Solana Sunday: Surviving the FTX Fallout
From the beginning, Solana has received major investments and endorsements from FTX to help grow the network. As a competitor to Ethereum, it was necessary for early investments to help it expand into a network large enough to compete against the most popular web3 network available.
Following the recent crash of FTX, doubts about the Solana network have quickly risen as many recognize FTX’s involvement with the network and worry that the blockchain will be unable to retain its place as a major network for web3. Even more so, it has fallen out of the top 10 most valuable blockchains and replaced by Polygon which has continued to show resilience.
However, not all is lost because the Solana network still has a lot of major players involved with the network. This year Alpine has seen a large number of teams building on the Solana network and while Solana has taken a massive hit with the FTX crash, is well positioned to continue growing in the future.
Fallout from FTX
As we all know by now, the collapse of FTX has caused the entire crypto industry to go into a frenzy with new developments about the company’s mishandling of funds reaching further and further out, damaging businesses all around the industry such as Gemini and BlockFi.
Unfortunately, Solana has not been untouched, with FTX’s implosion causing their token to drop in value by nearly 50%. With Solana’s price already dropping from above $200 to under $30, the 50% drop has been another blow to the network which has struggled to return to form; falling out of the top 10 coins behind its replacement Polygon.
Coinbase Cloud Validator
One of the biggest signals of confidence comes from Coinbase which has been an early supporter of the Solana network. They have allowed their Cloud Validator to help empower the network with efficiency and stability in order to help mitigate the network outages that have plagued Solana in the past.
Now with new QUIC updates to the network, Solana will be able to prevent the same outages. The QUIC updates will allow transactions to be sent to validators based on their staking-weight which will direct transaction traffic to more appropriate validators in order to stop the network from being shutdown when spambots cause transaction activity to spike.
Building on Solana
Fortunately, as BCCN3 has covered in the past, the number of people building new projects and protocols on the Solana network is growing with no sign of slowing down. Solana has become extremely popular with many developers because of its low gas fees which allow new teams with access to limited amounts of liquidity to build on the Solana blockchain.
Some of the most influential creators in the NFT space have also grown their projects on Solana as well. DeGods for example - led by Frank - is a landmark project for the blockchain and has caused many projects on the Ethereum network to follow suit as they continue to innovate the utilities of their tokens with DeGods, Y00ts, and their Dust token.
While times may look tough for the network at this moment, it is important to take a step back and acknowledge how much work has been done with the Solana blockchain. Their community remains strong and there’s still a lot to be excited about as the network continues to innovate the web3 industry.
