LD Capital: Solana high-performance public chain revitalization and project analysis

Author: Jaden, Jill, LD Capital

1. Fundamental introduction

Solana is a Layer 1 blockchain based on PoH, focusing on high energy efficiency, high transaction speed, and low fees. It was founded in 2017 by former Qualcomm executive Anatoly Yakovenko. After the FTX thunderstorm, the SOL token price and the entire ecosystem suffered a fatal blow, and the Solana ecosystem was in an extremely sluggish state for more than a year.

Currently, the Solana ecosystem has restored its vitality, mainly for the following reasons:

1) The market is recovering overall. According to Artemis data, on October 1, 2023, the market value of stablecoins in the blockchain market was 130B. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the market value of stablecoins increased to 135.5B. As of March 36, 2024, the number of stablecoins in the market increased to the current 156.5B. The market value of stablecoins on Solana increased from 883.9M to 97.5B, a growth rate of approximately 170,000%.

2) Multiple new projects appear in the ecological project, and potential airdrops attract users. Jupiter, the largest transaction aggregator on the Solana chain, announced in January 24 an airdrop of JUP to early users, Bonk airdrop to soga mobile phone holders, etc., as well as a series of new protocols in the Solana ecosystem, Drift Protocol, Backpack, Marginfi, magic eden. The currency has not yet been issued, which has aroused users' enthusiasm for interacting with new projects in the Solana ecosystem.

3) High-performance features have contributed to the prevalence of meme culture. As the price of ETH tokens rises, the interaction fees of the Ethereum chain are too high compared to other public chains and second-layers, prompting non-whale users to disperse to other chains. As the original leading meme token on Solana, BONK’s market value reached US$1.5 billion in mid-December, and the wealth-creating effect of memes on Solana began to spread.

2. Token situation

The total number of SOL tokens in circulation is 573 million The amount is 444 million, and the amount of tokens pledged is 360 million. The current market capitalization is US$87.2 billion, which has exceeded the previous bull market high.

3. Ecology

The current TVL of Solana is US$4.99 billion, and the ecosystem In the stage of rapid recovery. It is just one step away from the TVL high of $10 billion during the last bull market. The number of daily active users and new addresses on the chain has continued to hit new highs since May 2022. Since March 2024, the number of active addresses has been 3,743, and the number of new addresses has been 2,784.

Meme

Meme, Chinese for "meme", is defined as "the basic unit of culture that can be transmitted through non-genetic means, especially imitation." ” In the Internet society, memes are considered to be viral culture, which can be in the form of language, pictures, videos, behaviors, etc. The replication properties of memes should have three characteristics, namely inheritance, mutation and selection. After users voluntarily filter information, they copy and share the information they agree with. Information that is difficult to gain public recognition often fades out of the public's sight over time, thus realizing cultural inheritance and selection. In the process of communication, it should have the characteristics of re-creation, so as to realize the re-creation of culture. In addition, we also need to pay attention to the power of subconscious emotions. Only when enough transmitters fully add their own emotions and emotions can it be possible to achieve explosive results.

The top 100 meme tokens by market value are DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, WIF, FLOKI, and BONK. Except for the meme tokens on Ethereum, only Solana meme tokens are in the top 100 in terms of market value. In the meme culture of the blockchain, the "DOGE" dog culture can be regarded as the original cultural unit. SHIB and FLOKI are the re-creations of dog culture on the Ethereum chain, while BONK and WIF are the re-creations of dog culture on Solana. . The WIF community contains a broader community base, so it later surpassed BONK and became the meme leader on Solana.

Market capitalization (data taken from Coingecko; March 24, 2024)

Dogwifhat (WIF)

dogwifhat meme, originally popular in Bastion Night and Rocket League players. On November 6, 2019, Fortnite professional player issa first set his Twitter profile picture to a photo of a Shiba Inu wearing a pink knitted hat. Twitter user @Vapurly commented "Dogwifhat" and later posted "Join dogwifhat" of Twitter content. Subsequently, a large number of influential celebrities successively used the image as their social media avatar, including Fortnite anchor Vraxito, Rocket League players Spoodah, nxtsabo, etc.

The Dogwifhat token was inspired by this image and launched in November 2023. On March 1, 2024, Robinhood announced that it would add support for WIF to its encryption platform. On March 2, Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, tweeted that he was optimistic about WIF.

Bonk (BONK)

BONK will be launched on December 25, 2022. As a Christmas gift to the Solana community, 50% of the tokens are used for airdrops. This project aims to challenge the dominance of VC tokens and oppose the token economics of low circulation and high inflation.

BONK tokens are highly accepted in the solana community, and are accepted by penBook and Orca platforms as a payment option for NFTs, and serve as incentives for staking NFTs on platforms such as SolFarm and BonkStake. measure. BONK is also expanding its influence further by airdropping Solana Saga encrypted phones.

Book of MEME (BOME)

Book of MEME is a CC0 meme library, also It could be a decentralized social network, an NFT that links everything, or a mini GIF on the solscan network, released by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm. The project originally planned to raise 500 SOL, but finally raised a total of 10,131 SOL. All SOL raised are added to the LP pool, providing good initial liquidity so that whales can easily participate in transactions.

Slerf (SLERF)

On March 17, Slerf announced the fundraising through its Twitter account According to funding news, more than 50,000 SOL have been successfully raised. Half of the funds raised will be used for pre-sale and the other half will be injected into the liquidity pool (LP). This approach is consistent with the rules of other fundraising MEME projects, and there is no outstanding point. However, on the 18th, the founder of the Slerf project @Slerfsol announced on

Myro (MYRO)

Named after Solana co-founder Raj Gokal’s pet dog Myro . MYRO holders can use the tokens to purchase limited edition Myro merchandise, including T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts. The project also hosts regular community events, including voice chats, forums and competitions to enhance community cohesion. The team chose to implement a 0% transaction tax on the token to ensure that users will not incur additional fees when making transactions. In addition to giving up contract ownership, developers also burn their LP tokens, further strengthening the decentralized nature of meme tokens.

WEN

WEN is a test issuance of meme tokens based on the LFG Launchpad platform launched by the Jupiter project .

Token allocation is: 70% is used for airdrops. Airdrop targets include Jupiter users, Ovols NFT holders, blue chip NFT holders, Genesis Saga NFT holders Authors, mockJUP test users, etc. 20% is used to build liquidity in DLMM; 10% is retained in the treasury, of which 0.75% of WEN will be given to Jupiter DAO and 0.25% will be given to the Jupiter team; after the airdrop application is completed, all unclaimed WEN will be destroyed.

DEX

Jupiter (JUP)

Introduction: Jupiter launched in September 2021 as a DEX aggregator on Solana, aiming to provide Solana users with a better trading experience by delivering liquidity from multiple sources . Currently, it mainly provides four major functions: transaction aggregation, limit order, DCA/fixed investment, and Jupiter Start.

According to the ranking of Coingecko decentralized exchange trading volume, Jupiter's 24-hour trading volume is only lower than Uniswap, occupying the second place, and has been on the list several times recently Beyond Uniswap. On the one hand, due to the popularity of the Solana ecosystem and extremely active trading volume, and on the other hand, due to its good liquidity, Jupiter has become the first choice for Solana users to trade.

In order to let Jupiter community members and users know more about new projects in the Solana ecosystem, Jupiter launches the Jupiter Start business. The key One of the functions, Launchpad Launchpad (LFG), has now been launched and is currently the only active DEX on Solana that comes with its own launchpad. Currently, LFG Launchpad has opened its first round of voting on March 7, and can issue tokens for supported candidate projects. The first-round candidate projects are Zeus Network, SharkyFi, and UpRock. Zeus Network has confirmed that it will launch LFG Launchpad.

In the voting process designed by Jupiter DAO, JUP holders obtain voting rights by locking JUP tokens and actively vote on proposals and LFG candidate projects , there is no minimum pledge quantity limit. There is a 30-day cooling-off period for the unlocking of pledged tokens. During this period, you can still participate in voting, but your voting rights will gradually decrease.

Jupiter plans to distribute 100 million JUP tokens and 75% of launchpad fees to stakers. According to Jupiter DAO historical data, 22,000 wallet addresses and approximately 240 million tokens have been pledged in the first round of voting (March-June). This time there are 50 million tokens and other Launchpad fees (including 7.5 billion WEN) will be put into distribution, and another 50 million will be used in the next quarter, which means that the JUP first round (90 days) staking return rate can reach at least 84% (0.5/2.4/90*100%*365).

And Jupiter has specially established Jupiter Labs for incubation infrastructure, and the products currently scheduled to be launched are derivatives. DEX and LSD stablecoins, Labs are independent of Jupiter and will eventually operate independently. Derivatives Perps is similar to the GMX V1 protocol. It has launched a beta version and supports three assets: SOL/ETH/WBTC. The most active SOL trading pair has a 24-hour trading volume of US$200 million. It is enough to see that driven by Jupiter, Jupiter Labs has attracted More market users and funds. The stablecoin protocol XYZ has not been launched yet, and users can mint the interest-bearing stablecoin SUSD by staking SOL.

Currently, Jupiter has aggregated most of the transaction volume on Solana, and with the blessing of its huge user traffic and project resources, Jupiter Start and Jupiter Labs It can promote the improvement of Jupiter and Solana ecosystems, and can form a linkage effect to a certain extent, further expanding Jupiter's market potential.

Team and investment:

The main members of the team are Meow and Ben Chow, both of whom Jupiter was established in May 2021. At the same time, they are also a member of Meteora, the liquidity platform on Solana. Jupiter has not announced any financing.

Token status:

The project will officially issue tokens on January 31, 2024 , its total token supply is 10 billion, 40% of which will be distributed to the community through 4 rounds of airdrops. The first round of airdrops allocated 10% of the tokens, which means that there are still airdrops expected in the future to encourage users to adopt.

The current market value is US$1.605 billion, and mainstream exchanges listed on it include Binance and Gate. The circulation of JUP is 1.35 billion, and 240 million tokens were pledged in the first round of voting, which is equivalent to locking 18% of the liquidity, and there are even fewer chips circulating in the market. Under the spiral effect of high yields and reduced circulation, it is possible to further promote the increase in the price of JUP tokens.

Raydium (RAY)

Introduction: Raydium is the first built on Solana AMM and liquidity provider whose core product is Raydium DEX. Raydium is unique in that its integration with Serum’s order book enables market participants to trade digital assets more flexibly, and Raydium’s liquidity pool contributes to Serum’s order book, enhancing overall liquidity. This integration ensures that anyone on Serum can trade orders on Raydium and vice versa.

Raydium also comes with Launchpad function. It was once the most popular DEX on Solana. The previously popular Star Atlas game project also completed its IEO on this platform. . Raydium's new pool can be Ray Pool and Community Pool. Community Pool completes some social platform interaction tasks according to the requirements of the project party to participate in the issuance of IEO. Ray Pool is the token RAY that can obtain new tickets based on the number of pledges, thereby providing RAY token empowerment.

However, the project suffered a hacker attack in December 2022, resulting in a loss of approximately US$4.4 million. Investors were later compensated through the project treasury. Due to the decline of the Solana ecosystem and the negative impact of hacker attacks, Raydium entered a trough of development, and its market value was once surpassed by Orca.

Team and investment

Rdydium’s team has expertise in the fields of cryptocurrency quantification and market making With many years of experience, he was introduced to the Solana ecosystem by the FTX team. Raydium did not announce the relevant financing amount.

Token situation:

RAY token The total amount is 555 million, launched on February 21, 2021. The current market value is US$500 million, the FDV is US$1.07 billion, and the token circulation reaches 46.7%. In the RAY economic model, 22% of tokens are allocated to teams and consultants. It is reported that these tokens have a lock-up period of at least 3 years, which means that some of the team’s tokens may face unlocking in 2024.

Depin

Nosana (NOS)

Introduction: Nosana is a distributed GPU network that allows anyone to rent computing power. By utilizing the potential capabilities of idle GPUs around the world, it can achieve on-demand access to GPU computing power, solve the problem of GPU shortage in the market, and provide AI users with The computing resources needed for the Metaverse project.

Nosana’s goal is to combine AI with blockchain technology to meet the growing demand for GPU units for AI inference.

With the explosive growth in the AI ​​field, Nosana has quickly turned to AI reasoning, and the token price has performed relatively well as a result.

According to Nosana browser data, Nosana AI inference will show relatively strong demand from mid-December 2023 to March 2024.

Token situation:

NOS token total The quantity is 100 million pieces, the current market value is 410 million US dollars, and the circulation volume reaches 83%. Mainstream exchanges listed include Gate and MEXC. Liquidity is mainly concentrated in Raydium.

NOS is the native token of the Nosana ecosystem. It is used to pay service fees and purchase computing resources in Nosana. It is also required when deploying AI inference work on Nosana. NOS token. At the same time, Nosana provides token staking for users to earn rewards. Of the fees generated in the Nosana network, 2% is used to reward NOS stakers, and NOS tokens can capture a certain value in the Nosana network.

Helium (HNT)

Introduction: Helium aims to use corresponding incentives to encourage miners to deploy hotspots, provide wireless network coverage, and provide low-power, wide-coverage wireless network access for IoT devices. At the same time, Helium rewards miners through an original coverage proof mechanism. Helium's potential and prospects come from its mining model. Its original PoC (Proof of coverage) is an optimized version of the PoW mining mechanism, which can also be regarded as a geographical location PoW mining mechanism. It is completed through wireless network technology. Its characteristics are: It consumes less energy, does not require a lot of electricity, and has a very low entry threshold for mining, so it is popular among users.

On April 20, 2023, the Helium network completed its migration to the Solana network, with the strongest ecological and strongest narrative buffs superimposed. Currently, the community covers nearly 990,000 hotspots and 400,000 active hotspots.

The 2024 DePIN Global Hardware Conference will be held at the Hong Kong Cyberport on April 8. Helium Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar has confirmed to attend.

Team and investment:

The Helium project was established in 2013 and is headquartered in San Francisco, USA. , since 2014, Helium has completed at least 4 rounds of financing. In 2022, it completed a US$200 million D round of financing with a valuation of US$1.2 billion. The performance of each round of financing has been very impressive. Participating companies include A16Z, Multicoin and Google Ventures, among others.