The Solana network and its ecosystem trading tools have become an important foundation for driving the current "Memecoin Super Cycle". The Solana network was created by Anatoly Yakovenko and Greg Fitzgerald in 2017 and officially launched its mainnet in March 2020. Through its unique technical architecture, it has achieved high throughput, low latency and low fees, and has quickly risen to become one of the leading players in the blockchain field, attracting the attention of many developers and traders, and has also gained widespread attention in the community, making an important contribution to the promotion of Web3.0.
This issue is the 4th episode of the "Developer's Story" column, which will provide a better understanding of the Solana world from the perspectives of Matt Sorg and the OKX Web3 technology team. The topics covered in this issue include the hot spots in the Solana network market, technical innovations, ecosystem development, community governance, developer construction and other topics, aiming to gain an in-depth understanding of the insights and plans of Solana developers.
How to view Solana and the Memecoin craze
Matt Sorg: There is no doubt that Memecoins are a zero-sum game. Traditional zero-sum games have high commissions from the platform side. But most Memecoin platforms have very low transaction fees, and anyone can participate at will. This may mean that DeFi projects can customize services based on user preferences, or individual users can find ways to contribute to the project. I'm not entirely sure how Memecoins will develop, but I don't think it's right to deny them.
OKX Web3:
Many users are now trading Meme tokens on Solana, which poses higher requirements for the basic performance of wallets, and we have also made a lot of product optimizations:
1) For Meme trading, OKX Web3 wallet users can choose the ultra-fast trading mode to trade, the underlying principle is the same as the current mainstream trading bots, which is to access the services of third-party trading channels like Jito, and currently OKX Web3 wallet is the only wallet vendor that has integrated Jito, meeting the needs of Meme users for trading speed.
2) For Meme prices, we have made special treatment for Meme-type token assets, because the prices of Meme coins fluctuate greatly, and Meme users are very sensitive to the price fluctuations of Meme assets, so the OKX Web3 wallet displays the real-time on-chain prices for Meme-type assets, so that users can feel the changes in Meme token prices in real time in the OKX Web3 wallet.
From the perspective of long-term industry development, we believe that a neutral view should be taken towards Solana and Memecoins. Currently, Solana has gained a huge number of users and trading volume through the Memecoin wave, which is closely related to its high performance, low fees, and the strong Meme community atmosphere. But Memecoins still lack real applications and are more like a high-volatility game. Looking at the long-term development of Web3, while supporting Memecoins, Solana should also focus on more valuable technical innovations and applications to ensure the sustainable development of the ecosystem.
Solana network data saw huge growth in Q2 and a large number of innovative applications were born, what is the underlying technology it relies on?
Matt Sorg: Solana is a truly differentiated technology, where each component in the network maintains decentralization while optimizing performance, and we now have thousands of validator nodes globally. Many organizations contribute to the Solana protocol through multiple client teams, and many commercial organizations are interested in the Solana network, including RPC services, infrastructure, DeFi and more. Solana's culture is to continuously improve every part of the technology stack, even if they are leading today, they will eventually become a bottleneck. While other ecosystems are just beginning to discuss some of the things Solana has been proposing since the beginning, with efficiency at the core. This approach ensures that all parts of the technology stack are optimized, and the Solana system processes more transactions on average per day than the total of all other blockchains.
OKX Web3:
We highly recognize Solana's underlying technology, and from the perspective of our wallet, there are several differences in OKX Web3's support for the Solana network compared to other networks:
• In terms of trading mode, users can choose to use a third-party trading channel like Jito to have their trades packaged on the chain faster, which other networks currently do not have this service.
• In terms of asset parsing, Solana is currently the only network that can achieve real-time parsing of assets and full display of assets, so as long as users have new token assets, the OKX Web3 wallet can display them in real time.
According to the general market situation, the transaction failure rate on the Solana chain is generally higher than on the EVM chain. The OKX Web3 team has made a lot of efforts to reduce the transaction failure rate for users when using Solana:
• In terms of priority fees, OKX adopts a dynamic pricing approach, because the priority fee on Solana is determined by two factors: Unit Price and Unit Limit. In order to make the priority fee achieve the optimal effect and not let users blindly pay more SOL as the target, we have analyzed the on-chain transactions of the last 1,000 transactions in the pricing of Unit Price, and only recommend the optimal Unit price to users. At the same time, in the calculation of Unit Limit, we will not blindly set a too high Limit number, as setting too high a Limit is not conducive to the transaction being packaged on the chain, so we will calculate the estimated Limit consumption of this transaction as a reference, saving priority fees while ensuring the transaction can be successfully packaged on the chain more quickly.
• In terms of broadcast strategy, we have adopted a multi-node broadcast scheme, selecting the top node service providers on Solana for multi-node broadcast. We have also integrated with third-party trading channel providers like Jito, which can broadcast transactions to the chain faster and with a higher success rate.
The transaction failure rate has been reduced from a maximum of 70% to a minimum of 0.8%. Compared to the on-chain transaction failure rate data, we maintain a leading position.
Will the Blinks protocol and Solana ecosystem phones drive large-scale adoption of Solana?
Matt Sorg: Good products start by meeting users' urgent needs and then iterate on that basis. One of the main benefits of decentralization is not just the ideology, but that it allows businesses to operate in a self-interested, permissionless way. Blinks extends this permissionless integration to Web2. Users don't have to wait for other platforms - Solana's wallets and applications can iterate and create products that users love.
The beauty of Blinks is that its underlying infrastructure was initially launched as part of Solana Pay. This API specification takes a wallet public key and returns a serialized transaction, but due to the name constraint, its prototype was only suitable for payment scenarios. Solana Actions formally expanded the application scenarios of this specification, not only limited to payment functions, but with more capabilities. Through Actions, blockchain protocols can be converted into services, making them operations that can be shared anywhere (through Blinks). On Solana, Actions and Blinks make any website and application on the internet a distribution point for on-chain interactions, further driving mainstream user adoption. Combining this with all of Solana's advantages, it can create a whole new economic model.
In summary, Solana has uniquely achieved a diversified economy under shared state. Payments, DePIN, games, RWA, etc. all run in the same shared state and are interconnected through highly liquid DeFi protocols. I believe that as the Solana network effect continues to strengthen over time, large-scale user adoption will gradually be realized, bringing an experience that closed-loop Web2 applications cannot match.
OKX Web3:
Solana has unleashed enough creativity in ecosystem expansion, not only enriching native Web3 use cases, but also increasing the exposure of Solana and even Web3 technology in Web2, which will inevitably drive the prosperity of the Solana ecosystem. From a third-party perspective, whether it's the Blinks protocol or the Solana ecosystem phones, the emergence of these new applications will greatly lower the technical threshold and attract more mainstream users, especially those unfamiliar with Web3 technology and applications, to enter Solana. At the same time, these new tools, new platforms and possibilities will also attract more developers to participate in building the Solana ecosystem, ultimately driving the long-term growth of Solana ecosystem user volume and transaction scale.
Solana Development Environment, Network Security, and Frontier Technology
Matt Sorg: In terms of the development environment, the SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) separates executable code and state, allowing programs to be easily reused in different configurations. Many applications do not need to deploy code on-chain, creating an environment where front-end developers and on-chain developers can each play an important role in the DApp layer. There are many incentives that allow other application developers to build code in a large interconnected ecosystem, beyond just the basic execution environment. Developers can collaborate extensively in hackathons, Hacker Houses, training camps, and even lengthy Twitter/X discussions. The "Renaissance" hackathon held on the Colosseum platform in the first half of 2024 attracted over 8,300 participants and received 1,071 project submissions. The registration for the second hackathon "Radar" grew by more than 36% compared to "Renaissance", with over 11,000 registrants. The upcoming "Electric Capital" report will showcase the significant growth of Solana developers.
In terms of network security, Solana has maintained extensive audits and an active security program, including a bug bounty program. As the blockchain industry has matured, many professional security organizations have emerged, such as the Crypto-ISAC, Security Alliance (SEAL), and Immunefi. The Solana Foundation actively collaborates with these organizations to strengthen the security of the ecosystem. Good engineering design requires attention to detail and continuous improvement and learning. Although Solana is referred to as a monolithic chain, its codebase is quite modular, which is driven by the Solana Foundation. Additionally, as mentioned, there is significant redundancy between the client and stack components, and the Solana Foundation plays a coordinating role, including the Solana Improvement Document (SIMD) process.
In terms of frontier technology, Solana is a rethinking of how blockchains process and propagate data, and it is at the forefront of throughput and speed, processing more transactions than the sum of all other public blockchains.
For more detailed data, please visit:
https://chainspect.app/dashboard
OKX Web3:
Our team has been committed to providing a good wallet solution service for Solana developers. We will soon launch Solana support on the OKX OS, providing Solana ecosystem builders with a complete wallet solution. Meanwhile, the OKX Connect product launched on Telegram will also soon support Solana integration, helping Solana ecosystem developers focus more on building products in their own domains and jointly building the community.
We will also regularly invite Solana developers online and offline to discuss the current pain points of community users and the direction of future Solana community building. We hope to contribute OKX's own strength to the construction of the Solana ecosystem in a comprehensive way.
For example, a current feature of the Solana chain is that many project parties will directly airdrop tokens to users without the need for active claiming. This results in ordinary users having a large number of non-actively acquired tokens or NFTs of different values on Solana. The OKX Web3 team has done a lot of work on asset display: Solana users can now experience full asset display and real-time asset parsing in the OKX Web3 wallet. If you are importing your wallet address to the OKX Web3 wallet for the first time, you can see all the assets with balances on that address. If you have purchased new token assets on Solana, you can see your newly acquired token assets in real-time on the OKX Web3 wallet homepage, without the need to additionally add token contracts.
Discussing Applications, Solana's PayFi Narrative, Re-Staking Narrative, and the New SPL Token Standard "Token Extensions"
Matt Sorg: In my view, PayFi is programmable money. Blockchains are used for commercial purposes of buying, selling, and paying, all of which can be customized and leverage DeFi to reduce friction and improve liquidity. Whether it's Web2, Web3, or other systems, Solana is the world's highest-performing and lowest-barrier system.
Solana's functionality is very similar to the Ethereum re-staking track, and currently, multiple applications benefit from Solana's infrastructure, leveraging Solana's economic security to ensure some applications that do not directly go through consensus. The difference between the two is similar to the above L2 discussion, with the main technical difference being SWQoS.
Token Extensions are audited on-chain code that developers can use to configure tokens to their liking without deploying on-chain code. They provide ready-made options to unlock important use cases, such as:
• Confidential transfers that conceal the amount of tokens transferred in a compliant manner, as the sender and recipient addresses are known, and the issuer can register as an auditor.
• Transfer hooks allow the use of customizable logic to attach conditions to transfers. Developers can trigger certain processes or even create a permissioned ecosystem around a token, even on a permissionless blockchain like Solana.
To learn more, please visit:
https://solana.com/solutions/token-extensions
OKX Web3:
Token Extensions allow tokens to have different functionalities, such as freezing, burning, and transfer restrictions, greatly expanding the complex application scenarios of tokens. The expansion of these basic capabilities provides Solana DApp developers with a great deal of development freedom. For example, Transfer hooks limit the execution of specific logic during transfers, which has many applications in DeFi, gaming, and other compliant scenarios. Stablecoin developers can ensure that the recipient's account meets specific KYC (Know Your Customer) or AML (Anti-Money Laundering) requirements, and only accounts that meet the conditions can receive the tokens.
ZK Compression Technology Sparks Community Discussion, Does Solana Network Need L2?
Matt Sorg: To achieve Solana's goal of near-light-speed global state synchronization, it needs to be flexible in adapting to various configurations. ZK compression allows verifying arbitrary amounts of data on the mainnet with relatively small memory usage, which is data scaling. Entities like Light Protocol and Helius are developing ZK compression and other technologies to enable scaling from multiple dimensions. Other projects focus on high-computational tasks, including machine learning (ML), with some off-chain computations being embedded in blocks, and others may be similar to L2 solutions.
• The Solana mainnet does not care about the naming of the submitted transactions; its responsibility is to connect these transactions as frictionlessly and permissionlessly as possible.
• Solana exhibits the ultimate on-chain performance while maintaining sufficient decentralization. Usually, the existence of solutions is due to certain configurations being incompatible with the mainnet.
• Examples of configurations that may differ include geolocked validation, KYC, and localized performance (not attempting to synchronize global state).
Vision for Solana's Future Development and How Long Do You Think the Crypto Industry Will Exist?
Matt Sorg: Within and outside the Solana ecosystem, there is an extremely diverse community, and many enterprises are happy to support these communities and developers. The role of the Solana Foundation is to do things that would be difficult for any single institution to do. We facilitate dialogues, communicate with institutions that want to interact with more formal ecosystem organizations, and help provide content that anyone can use to introduce excellent upcoming projects to users and developers. In fact, we're excited for the Foundation to become less important over time. Strong teams, in-person builder communities, community-hosted conferences, and so on, have truly taken on a life of their own.
Technical development often involves multiple parallel leadership. People have made many mistaken assumptions about technological development, especially those related to Solana. The "blockchain trilemma" comes from a blog post by Vitalik, describing a broad consideration of common tradeoffs, but it is not a rule. Some seem to think that as soon as a bottleneck appears, Solana is at the limits of the "trilemma," meaning drastic tradeoffs must be made. The reality is that even on current hardware, Solana's development may have only completed 2%. This may sound concerning, but remember that Solana has already processed more transactions than the sum of all other public blockchains. This is excellent, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
I'm quite certain: the way mathematics is applied to bits will far exceed human existence.
OKX Web3:
The development of Solana and the crypto industry as a whole is an exciting and rapidly evolving space. The Solana ecosystem has shown remarkable growth and innovation, with a diverse community of developers, enterprises, and users contributing to its success.
The introduction of technologies like ZK compression and Token Extensions demonstrate Solana's commitment to scalability and flexibility, allowing the network to adapt to various use cases and configurations. The collaboration between the Solana Foundation and organizations like OKX Web3 further strengthens the ecosystem, providing developers with the tools and support they need to build cutting-edge applications.
As for the longevity of the crypto industry, it's difficult to predict with certainty, but the underlying technology and its potential applications continue to evolve and expand. The industry has already weathered various challenges and cycles, and the growing mainstream adoption and institutional interest suggest that crypto is here to stay, even if the specific projects and trends may change over time.
Ultimately, the future of Solana and the crypto industry will be shaped by the continued innovation, collaboration, and dedication of the diverse community of stakeholders. The OKX Web3 team remains committed to supporting the Solana ecosystem and contributing to its long-term success.
Solana's ecosystem building is one of the core projects of OKX Web3, and we hope to create a friendly multi-chain wallet for Solana ecosystem users. Especially in terms of underlying capabilities and ecosystem support, we have set up a Solana-dedicated team to focus more resources on building the Solana ecosystem.
In terms of underlying capabilities, due to the surge in Solana on-chain transaction volume at the beginning of the year, the transaction failure rate has increased sharply. After in-depth research on the characteristics of the Solana chain, we have conducted in-depth research and support on the optimization of transaction speed and transaction success rate. We have become the first wallet to access the third-party Jito service, and have also co-built the optimal priority fee solution with the Solana community. The transaction speed has been improved from the previous 10s to 2s. The transaction failure rate has been reduced from the highest 70% to the lowest 0.8%. In terms of Solana asset parsing, OKX has also made great changes, and the three terminals can now support real-time parsing of assets on Solana, without the need to manually add token contracts to view newly added assets.
In terms of ecosystem support, Solana's latest Token 2022 protocol, we have deeply supported the parsing and trading of this type of token at the beginning of the year, and will continue to explore more functions derived from the Token 2022 protocol. With the explosion of Blinks in the middle of the year, the OKX Web3 wallet has also integrated Blinks in the first time, allowing users to purchase Crypto shared by Blinks through the OKX Web3 wallet, and also create Blinks shares to their own Twitter with one click. At the same time, we have also launched Meme mode for Meme users, which can achieve transaction speed that completely matches the fastest trading robots on the market, and can also view the most real-time token prices in the OKX Web3 wallet. For the hottest Sonic on Solana's SVM, we have also completed the integration recently, becoming one of the earliest wallets to venture into the Solana L2 and Gamefi ecosystem, and jointly launched an exclusive event with Sonic, which has garnered a lot of participation and exposure from Solana users.
As an important Web3 community, we hope that Solana will continue to maintain its technological leadership, expand its ecosystem, drive user growth and community building, and push Web3 towards mainstream users, allowing more Web2 users to enter the world of blockchain and experience the innovation brought by crypto technology. We believe that the crypto industry will exist in the long term, which not only depends on the development of crypto technology and application scenarios, but also on the innovation and integration with the real world.
About the "Developer's Story" Column
Web3 developers have made important contributions to the development of the crypto industry. Their innovative spirit and technical capabilities have injected lasting vitality and momentum into the development of the entire industry, not only improving the technology itself, but also providing support for future application scenarios and business models. However, although they are active, they are rarely noticed. The "Developer's Story" column launched by OKX Web3 and ChainCatcher aims to understand the development context, technical insights, latest dynamics, market changes, and hot comments of different public chain ecosystems from the perspective of developers, through dialogues with core developers of different public chain ecosystems and the OKX Web3 technical team, to enhance the voice of Web3 developers, get closer to these most active and interesting people, and provide them with the greatest support.
Disclaimer
This content is for reference only and does not constitute or should be considered as (i) investment advice or recommendation, (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold digital assets, or (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) are subject to market fluctuations and involve high risks, which may depreciate in value or become worthless. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation and risk tolerance. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals for your specific situation. Not all products are available in all regions. For more details, please refer to OKX Terms of Service and Risk Disclosure & Disclaimer. The OKX Web3 mobile wallet and its derivative services are subject to separate terms of service. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with applicable local laws and regulations.
