Do ya’ll know what the most surprising thing about the Solana Breakpoint conference has been? The fact that there is absolutely no line for the women’s bathroom. 😭🙄 In fact, I may have spotted less than 20 women around the whole conference, with 50 percent of them attending as guests of their husbands. Solana could very well be the hypest blockchain with over 1.2 million active accounts and 37 billion transactions to date. Like I stated in my previous newsletter, the price of its token shot up this summer, and today I learned it’s basically because of how cheap and easy it is to mint, sell and buy NFTs on the Solana blockchain. So in these next few posts, I’ll be sharing more about how to use NFTs, their utilities, and how it all relates to the culture of crypto.
Sitting down with my peers is always an eye-opening experience. I arrived at the roundtables expecting to hear primarily about the challenges of building out and scaling solutions, but their conversation went in an entirely different direction. There’s a shit ton of VCs here looking for stuff to invest in, there’s a bunch of technical developers and also community builders looking to figure out how to make their projects pop off on the Solana blockchain and metaverse. Much of the conversation is revolving around enhancing the user experience, interoperability of the network and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and applications that can and will be built on Solana.
If there’s anything I am taking from the conference it the one key message of interoperability. The concept that something even centralized banks and telecommunications companies have failed to do. We need more unity. Case and point: When I was trying to sign my apartment lease and pay the downpayment, I faced so many issues just because my bank doesn’t really have a retail branch in Florida. I had the cash to pay, I just needed a “certified check” by a bank to present to my landlord. Even though I had this money in my account, I couldn’t walk into a Chase or Bank of America and pay for one of their certified checks, because my current banking system wasn’t on their same accounting system. This is the problem with centralized systems in that every entity has their own rules, nothing is cohesive and the customer is never the priority.
In Web3, we believe that there will be more community and collaboration.
This narrative was pushed as a primary introduction to the conference. The founders of this blockchain, Raj and Anatoly, want to continue to build the global community up to 1 billion users. They are even giving out millions of dollars in grants and you (yes, You! ), can gain access to this funding right here.
Applications Building on the Solana blockchain
Since March, so many companies with major $$$ have been building on this blockchain so if you’re still a bit skeptical about what the cyberpunk have been up to, it’s still early and just reading this newsletter you’re gaining major gems💎💎.
Thoughts on my experience with NFTs so far
So if you’ve been reading this newsletter for at least three months, you’ll know that a lot of the NFT projects I highlight are powered on the Ethereum blockchain using OpenSea and Rarible NFT marketplaces, like our own zine NFTs. One thing to keep in mind are the fucking extremely high gas fees to even participate in the space which is basically a pair of Yeezys right now. Every time you buy an NFT or sell /transfer something, it costs money on top of the jpeg that you are buying. Think of gas prices as a tax, but this crypto tax price/ will increase when the value of the currency increases when you’re transacting on the ethereum blockchain. When it comes to Solana, this is not the case. There are no crazy gas fees because of the proof of history validation that happens within the network, requiring less from miners and its super fast. Essentially this is why Solana NFTs have popped off as a use case for artists and especially gamers, who can earn all types of rewards.
However, with the onslaught of so many blockchains, this is becoming a major problem. I need a different currency and wallet to even participate in Solana’s blockchain. My MetaMask wallet and Eth only works on platforms like SupeRate and Open Sea. I can’t move my Solana-based NFTs to my Kukoin Wallet where I bought my NARs makeup NFT.
You get what I’m saying?
In web3, we should be able to move freely around the net without barriers, borders and censorship. Interoperobility. During the sessions, a lot of the panelists were dropping interoperability theories in the same notes at user experience. Right now, there’s so many company building stuff. Yes, I want to start building products too, but right now, I’m taking the time to learn. Someone asked me to create a token because I’ll basically get rich, but I’ve been hesitate to do something like this because my time right now is super thin and I’m moving with intention. I can only work on stuff that will literally pay my bills and fund 1-2 projects at at time. Skeptical but, What if tokens just become fodder and weeds in the market place? Or what if in the future, tokens become our digital identities? Our new social security cards.
More on this later but my next articles will be on funding, developers shit, and obviously the parties and events in Portugal! 🇵🇹 😎 Don’t unsubscribe. I’ll also share more about the lifestyle of Lisbon, like the shopping, interior design porn, and delicious Michellin star bistros.
Glossary Terms
Interoperability: Unrestricted sharing and access across chains and metaverse that bring the concept of De-fi to life. Read more about this technical term here.
WTF is a decentralized Spotify? 🧐
Audius is a music streaming and sharing platform that puts power back into the hands of content creators.
They are powered on Solana. The team is super dope. Learn more here if you’re a musician or like music and supporting indie artists.
In Partnership With: Nym.Tech
Interested in privacy and security? What about the possibility of voting on the blockchain for a more secure “democracy” if you’re into this type of stuff? Then you should totally read Nym.Tech’s white paper about their cool new network. It’s a bedtime read. The team is based in the UK and we’re collaborating on content this month. So follow their Twitter to make me look good. Please and thanks!