Author: Jay & Suyu, Four Pillars; Translation: Jinse Finance xiaozou
1. Introduction
The level of development of Internet infrastructure is closely related to the emergence of various applications. In the early stages of the Internet, bandwidth was limited and network communication standards were very inefficient, resulting in long web page loading times and low user accessibility to multimedia content. In this environment, development focused on simple web applications and text-based information exchange dominated.
However, with the advent of broadband Internet and the advancement of data network standard technology, the Internet's data processing efficiency has been greatly improved. This makes it possible to implement applications that can handle large amounts of data and have multiple functions, and various high-bandwidth applications have emerged, such as video streaming platforms such as Netflix, online games, large file sharing, real-time communication and collaboration tools. In other words, the development of Internet infrastructure has promoted the development of new applications and services, fundamentally changing the way people consume digital content.
We seem to be seeing this momentum again with Solana - in the past four years since the launch of the mainnet, Solana has rapidly grown into an ecosystem with over 700 decentralized applications. This is thanks to its steady optimization of network throughput and consumer/developer-friendly features while gradually improving moderate decentralization. Therefore, the Solana ecosystem is not only huge, but also provides utility that is relatively ahead of other ecosystems.
In this article on the Solana ecosystem, our goal is to form an overview of the rapidly growing Solana ecosystem by categorizing and curating over 250 of the most active projects, from infrastructure layers to consumer applications.
*Ecosystem projects are divided into six categories: “Infrastructure and Development Tools”, “Finance”, “Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN)”, “Artificial Intelligence (AI)”, “Consumer Applications” and “Community and Culture”.
2. Infrastructure and development tools
As mentioned in a previous report on Solana Mega, the most important factor affecting the performance and coordination of applications across the Solana ecosystem (which prioritizes composability) is the various infrastructure technologies developed at the protocol level. In addition to the SVM technology stack for transaction processing, Solana's rich set of toolkits, libraries, and standards support the development of a variety of applications by making more efficient and effective use of the Solana platform.
Notable examples include: Solana Program Library, a library of programs that include various functions such as token creation and management (SPL token programs), token swaps, and lending protocols; Anchor Framework, the most popular development framework, especially favored by developers who are new to Solana or those who want to quickly build and deploy applications; GameShift, a framework designed to simplify the process of creating blockchain games. In addition, standard sets such as Token Extension and Compression technology eliminate communication inefficiencies and enable applications that need to process large amounts of data or implement complex logic.
In terms of usability, payment-related API modules are particularly noteworthy, which are JavaScript libraries that simplify cryptocurrency payments, and the Blinks (Blockchain + Links) solution, which defines on-chain transactions in the form of URLs, allowing them to be integrated and used in various applications.
In addition, in terms of network stability, in addition to the clients of Solana Labs and Jito Labs, client diversity projects such as Firedancer, Tinydancer, and Agave are also underway. In addition, many projects are working hard to flexibly utilize the SVM execution environment in a multi-chain environment through SPE (Solana Permissioned Environments) or various protocols, enabling individual products to build their own ecosystems or improve the efficiency of existing ecosystems.
Here is a list of some projects in the “Infrastructure and Development Tools” space that are worth keeping an eye on to understand the future development of the Solana ecosystem.
(1) Backpack
Coral, the company behind the Anchor development framework, created the Backpack wallet and Mad Lads, both iconic representations of scalable technology and the Solana ecosystem’s positive community. Both products are deployed asxNFTs , which literally means “executable” Web3 application asset standard plugins.
The Backpack wallet was launched to allow users to experience various dApps deployed as xNFTs in an integrated environment. It currently provides a seamless user experience for the xNFT versions of approximately 90 applications spanning various fields including games, NFTs, and DeFi .
(2) Squads
Squads is a custody layer solution that enables more secure asset management and operations, providing standards for various smart accounts, including asset management, permission settings, and multi-signature accounts.
The Squads Labs team launched the first smart wallet Fuse Wallet (iOS beta) in the Solana ecosystem. Fuse Wallet provides features such as 2FA, spending limits, social recovery, time locks, key rotation, gas abstraction, and native staking.
In addition, the Squad team also announced the launch of the Squad Policy Network (SPN), which enables enterprises to manage centralized custody in a trustless and decentralized manner. SPN will provide customized and universal policies for all users after integration with Jito (re)staking.
(3) Code
Code SDK is an open payment protocol and application that allows developers to easily receive micropayments from users around the world - anyone can charge users small fees in a web environment through a "Pay with Code" button, with users paying 5 cents and developers paying a fixed fee of 1 cent to cover blockchain transaction costs.
(4) Sphere
Sphere is a settlement project that won the Solana Summer Camp hackathon in December. Sphere has various features including crypto deposits/withdrawals, on-chain subscriptions, invoicing, payment linking, AML/fraud prevention, and reporting.
(5) TipLink
TipLink is a lightweight non-custodial wallet that allows easy transfer of digital assets via a link or QR code. In other words, users only need to link their Gmail account or Solana wallet to the received link or QR code to instantly create a wallet and use the assets received through the linked wallet.
(6) Dialect
Dialet provides a development stack for decentralized messaging protocols deployed on the Solana network. Recently, they developed the "Actions" protocol, which can define a series of on-chain transactions in the form of URLs, and the "Blinks" client, which can detect these Actions protocols and allow them to be linked and used in various applications.
In other words, developers can use the Actions protocol to create URL links for on-chain tasks in target applications, and end users can seamlessly perform various on-chain activities (such as voting, prediction, subscription, donation, mining, token exchange, etc.) by interacting with these links.
Various Blinks-related projects are also emerging, such as Blnk.fun, which makes it easy to create and trade Blinks without coding, and Send, a community-based platform that explores various application use cases of Blinks and activates the ecosystem.
(7) Wormhole
Wormhole is a multi-chain bridge protocol jointly launched by Solana and Certus One, which can transmit messages and assets between multiple blockchains including Solana. It is particularly important to note that Wormhole's wrapped assets are the most liquid assets on Solana. The main goal of Wormhole is to overcome the liquidity fragmentation problem in the blockchain ecosystem and establish an integrated environment where assets and information flow freely across networks.
To this end, Wormhole adopts the Native Token Transfer (NTT) framework, which uses a burn-and-mint mechanism as well as Circle’s CCTP, and plans to enhance multi-chain governance capabilities through the recently launched W token to enhance decentralized operations.
(8) Anza
The Anza team is a software development company focused on building the Solana ecosystem. Many of the team's core engineers come from Solana Labs. Anza aims to make the SVM ecosystem more widely adopted through various client diversification plans (i.e., separate client development and support) and contributions to other major protocols within the Solana ecosystem (e.g., Token Extension, Solana platform tools and SDK, etc.).
(9) Helius
The Helius platform supports stable blockchain application development by providing APIs, RPC nodes, webhooks, and various development tools to Solana ecosystem developers.
(10) Light Protocol
Light Protocol is a team building a ZK (zero-knowledge) layer in the Solana ecosystem. Together with the Helius team, they developed ZK Compression, a technology that combines zero-knowledge proof and state compression technology. It aims to create a more logically complex application development environment with a larger user base by significantly reducing the operating costs of data and accounts in the Solana network.
(11) Metaplex
Metaplex is a typical library that provides various tools to facilitate the creation, sale and management of digital assets in the Solana ecosystem, including ownership expression, rights management, compressed NFT creation and deployment management.
Depending on how much each tool is used, a percentage of fees can be collected. Half of these collected protocol fees go into the Metaplex DAO treasury in the form of MPLX tokens (Metaplex’s utility and governance token), and the other half is used by the non-profit Metaplex Foundation to maintain the continued development, security, governance, and management of the Metaplex DAO.
(12) Solana Labs
The Solana Labs team was founded in 2018 and its main responsibility is to continuously develop and support Solana's overall core technology stack, from infrastructure design to client and token standards (e.g., Token Extension). Its goal is to ensure that the Solana network runs in an efficient and optimized manner.
(13) Eclipse
Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer 2 (L2) based on SVM, using Ethereum as the settlement layer. It also utilizes Celestia as a data availability solution and uses RISC Zero's zero-knowledge proof for verification. In this way, Eclipse aims to maximize verifiability while ensuring the highest degree of transaction processing capabilities.
(14) Neon EVM
Neon EVM is a project that enables the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to run on the Solana blockchain. The goal of the project is to allow Ethereum-based applications and smart contracts to take advantage of Solana's advantages (such as fast transactions, low fees, and parallel processing capabilities). With Neon EVM, Ethereum developers can easily migrate their existing Ethereum applications to the Solana network. Neon EVM can access storage data in Solana accounts, and all (anonymous) Ethereum accounts in Neon EVM are stored in the corresponding Solana accounts.
(15) Rome
The core idea of Rome is to improve the efficiency of rollup transaction processing by using Solana as a shared sorting layer. In other words, Solana sorts and executes transactions from various rollups on Ethereum (or Celestia), while Rome updates the status of each rollup based on these processed transactions and ensures that they are submitted on Ethereum (or Celestia).
(16) Termina
In the Solana ecosystem, we have seen examples of new projects being built using SVM application chains, rollups, and sidechains. These approaches leverage the Solana execution environment while maintaining flexibility in setting up block creation, block space, transaction ordering, and state management systems.
Developed by Nitro Labs, Termina provides SVM cloud platform services, enabling these projects to optimize and configure their own technology stack accordingly.
3. Finance
Although Solana is best known for its pioneering work in retail sectors such as DePIN, mobile, and payments, it is also becoming a key player in the financial sector. A common misconception about Solana is that its DeFi business is limited to meme coin trading. While Solana is indeed a primarily speculative network, this is not a disadvantage but an advantage as it highlights Solana's ability to handle large-scale transactions with high throughput and low latency.
Solana has seen significant growth in several verticals of its financial business in 2024. One of these is the decentralized exchange (DEX) sector, which has maintained high trading volumes throughout the year, sometimes rivaling or even surpassing Ethereum.
Another positive sign for Solana’s financial sector is the steady growth in the market capitalization of stablecoins. The market capitalization increased from $1.89 billion on January 1, 2024 to $3.8 billion on August 10, 2024, an increase of approximately $1.91 billion in total market capitalization.
While Solana is leading in retail applications, it is also beginning to see significant institutional adoption. For example, in late May, PayPal announced the launch of PayPal USD (PYUSD) for Solana, joining other financial institutions such as Visa, WorldPay, and Stripe.
One of the main reasons for Solana's growing institutional adoption in the stablecoin and real-world asset (RWA) space is the Token Extension feature released earlier this year. This new feature enables developers to integrate a variety of advanced features into SPL tokens, such as confidential transfers for private transactions, interest-earning capabilities for real-world assets, and permanent token delegation. These features are strategically designed by Solana Labs to meet the specific needs of enterprises and institutions for advanced token functionality and legal compliance.
The upgrade is already paying off, with Libre Capital recently launching an institutional fund for Solana. Solana users can now access a variety of funds, such as Hamilton Lane’s SCOPE, Brevan Howard’s Master Fund, and Blackrock ICS Money Market Fund, directly from their phones.
Other areas of Solana, such as Liquidity Staking (LST), are also growing rapidly. JITO has become the leading LST protocol, greatly increasing the number of SOL staked. Currently, JITO has nearly 12 million staked SOL and a total locked value (TVL) of more than $1.7 billion.
Perhaps the biggest success story of the year has been Solana’s pump.fun, a memecoin issuance platform. The project has effectively captured the huge speculative demand for memecoins by providing a platform with an improved memecoin issuance mechanism. Since its launch in January 2024, pump.fun has quickly risen to become a top ten protocol in terms of fees and earnings. In about six months, the platform’s total earnings/fees soared from about 8 SOL on February 1, 2024 to 518,366 SOL on August 1, 2024.
As highlighted above, Solana is not just a meme chain, but a public chain that is thriving in many aspects of the financial sector. It has successfully captured the speculative demand of retail investors in the market, while also steadily gaining institutional-level adoption from enterprises and institutions.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most important developments and interesting projects in the Solana finance space.
(1) Compute Labs and DBunker
Compute Labs and Dbunker are pioneering a new space at the intersection of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINFi). Their goal is to lower the barrier to entry for AI computing and DePIN by reducing the high initial capital costs, the need for expertise, and the complexity of managing physical infrastructure.
Compute Labs does this by converting GPUs into GNFTs (GPU Non-Fungible Tokens) through its Compute Tokenization Protocol (CTP), which effectively financializes computing hardware, which can then be deployed in a variety of DeFi activities, unlocking new value and unlocking the GPU market as an asset class.
DBunker simplifies DePIN by tokenizing physical mining hardware through its platform, creating digital assets that represent shares of physical mining equipment, allowing users to participate in DePIN without the complexity of managing physical infrastructure.
(2) PARCL
Parcl is a decentralized real estate exchange developed on Solana that allows users to trade and speculate on global real estate market prices. This is achieved through Parcl's City Index, which tracks the median price per square foot or square meter in various cities, providing users with information about the entire city's real estate market, not just individual property information.
(3) PYUSD
PayPal USD (PYUSD) is PayPal’s stablecoin. PayPal announced its strategic decision to integrate with Solana, calling it the “next phase of adoption” that aims to leverage Solana’s fast finality and low fees to usher in the next era of digital payments.
(4) Drift
Drift is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Solana that focuses on improving order processing speed and market efficiency. The Drift protocol supports a variety of functions, such as: spot trading, perpetual contract trading, lending, and passive liquidity provision. The Drift protocol is constantly expanding its product range and recently announced that it will release a prediction market.
(5) Jupiter
Jupiter is the leading DEX aggregation platform on Solana, providing the best and cheapest path to trade on Solana. The platform offers a range of products such as limit orders, perpetual contract trading, DCA (dollar cost averaging), fiat currency deposits and bridging functions. Jupiter also has the "LFG Release Platform", which helps release protocols such as Sanctum, Zeus and SharkyFi. In addition, deBridge Finance will be released at the end of August. The Jupiter team quickly adapted to the market and recently added a new product "Ape" to support a smoother and safer meme coin trading experience.
(6) JITO
JITO is a Liquidity Staking (LST) protocol that integrates Maximum Extractable Value (MEV) into its staking mechanism to share revenue with holders. In 2024, JITO's market share in the LST field has grown rapidly and is now the largest Liquidity Staking (LST) protocol in the Solana ecosystem with a TVL of over $11 million.
(7) Solayer
Solayer is a top-ranked market on Solana. Solayer takes a different approach to restaking, and instead of focusing on securing off-chain bridges, oracles, and rollups, it focuses on providing higher transaction priority and the possibility of securing block space for on-chain dApps. The Solana restaking protocol recently received an investment from Binance Labs and completed a Builder Round with well-known figures in the Solana community such as Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs.
(8) CUBE
Cube is a leading hybrid decentralized exchange (HEX) that combines off-chain order matching with on-chain settlement by leveraging multi-party computing (MPC) technology to provide an efficient, secure, and compliant trading experience.
(9) Magic Eden
Magic Eden is the main NFT market on Solana, supporting multi-chain environments including Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin Ordinals, providing a publishing platform for individual projects or BTC inscriptions.
(10) Tensor
Tensor is a platform tailored for professional NFT traders on Solana, integrating AMM and market functions. Users can access real-time data, candlestick pricing AMM for NFTs, and adopt various trading strategies, including large-scale acquisitions, bidding, and NFT listing/delisting. In addition to these features, Tensor also provides various reward programs for retail users, competing with Magic Eden for the king of the NFT market.
4. Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN)
The Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) uses various incentive mechanisms to crowdsource, operate, and maintain real-world physical infrastructure on a blockchain network. The defining feature of DePIN is the aggregation of necessary infrastructure, such as physical hardware or software.
However, at a more fundamental level, the most important aspect of the DePIN business model is the ability to effectively manage and utilize data transmitted through the network's physical or digital infrastructure. For example, Helium supports wireless connectivity by transmitting data from IoT devices. IO.NET uses its GPU/CPU node network to optimize data processing for machine learning tasks. Hivemapper collects and uses geospatial data from dashcams to provide mapping services. Therefore, DePIN is fundamentally data-driven and requires a reliable base layer with high transaction throughput, high composability, and high scalability.
Solana has become the leading public chain in the DePIN field with its ability to scale thousands of transactions per second (TPS), low latency, high cost efficiency, and a thriving ecosystem and developer community. These advantages make Solana the preferred base for leading DePIN projects such as Render Network, Hivemapper, and Helium. Solana's DePIN field is booming, and related projects have achieved significant growth and practical applications. A typical example is Helium, whose number of mobile users more than doubled in 2024, breaking through 100,000 in July this year.
Solana DePIN's strong growth has attracted and will continue to attract many new (and innovative) DePIN projects to the Solana ecosystem, such as Grass, Exabits, and Natix. This trend is likely to continue, as Solana's simple and straightforward monolithic approach and ability to support a variety of resource-intensive networks make it a preferred and DePIN hub for cryptocurrencies.
Below is an overview of the important progress and milestones achieved in the Solana DePIN space.
(1) Hivemapper
Hivemapper is a global mapping network that uses vehicle dashcams to collect real-time, high-resolution road imagery and rewards contributors with its native HONEY tokens. Hivemapper had an exceptionally strong second quarter, achieving several milestones, such as successfully mapping 25% of the world's road network and mapping approximately 28 million kilometers of street imagery per month. In addition, they have signed partnership agreements with a Fortune 50 company, two of the top 10 online map providers in the world, and multiple local municipalities and property management companies. Hivemapper also shipped 5,605 dashcams in the second quarter and plans to field test its next-generation dashcam "Bee" soon.
(2) NATIX
NATIX is a DePIN protocol for geospatial data mapping that aims to solve the problems of isolated data access and high business costs caused by the data monopoly of large technology companies. Natix creates a global decentralized dynamic map (DDMap) by integrating proprietary artificial intelligence, edge computing, and economic incentives into crowdsourced cameras around the world.
(3) Ambient Network
Ambient Network is a decentralized environmental monitoring infrastructure network that aims to collect global environmental data to protect the health of our planet and its inhabitants. Ambient has developed a mobile application called AmbiGO that monitors urban air quality, noise levels, and cleanliness by rewarding users who contribute and map environmental data. Ambient plans to launch a TGE (token generation event) on Solana in the third quarter of 2024.
(4) Shaga
Shaga is a two-time global DePIN hackathon champion and is currently developing a P2P cloud gaming platform. By connecting gaming PCs around the world into an open, decentralized network driven by players, Shaga hopes to improve latency and reduce dependence on large companies.
(5) 375ai
375ai is a DePIN building advanced decentralized wireless edge infrastructure. 375ai launched its first product, 375edge, a sensor and edge AI node capable of collecting, processing and transmitting multimodal data such as environmental and traffic data. Network participants can earn token rewards by deploying 375edge to collect and report high-quality data.
(6) DAWN
DAWN (Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Network) is a Solana DePIN protocol developed by Andrena. DAWN is a user-driven decentralized wireless network that provides affordable gigabit-speed home and business internet.
(7) Helium
Helium is a secure and cost-effective DePIN for 5G wireless connectivity. The Helium network is powered by a global community of distributed hotspot operators who provide wireless network coverage and earn Helium tokens in return. Helium offers highly competitive mobile plans in every state in the United States starting at just $20 per month.
The DePIN flywheel has worked well for Helium, as their Helium mobile subscriptions exceeded 100,000 in July 2024, more than doubling from the beginning of the year. Helium also announced the Helium Licensing Program. This program will enable third parties to produce and sell Helium hotspot devices, thereby generating revenue (licensing fees) and expanding the Helium network.
(8) GenesysGO
Developed by GenesysGo, ShdwDrive is a decentralized cloud storage platform on the Solana network. It uses a directed acyclic graph (DAG) data structure to achieve efficient decentralized data storage, management, and computing.
At the Solana Crossroads conference in Istanbul, GenesysGO launched the first decentralized storage network powered solely by mobile devices. Mobile shdwDrive will be integrated into Solana Mobile Chapter 2, which has over 150,000 pre-orders. The integration will allow Solana Saga users to turn their devices into decentralized storage nodes and earn rewards in SHDW (GenesysGO’s native token).
(9) StarPower
StarPower is a decentralized energy network (DEN) protocol on Solana that builds a distributed energy network by aggregating and utilizing the energy of various distributed energy devices (DERs), forming a unified and powerful distributed energy network that can meet the growing energy needs of artificial intelligence. StarPower has released its first product, StarPlug, which will be used to build its global energy network.
5. Artificial Intelligence
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the past few years has had a significant impact on various industries and has sparked widespread public interest in generative AI applications such as ChatGPT. However, most of the development, both at the infrastructure layer and at the model layer, has been dominated by closed-source Web2 companies. This centralized landscape has given rise to the idea of developing open source alternatives within the crypto industry, so the number of new AI projects has surged in the past year.
The popularity of decentralized AI has greatly benefited Solana, as many DePIN x AI projects have chosen to launch on the Solana network. This is largely due to Solana's technology stack, which provides significant advantages over competing chains. The parallel execution capability of Solana smart contracts significantly improves the efficiency of transaction processing on the Solana chain by allowing multiple non-conflicting transactions to be executed simultaneously, effectively optimizing computing hardware such as GPUs and CPUs. This is very beneficial for projects that perform large amounts of data and computing processes, as Solana allows them to coordinate resource allocation and process transactions on a large scale, supporting faster and more efficient operations.
However, while Solana’s AI space is not as developed as DePIN, it is at a promising stage, with three particularly promising areas: decentralized computing networks, data, and AI agents.
What follows is a summary of important developments in Solana’s AI space, as well as projects worth watching that may impact Solana’s future growth.
(1) IO.NET
IO.NET is a decentralized GPU aggregation platform that provides consumer and enterprise-level computing solutions for AI/ML. It stands out as one of the largest decentralized computing networks, leveraging idle GPUs worldwide to provide cost-effective and scalable solutions for various AI/ML tasks, including parallel training, hyperparameter tuning, and inference workloads.
IO.NET had a turbulent second quarter before its token launch, with issues related to GPU numbers displayed in web browsers. The IO.NET team implemented a proof-of-work (PoW) validation system to prevent GPU vulnerabilities and ensure greater transparency. The team has shown great determination and continues to push for new collaborations and updates.
(2) Kuzco
Kuzco is a decentralized GPU cluster built on Solana that provides scalable and cost-effective reasoning for large language models (LLMs). Kuzco's network requests are growing, new nodes are constantly entering the network, and it is currently being used for LLM reasoning work at DecentAI developed by Catena.
(3) Render Network
Render Network, a GPU network focused on providing scalable and cost-effective 3D rendering solutions for artists and businesses, continues to gain success through its application OctaneX. OctaneX, powered by Render, is integrated into Apple's latest iPad Pro, was showcased at Apple's keynote, and created the opening sequence for the HBO series The Last of Us.
(4) Exabits
Exabits, incubated by Harvard Innovation Lab, is developing an “AI computing foundation layer” for AI training, inference, and fine-tuning.
(5) Grass
Grass is a DePIN that aims to democratize AI model training through a distributed network of incentivized nodes that share unused bandwidth to collect and process web data. Grass achieved many successes in the second quarter. First, they successfully open-sourced a user dataset containing 600 million Reddit posts and HuggingFace comments, which is now publicly available for open source AI training. In addition, Grass desktop nodes can now achieve higher efficiency. Grass has announced the integration of Solana wallet addresses with users' Grass accounts, which will be used to distribute rewards to nodes when the node's data is used for AI inference or training workloads.
(6) Synesis One
Synesis One is a decentralized Train2Earn platform that allows anyone to profit from training AI. Data is the cornerstone of AI and needs to be labeled and annotated to improve the quality and accuracy of the underlying models. However, in its current state, microtasks and providing raw data are either extremely underpaid or performed by tech companies without the user's consent or knowledge. Synesis One democratizes AI training by incentivizing data crowdsourcing, where participants are rewarded for actively providing raw data and performing microtasks such as data labeling/annotation, or passively providing data by holding "Kanon NFTs".
(7) Privasea
Privasea provides security and data privacy solutions for AI and DePIN using Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). As AI becomes a part of everyday life, sensitive data such as financial information, medical records, and personal identity details are increasingly vulnerable to being leaked or manipulated, putting our digital identity and privacy at great risk.
Privatsea uses various FHE to encrypt sensitive data. It has also developed a dApp called "ImHuman" that allows users to save and encrypt their biometric data locally as NFTs to prove that they are real people and prevent robots and malicious AI from impersonating them.
(8) Dain Protocol
Dain Protocol is a decentralized AI network consisting of autonomous agents that can communicate, interact, learn, and collaborate. Dain aims to solve problems associated with today's Internet fragmentation by leveraging the collective intelligence of multi-agent systems and providing a unified platform to deploy and use AI agents with multi-module capabilities. DAIN recently released their code-free DeFi AI agent, DainTrader, for alpha users.
(9) Matrix One
Matrix One is committed to making it easy for anyone to create personalized AI characters by providing the necessary interfaces and tools to create multi-module AI agents that can be monetized and integrated in the virtual and real worlds. The protocol was created to improve the existing AI character platforms' high technical barriers, poor revenue distribution, lack of optionality, and AI character ownership. Matrix One minimizes these problems by providing developers and creators with a set of infrastructure tools such as character studios, 3D character visualizers, model indexes, and markets to make it easier to create, own, and trade tokenized AI characters.
(10) WayFinder AI
WayFinder AI is a decentralized protocol that allows user-owned autonomous AI agents to navigate and operate between on-chain applications and ecosystems. WayFinder powers Parallel Studios' new game Colony, which has AI agents with various capabilities such as smart contract creation. These agents can be highly customized through their advanced memory capabilities.
6. Consumer Applications
With a series of bankruptcies and turmoil, many are unsure about what the future of the crypto world will look like after the crypto industry has been in trouble in 2022. Naturally, crises usually have a negative impact, forcing the industry to turn to pragmatism, and mainnet have begun to discuss measures to gain real adoption.
Solana’s developer-friendly technology stack is optimized for user experience and is poised to become the most consistent network for mass adoption, achieving these goals. As a result, the network has seen strong growth in a variety of consumer-facing applications, such as gaming and mobile trading dApps.
What follows is a short list of consumer applications that demonstrate Solana’s user-centric approach.
(1) Echelon Prime
Echelon Prime provides the foundation for Parallel TCG (a sci-fi trading card game) and Parallel Colony (a strategy survival game with integrated AI characters).
(2) STEPN
Stepnoofficial is a social lifestyle app on Solana that connects people around the globe, encouraging an active and healthy lifestyle through STEPN’s digital NFT sneakers, where users can earn rewards when performing various daily activities.
(3) Audius
Audius is a decentralized music sharing platform that bridges fans and artists, providing users with exclusive new music while allowing artists and creators to maintain control of their work and receive fair compensation. Audius has signed licensing agreements with all major US performing rights organizations (PROs), including ASCAP, BMI, GMR, and SESAC.
(4) MetaDAO
MetaDAO is a decision-making market platform on Solana that leverages the concept of "futarchy" to enhance governance mechanisms. MetaDAO allows users to participate in governance decisions by trading tokens representing different potential outcomes.
(5) CUDIS
CUDIS is an AI health ring that helps users manage and track their health by monitoring and providing insights into various health indicators such as sleep, steps and daily activities. CUDIS provides users with personalized health advice through an integrated biometric dashboard, AI coaching and a points reward system for users to complete each goal, thereby helping users achieve their health goals. CUDIS successfully completed the first round of ring sales and is now in the second round of sales.
(6) DeStreet
DeStreetdApp is a social trading application that won second place in the DAO and Community category of the Solana Renaissance Hackathon and first place in the Bonkathon competition. The dApp allows traders to create, discover and share trades on social media by simply sharing a link. Trade initiators can earn 20% of the total profit, and users can subscribe to their favorite influencers to automatically follow their trades, adding an element of gamification and social prestige.
(7) DFlow
DFlow is a non-custodial mobile trading platform based on Solana, focused on accelerating the adoption of on-chain trading from both the application and infrastructure side through their mobile trading applications and liquidity aggregators. The DFlow mobile app was recently launched and is now available for download on IOS and Android.
(8) Follows.App
Follows.App is a social trading platform on Solana that innovates the creator economy through creator financialization (Creator-Fi). The app allows fans (users) to support and invest in their favorite influencers by buying and selling Follows, providing fans with a unique experience and creators with new profit opportunities.
7. Community and Culture
FC Barcelona’s La Masia academy is famous for producing world-class players such as Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta, who not only won championships for themselves, but also brought millions of dollars in revenue to the entire club, including ticket and fan equipment revenue. Like football training camps, blockchain communities are essential to cultivating grassroots talent, building a common culture, and driving growth and success.
Reminiscent of La Masia, Solana has built one of the most vibrant communities in crypto, filled with passionate maximalists, founders, developers, and investors who are nurturing and attracting global talent to the Solana ecosystem through initiatives, hackathons, and grant programs.
Many of the largest projects in the Solana ecosystem, such as Magic Eden, JITO, and IO.NET, all started as Solana hackathons. Grassroots projects like these have remained loyal to Solana and are now giving back by helping to grow the Solana ecosystem by attracting new users, partners, and network liquidity, as well as sponsoring hackathons. In this sense, the Solana community is the cornerstone of a virtuous cycle, where recurring investment and collaboration perpetuates further innovation and growth.
Culture is the glue that holds communities together. For Solana, this is reflected in the phrase “Only Possible on Solana” (OPOS) and the large community that has formed around NFTs and meme coins.
Solana NFT and meme projects such as Solana Monkey Business (SMB), Mad Lads, Bonk, PONKO, etc., all started out as pure artistic or meme expressions, but through their cultural and aesthetic appeal, they have formed a larger community of like-minded people, thus strengthening the entire Solana community. For example, Solana Monkey Business's MonkeDAO hosts Solana global meetups and funding programs, and there is also the recent Bonkathon co-hosted by Radiants, Bonk, and Phase Labs, with a prize of up to $300,000, aimed at promoting innovation in the Bonk ecosystem. In this sense, Solana's community and its cultural support are fundamental pillars of the Solana network.
Here is an overview of some of the projects and communities that are shaping Solana’s culture and community.
(1) Bonk
Bonk is a dog-themed meme coin launched on the Solana chain on December 25, 2022. In 2023, the Bonk airdrop was included in the Solana Saga and played a major role in its success. Since then, Bonk has developed use cases beyond meme appeal, such as projects such as BonkBot and Bonkswap, as well as various other integrations between DeFi, games, and NFTs.
(2) dogwifhat
Dogwifhat is a Shiba Inu-themed meme coin featuring the real-life dog Achi wearing a pink hat. Dogwifhat was launched in November last year and quickly became popular. It is currently the largest meme coin in the Solana market.
(3) PONKE
“Degenerate Gambler with Anger Issues” Ponke is one of Solana’s most popular memecoins, having been active since late 2023. Despite Ponke’s wild price fluctuations, the community only seems to be growing stronger due to its massive cultural appeal and viral TikTok memes amassing millions of views.
(4) Popcat
Popcat is an internet meme that originated in October 2020 and features two images of a domestic shorthair cat named "Oatmeal" in a series of videos, one with its mouth closed and one with its mouth open, with the second image edited to make the cat's mouth appear in an "O" shape.
(5) Mad Lads
The Mad Lads NFT series is built on the xNFT standard and aims to explore the potential of NFT as a decentralized application. The release of Mad Lads has injected new vitality into the Solana community, which was in trouble due to the collapse of FTX.
(6) Retardio
Retardio is a Solana meme coin that emerged after an online controversy in which influencer Andrew Tate called account X @trading_axe a “retardio.” Since then, the term “retardio” has become famous in crypto circles, and a cult-like community has formed around it.
(7) MonkeDAO
MonkeDAO is the DAO of the famous NFT series Solana Monkey Business (SMB) and Solana's first NFT DAO. In 2021, MonkeDAO was still a small community passionate about SMB NFTs, and now it has grown into a global community investing, incubating, and building the future of Web3. In late April, MonkeDAO renewed its contract with the Solana Foundation and added the Metaplex platform to support builders and creators of the Solana ecosystem.
(8) Radiants
Radiants, a community of creators, developers, and artists building public products on Solana, recently hosted a Bonkathon in partnership with Bonk, Phase Labs, and the Solana Foundation.
(9) Superteam
Superteam is a global community of founders, developers, grantees, and other stakeholders who collaborate to grow and incubate new innovative projects in the Solana ecosystem.
Superteam is a truly international company with offices in 12 countries including Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, Vietnam, UK, UAE, Philippines, Malaysia and Canada, nurturing global talent.
(10) Colosseum
Colosseum is the Solana Foundation's accelerator platform, which hosts hackathons and provides critical support to early-stage startups in the Solana ecosystem. Hackathon winners can enter the "Colosseum" program, where they can get help with product launches, opportunities to connect with top venture capital firms, and an additional $250,000 in funding.
Colosseum hosted the Solana Renaissance Hackathon, where more than 8,300 participants from over 95 countries submitted 1,070 projects in areas such as infrastructure, games, DePIN, DAO, DeFi, and consumer applications.
(11) Solana Foundation
The Solana Foundation is a nonprofit organization that provides grants, financing, and resources to developers, projects, and various initiatives to grow and nurture the Solana ecosystem.
(12) Breakpoint
Breakpoint is an event organized by the Solana Foundation that brings together industry experts, artists, developers, and community members. Breakpoint lasts for several days and features a variety of fascinating talks and workshops. This year, Solana Breakpoint will be held in Singapore on September 20th and 21st.
(13) Crossroads
Crossroads is an annual community conference held in Istanbul, Turkey. Solana Crossroads was created to connect Solana global community members, providing opportunities for communication, presentations, and learning about the latest developments in the Solana ecosystem. This year's Crossroads conference had more than 3,000 attendees and more than 50 presentations.
(14) Solana Summit
The Solana Summit is the largest gathering of Solana founders, creators, and developers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. It aims to build connections and strengthen the community of Solana supporters. The Solana Summit was held from June 20 to June 22 this year, with more than 750 attendees from 55 countries and more than 95 speakers and workshop hosts in attendance.
(15) SolanaFloor
SolanaFloor, powered by Step Finance, is the leading Solana news and media hub covering the latest developments and news from the Solana ecosystem.
(16) Validated
Validated is the top Solana podcast hosted by Austin Federa, Head of Strategy and Communications at the Solana Foundation. Validated features engaging, thought-provoking conversations between Austin Federa and guests who are rethinking the internet. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
