Week in Solana: Solana Steals the Show with Phones, Games and Gains

As the crypto market surges ahead thanks to interest rate cuts and a historically bullish Q4 incoming, the Solana ecosystem has had one of its best weeks ever.

The unsurprising catalyst was Solana Breakpoint 2024, held in Singapore from September 20-22. The conference brought together over 5,700 developers, investors, and enthusiasts, showcasing Solana's growing ecosystem and increasing adoption across various sectors of the blockchain industry.

We were at Breakpoint and year-on-year, it’s an exponential leveling up over last year’s introspective affair in Amsterdam where Anatoly (Toly) Yakovenko, Solana founder, spent hours on the floor to talk to attendees and thank them in person for their support.

This year, all the handwringing and mea culpas made way for fist bumps and meme coins as the conference, held at aptly named Suntec Convention Center, adjacent to the F1 Singapore track, got its swagger back, and in a good way.

Key announcements from Breakpoint included PayPal's endorsement of Solana for retail crypto payments, Franklin Templeton's plans to tokenize assets on Solana, and the unveiling of Solana's new Seeker mobile phone and Play 1 handheld gaming console.

The message is clear: Solana’s increasingly a hit with both institutions and retail, and the last remaining ghosts of 2022’s calamitous FTX collapse have been fully laid to rest.

Solana Ecosystem Overview

The Breakpoint (and Token2049) effect has created a sea of green candles on all fronts.

• Solana's DeFi sector continues to thrive, with top protocols showing impressive weekly growth.
• The meme coin and gaming sectors are also picking up steam, with most tokens posting significant gains.
• In the NFT space, Solana maintains its strong position, leading in user engagement across blockchain platforms.

Artemis: Solana &-Day Daily TXs vs DAU (new wallets)

Let's dive into the numbers and see how Solana is performing across various categories.

https://twitter.com/SolanaConf/status/1838715324600111615

Solana Numbers This Week

• Price: $151.97, up nearly 20% over 7 days
• Market cap: $71 billion with a 7-day change of 4.15%
• DeFi TVL: $4.799 billion
• 24h fees: $602,081
• Daily active addresses: Consistently above 4 million
• 24h trading volume: $2,607,880,927

How Did Solana Stack Up Against Its Competitors?

Solana has shown strong performance this week compared to its competitors:

• Solana's 18.89% 7-day gain outperforms key competitors like Ethereum (6.55%), Tron (1.93%), and Arbitrum (6.48%).
• With a TVL of $4.818 billion, Solana maintains its position as the third-largest DeFi ecosystem.
• In the NFT space, Solana leads with 27.1K daily active users over 7 days and 92.6K over 30 days

Top 10 Solana Breakpoint 2024 Stories

1. Frankendancer validator client goes live to help scale Solana
2. PayPal endorses Solana over Ethereum for retail crypto payments.
3. Major firms like Franklin Templeton plan to tokenize assets on Solana.
4. Jupiter acquires companies, announces new features and products.
5. Solana’s Seeker mobile phone and Play 1 handheld gaming console revealed
6. Bonk is adding new Web2 partnerships and planning a Solana ETP
7. Coinbase is launching wrapped Bitcoin 
8. Magic Eden has an $ME token in the pipeline
9. MakerDAO, now SKY, deploys on Solana
10. Helio integrates Blinks into Shopify

Solana Categories The Last Week

Solana DeFi

Source: DeFiLlama

Solana's DeFi sector continues to show strong growth:

1. Jito: $1.989b TVL with a 16% 7d gain
2. Marinade, Raydium and Sanctum all clock 20% gains over the last 7 days

Solana Meme Coins: Quick Takes

1. dogwifhat (WIF) leads with a 38% weekly gain and $2B market cap.
2. All top 10 coins show double or triple-digit growth the last week.
3. BONK maintains relevance with $1.3B market cap, up 18%.
4. Cat-themed coins (Popcat, MEW) surge nearly 50% each.
5. Smaller caps like Mother Iggy (140% up) and Mumu the Bull (70% up) are up bigly.

Note: Impressive gains, but high volatility. Invest cautiously.

Solana DePIN

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network projects at the moment (source: DePinScan)

1. Render (RNDR): $2.45B market cap
2. Helium (HNT): $1.31B market cap
3. io.net (IO): $205M market cap
4. Hivemapper (HONEY): $179M market cap
5. Nosana (NOS): $178M market cap

NFTs

• Leading in chain users: 27.1K over 7d and 92.6K over 30d
• Second in chain trading revenue: $169.4K over 7d
• Strong performance in chain royalties: $47M over the past year, approaching Ethereum's $50M

What You Can Do Now

1. Keep an eye on announcements from traditional finance institutions like Franklin Templeton and Citibank regarding their Solana initiatives. These could signal broader adoption and potential investment opportunities.
2. With Solana's new Seeker phone and Play 1 gaming console announced at Breakpoint, consider how these devices might impact the ecosystem and potentially create new opportunities for developers and users.
3. Look into projects like SKY (formerly MakerDAO) deploying on Solana and Coinbase's plans for cbBTs, which will bring more liquidity and users to the chain.
4. Keep an eye on a potential new Solana Airdrop Season: several new projects announced plans to launch a token later this year and Crypto Twitter and YouTube should be full of updates. Please stay mindful of scams and phishing attacks!
5. Close your eyes and relive that closing party!

Remember to always do your own research (DYOR) and consider your risk tolerance before making any investment decisions.

Closing thoughts

With the F1 literally on its doorstep, I can’t help to throw in one last comparison, as it’s surely not a coincidence. Last year’s Breakpoint now feels like a technical pit stop for refueling/repairs, while this year it felt like we’re going full throttle in a McClaren racing around Singapore’s urban track, with too little time to watch every talk and shake every hand.

While volatility can be expected in the short term, Solana’s trajectory appears to be up for the foreseeable future in terms of network effect, technical innovation and user adoption, a sentiment shared in interviews with Solana bulls like Joe McCann and Kyle Samani.

Solana is built for those with a need for speed, and it’s not slowing down for anyone again.