episode with Cobie and Chris Burniske. * The quicky of the current thing - Trump, Polygon, multichain, L1’s even profitable, NFT smart contracts being open sourced or siloed to Magic Eden, bear market, Bitcoin development, boredom, DCA. * Best FUD - I think that everyone’s fudding, but everyone is just downbad. I think the biggest fud is people leaving the space because it’s just not as fun. We’re going to be down for a while, find some areas you can contribute to and add something positive. Or just DCA and work. Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how I’m going to actually use the Solana Phone. They start shipping Q1 and I’m an iPhone guy. I’m ready to upgrade my phone and debating getting a new iPhone or just going 100% Solana. I’ll probably keep the iPhone because I don’t want to have those green messages in the group chat and ruin it for everyone when someone likes a post. But we’ll see. Anyways, this is Thomas Bahamas bringing you an okay recap of the week in Solana. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thomasbahamas.substack.com