Solana’s year is just getting better. SOL’s price has risen 12,000% since Sam Bankman Fried (the CEO of FTX) tweeted an offer to purchase SOL for a far higher than market value in January. SOL recently made it into the Crypto Top 5 measured by market capital.
The price of $SOL began soaring to new all-time highs as the Solana community met in Lisbon for the network’s first-ever international conference, Breakpoint. Breakpoint, which was held in Lisbon after nearly two years of living with a pandemic in all parts of the world made it difficult for many members of the Solana community to meet in person and discuss their future projects.
The buzz surrounding Solana was created by presentations from Solana’s project leaders, including those in NFT metaverses and DeFi. As the meeting drew to a close, the optimism behind these projects was contagious, knowing that Solana’s high-speed and low-cost blockchain network was giving each of these sectors a leg up in technology.
The article will focus on three of the most outstanding Solana Breakpoint projects. These projects will help to lay the groundwork for a new generation, a half-billion blockchain users, who are looking for the benefits of DeFi, NFT metaverses exploration, and staying in touch via social media.
Hubble Protocol Explores the Universe Of DeFi 2.0 On Solana
DeFi’s growth has been exponential since its 2020 launch. DeFi’s total value is now just shy of $300 Billion. Around $15 billion of this TVL can be attributed to Solana. Solana currently sits third behind Binance Smart Chain ($21Billion) and Ethereum (183 billion).
Hubble Protocol is a project of a former Bloomberg programmer. By creating sustainable DeFi 2.0 services focusing on democratizing user participation and sharing revenues with the community, Hubble has a stated goal of “exploring the DeFi universe on Solana.”
Hubble’s first product is a lending platform where users can deposit multiple assets such as SOL, BTC and ETH in order to create USDH with a capital-efficient collateral ratio (110%). Comparisons have been made calling Hubble “the Maker DAO of Solana,” and USDH should become an integral part of DeFi on the network as a Solana native crypto-backed stablecoin.
What’s impressive about Hubble is that nearly all of the protocol’s revenue is shared with the community. Users who stake HBB, Hubble’s DAO governance token, receive the majority of the 0.5% fee for minting and redeeming USDH, and these fees are distributed in USDH.
Liquidations are collected 100% by the protocol’s users, and the arbitrage opportunities that keep USDH on peg are also significant revenue streams for those who love to arb. Hubble allows users to deposit crypto and earn yields while they borrow USDH. The yield on deposits can provide zero-cost borrowing as the gains may cover the minting fee and there is no interest on loans.
Project has outlined a roadmap to take DeFi 2.0 (Solana) to the next level. This includes structured products (prepackaged DeFi strategies), and under-collateralized borrowing. This is a huge addition to DeFi overall and the successful implementation of both should result in new DeFi users coming to Solana.
Star Atlas launches a unique blockchain gaming experience
Electronic gaming has been hailed as the entry point for crypto and blockchain technology’s mass adoption. It is the New York Times Reports suggest that the gaming universe could alter the landscape of commerce.
Play-to-earn gaming (P2E), and GameFi have led people to quit their jobs to earn a living by playing blockchain games. P2E games have become extremely popular. Axie Infinity has had an exceptional year with an incredible token price, which continues to rise.
Axie Infinity and many other offerings have been turn-based cards games. This is what has driven crypto gaming’s boom. Now, pair a “grand strategy game of space exploration, territorial conquest, political domination, and more” with the 3D power of Unreal Engine 5, and you get the revolution in blockchain gaming that is Star Atlas.
If Star Atlas’s gameplay graphics are even half as mesmerizing as its spine-tingling trailer, then wow. Unreal Engine’s technological leap to 3D will allow for the open-world immersion of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). This technology is also used in P2E and blockchain gaming.
Star Atlas takes place in 2620. Three warring factions fight for the resources of the universe. Gaming is driven through NFTs. As gamers battle, real assets will become and go away. Still, players can enter safer levels to train and learn how the game works before entering the “Wild Frontier,” where anything goes.
Star Atlas players will have many options for activities and opportunities to win. There’s a long list of rolesStar Atlas provides a wide range of choices for players, as well as a vast in-game economy. Users can make a profit mining and can even obtain DeFi loans or insurance on ships.
Star Atlas began releasing mini-games prior to launch and the Discord server already has over 100,000 members. It will be fascinating to see how many people leave their jobs and join P2E full-time once full gameplay launches.
Breakpoint announces the launch of a revolution in social media
Breakpoint featured social media on many occasions. During Sam Bankman-Fried’s participation in a talk about Solana that was piped in on the big screen, he mentioned that Solana was the only blockchain capable of delivering any social media presence.
While no one project stood out during the conference’s three days of presentations, social media was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. One of Reddit’s Co-Founders, Alexis Ohanian, filled a slot on the last day of Breakpoint to talk about why he and his venture firm Seven Seven Six were pledging $100 million to develop social media on Solana.
The investment is double the $50 million Ohanian pledged in partnership with Solana Foundation. Ohanian echoed SBF’s claims that Solana would become the home for social media as he added that Web3, in general, would flourish on the network.
Ohanian is quoted as saying, “There is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a Web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership,” and that Solana would be the network that makes this possible.
It’s too early to tell which project will rise as a leader in providing social media services for the future of Web3 on Solana. With $100 million of funding available to help develop this sector, be on the lookout for social media platforms building on Solana.
Speedy Solana’s Growth Continues Its Parabolic Rise
Solana’s network advertises speeds of up to 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), with block times clocking in at 400 milliseconds per block, making Solana the fastest public blockchain available today.
Solana has the lowest average transaction cost at $0.00025 and is therefore a popular choice for developers as well as users.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are reports of many users switching over to use Solana from Ethereum. Ethereum, the network which invented smart contracts, claims that it can handle 15-30 transactions per hour with each transaction costing $50.
Raj Gokal was co-founder of Solana. At the Breakpoint conference, he stated with Alexis Ohanian that his network plans on onboarding over a billion people during the next few decades. If Breakpoint serves as an indicator of Solana’s success, the DeFi, NFT, and social media projects lining up to build Solana’s future might make that billion-user figure a reality.