The Solana network and its ecological trading tools have become an important foundation for driving this round of "Memecoin super cycle". The Solana network was created by Anatoly Yakovenko and Greg Fitzgerald in 2017 and officially launched the mainnet in March 2020. It has achieved high throughput, low latency and low fees through its unique technical architecture, and has quickly emerged as one of the leaders in the blockchain field. It has not only attracted the attention of many developers and traders, but also gained widespread attention in the community, making important contributions to promoting the popularization of Web3.0.
This is the 04th issue of the "Developer Stories" column, which will help you better understand the Solana world from the perspective of Matt Sorg and the OKX Web3 technical team. This issue covers multiple topics such as Solana network market hotspots, technological innovation, ecological development, community governance, developer construction, etc., aiming to gain an in-depth understanding of the insights and plans of Solana developers.
What to think about Solana and the Memecoin craze
Matt Sorg: There is no doubt that Memecoins are a zero-sum competition. In traditional zero-sum competition games, the platform has a higher commission. But most Memecoins platform fees are very low, and anyone can participate at will. This may mean that DeFi projects can customize services according to user preferences, or individual users find ways to contribute to the project. I don't know exactly how Memecoins will develop, but I don't think it's right to deny them.
OKX Web3: Now many users are trading Meme tokens on Solana, which puts higher demands on the basic performance of the wallet. We have also made a lot of product optimizations:
1) For Meme transactions, OKX Web3 wallet users can choose the ultra-fast transaction mode to conduct transactions. The underlying principle is the same as that of the current mainstream trading robots. They are all connected to the services of third-party transaction channels such as Jito. Among the wallets currently on the market, OKX Web3 wallet is the only wallet manufacturer that has connected to Jito, meeting the Meme users' demand for transaction speed.
2) Regarding Meme prices, we have made special treatment for Meme-type token assets. Because the price of Meme coins is ever-changing, Meme users are very sensitive to the fluctuations in the token prices of Meme assets. Therefore, the OKX Web3 wallet displays the most real-time prices on the chain for Meme-type assets. Users can perceive 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 Solana and Memecoin need to be viewed neutrally. Currently, Solana has gained a huge number of users and transaction volume through the Memecoin wave, which is closely related to its high performance, low fees, and strong Meme community atmosphere. However, Memecoin still lacks practical applications and is more like a high-volatility game. Looking at the development of Web3 from a long-term perspective, while supporting Memecoins, Solana should still focus on more valuable technological 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. Each component in the network optimizes performance while maintaining decentralization. We currently have thousands of verification nodes around the world. 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, etc. Solana's culture is to continuously improve every part of the technology stack, even if they remain ahead today, but will one day become a bottleneck. Other ecosystems are just beginning to discuss some of Solana's core efforts since its early days. This approach ensures that every part of the technology stack is optimized, and the Solana system processes an average of more transactions per day than all other public chains combined.
OKX Web3: We highly recognize Solana’s underlying technology. From the perspective of our wallet, OKX Web3 currently has several differences in terms of support for the Solana network compared to other networks:
In terms of transaction mode, users can choose to use third-party transaction channel providers such as Jito to package their transactions on the chain more quickly. Other networks currently do not have such services.
In terms of asset analysis, Solana is currently the only network that can perform real-time analysis of assets and display all assets. As long as users have newly added 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 that on the EVM chain. The OKX Web3 team has made a lot of efforts to reduce the transaction failure rate when users use Solana:
OKX uses a dynamic pricing method for priority fees. To elaborate, because the priority fee on Solana is determined by two factors, Unit Price and Unit Limit, in order to achieve the best effect of the priority fee and prevent users from blindly paying more SOL as the goal, we have analyzed nearly 1,000 transactions on the chain for Unit Price pricing, and can only recommend the best Unit price to users. At the same time, when calculating the Unit Limit, we will not blindly set too high a Limit number. Setting too high a Limit is not conducive to the packaging of transactions on the chain, so we will calculate the estimated Limit consumption of this transaction as a reference, saving priority fees while ensuring that the transaction is faster and easier to successfully on the chain.
In terms of broadcast strategy, we adopted a multi-node broadcast solution and selected the top node service providers on Solana to broadcast multiple nodes. At the same time, we also connected to third-party transaction channel manufacturers such as Jito, which can broadcast transactions to the chain faster and with a higher success rate.
The transaction failure rate has dropped from a high of 70% to a low of 0.8%. Compared with the transaction failure rate on the chain, we are still ahead.
Will Blinks Protocol and Solana Ecosystem Phone Drive Solana Mass Adoption?
Matt Sorg: Good products start with meeting a pressing need for users and iterate from there. One of the main benefits of decentralization is not just the idea, but it enables businesses to operate in a permissionless, self-interested way. Blinks extends this permissionless integration to Web2. Users don’t have to wait for other platforms - Solana’s wallets and applications can continue to iterate and create products that users love.
The beauty of Blinks is that its infrastructure was originally launched as part of Solana Pay. The API specification receives a wallet public key and returns a serialized transaction, but its prototype was limited by its name and only applies to payment scenarios. Solana Actions officially expands the application scenarios of this specification, not only limited to payment functions, but also has more capabilities. With Actions, blockchain protocols can be transformed into services, making them operations that can be shared anywhere (through Blinks). On Solana, Actions and Blinks enable any website and application on the Internet to become a distribution point for on-chain interactions, further promoting mainstream user adoption. If this is combined with all the advantages of Solana, a whole new economic model can be created.
In short, Solana realizes a diversified economy in a shared state in a unique way. Payments, DePIN, games, RWA, etc. all run in the same shared state and are connected to each other through highly liquid DeFi protocols. I believe that as time goes by and the Solana network effect continues to grow, large-scale user adoption will gradually be achieved, bringing an experience that is difficult to match for closed Web2 applications.
OKX Web3: Solana has shown enough creativity in the expansion of its ecosystem, which not only enriches the native Web3 use cases, but also increases the exposure of Solana and even Web3 technology in Web2, which is bound to promote the prosperity of Solana's ecosystem. From the perspective of the three parties, whether it is the Blinks protocol or the Solana ecosystem mobile phone, the emergence of these new applications will greatly lower the technical threshold and attract more mainstream users, especially those who are not familiar 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, and ultimately promote the long-term growth of the number of users and transaction scale of the Solana ecosystem.
Solana development environment, network security, and cutting-edge technologies
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 the chain, creating an environment where both front-end developers and on-chain developers can play their respective roles and play an important role in the DApp layer. There are many incentives here to enable other application developers to build code in a large interconnected ecosystem. In addition to the basic execution environment, developers can also collaborate extensively in hackathons, Hacker Houses, bootcamps, and even long Twitter/X discussions. The first hackathon "Renaissance" held on the Colosseum platform in the first half of 2024 attracted more than 8,300 participants and received 1,071 project submissions. The second hackathon "Radar" registered more than 36% more than "Renaissance", with more than 11,000 registrations. The upcoming "Electric Capital" report will show the significant growth of Solana developers.
In terms of network security, Solana has maintained extensive audits and active security programs, including a bug bounty program. As the blockchain industry matures, many professional security organizations have emerged, such as Crypto-ISAC, Security Alliance (SEAL), Immunefi, etc. The Solana Foundation is also actively working with these organizations to strengthen the security of the ecosystem. Good engineering design requires attention to detail, gradual improvement, and continuous learning. Although Solana is called a monolithic chain, technically its code base is quite modular, which is driven by the Solana Foundation. In addition, as mentioned above, there is also a lot of redundancy between the client and the various parts of the stack, and the Solana Foundation also plays a coordinating role, including the Solana Improvement Document (SIMD) process.
In terms of cutting-edge technology, Solana is a rethinking of how blockchain processes and disseminates data. It is at the forefront of throughput and speed, processing more transactions than all other public chains combined. For more detailed data, please visit: https://chainspect.app/dashboard
OKX Web3: Our team has been committed to providing a good wallet solution service provider for Solana developers. We will soon launch Solana support on OKX OS, providing a complete wallet solution for Solana ecosystem builders. At the same time, the OKX Connect product launched on Telegram will also support Solana links, thereby helping Solana ecosystem developers focus more on building products in their own fields and building communities together.
At the same time, we will regularly invite Solana developers online and offline to discuss the pain points of current community users and the direction of building the Solana community in the future, hoping to achieve a complete closed loop in supporting the Solana ecosystem and contribute OKX's own strength to the construction of the Solana ecosystem.
For example, currently, one of the features of the Solana chain is that many project parties will directly airdrop tokens to users without actively claiming them. This results in ordinary users having a large number of tokens or NFTs of different values that they do not actively acquire on Solana. The OKX Web3 team has done a lot of work on asset display: Currently, Solana users can experience the display of all assets and real-time asset analysis on the OKX Web3 wallet. If you are importing your wallet address into the OKX Web3 wallet for the first time, you can view all the assets with balances on your address. If you purchase new token assets on Solana, you can see the assets you purchased in real time on the OKX Web3 wallet homepage, without having to add additional token contracts to view your newly added token assets.
Talking about applications, the PayFi narrative on Solana, the re-staking narrative, and the new standard for SPL tokens “Token Extensions”
Matt Sorg: In my opinion, PayFi is programmable money. Blockchain is used for buying, selling, and paying for commercial purposes, all of which can be customized and use DeFi to reduce friction and improve liquidity. Whether it is Web2, Web3 or other systems, Solana is the world's best performing and lowest barrier system.
Solana is very similar to Ethereum’s staking track in terms of functionality. Currently, there are multiple applications that benefit from Solana’s infrastructure, using Solana’s economic security to secure some applications that do not directly pass consensus. The difference between the two is similar to the above L2 discussion, with the main technical difference being SWQoS.
Token Extensions are fully 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 conceal the amount of tokens transferred in a compliant manner because the sender and recipient addresses of the transfer are known and the issuer can register as an auditor.
Transfer hooks allow for customizable logic to be used to attach conditions to transfers. Developers can trigger certain processes and even create a permissioned ecosystem around tokens, even on permissionless blockchains like Solana.
For more information, please visit: https://solana.com/solutions/token-extensions
OKX Web3: Token Extensions allow tokens to have different functions, such as freezing, destruction, transfer restrictions, etc., which greatly expands the complex application scenarios of tokens. The expansion of this kind of basic capabilities gives Solana DApp developers great development freedom. For example, Transfer hooks limit the execution of specific logic when transferring, which has many applications in DeFi, games and other compliance scenarios. For example, stablecoin developers can ensure that the recipient account meets specific KYC (know your customer) or AML (anti-money laundering) requirements, and only qualified accounts can receive tokens.
ZK Compression technology sparked heated discussions in the community: Does the Solana network need L2?
Matt Sorg: In order for Solana to achieve its goal of synchronizing the global state at near the speed of light, it needs to be flexible to accommodate multiple configurations. ZK compression makes it possible to verify any amount of data with a small memory footprint on the mainnet, which is data scaling. Entities like Light Protocol and Helius are developing technologies like ZK compression that allow scaling in multiple dimensions. Other projects are focused on computationally demanding tasks, including machine learning (ML), where some off-chain computations will be embedded in blocks and others may be similar to L2 solutions.
The Solana mainnet does not care about the naming of submitted transactions; its job is to connect these transactions as frictionlessly and permissionlessly as possible.
Solana demonstrates the ultimate in on-chain performance while maintaining sufficient decentralization. Usually, solutions exist because some configuration is incompatible with the mainnet.
Geolocked verification, KYC, and localized performance (no attempt to sync global state) are some examples of configurations where differences may exist.
What is your vision for Solana's future development? And how long do you think the crypto industry will exist?
Matt Sorg: There are extremely diverse communities within and outside of the Solana ecosystem, and many businesses are happy to support these communities and developers. The role of the Solana Foundation is to do things that are difficult for any one institution to do. We facilitate conversations, communicate with those who want to interact with more formal ecosystem organizations, and help provide content that anyone can use to introduce users and developers to great upcoming projects in the ecosystem. We are actually excited about the foundation becoming less important over time. Super teams, in-person communities of builders, community-hosted conferences, etc. have really taken on a life of their own.
Technology development often involves multiple, parallel leaders. There are many false assumptions people make about technology development, especially as it relates to Solana. The “Blockchain Triangle” comes from a blog post by Vitalik that describes a broad consideration of common trade-offs, but it is not a rule. Some people seem to think that whenever a bottleneck occurs, Solana is at the limit of the “triangle”, which means that drastic trade-offs must be made. The reality is that even on current hardware, Solana’s development may only be 2% complete. This may sound worrying, but remember that Solana has already processed more transactions than all other public chains combined. This is excellent, but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
I am certain that the way mathematics is applied to bits will far outstrip human existence.
OKX Web3: Solana's ecological construction is one of the core projects of OKX Web3. We hope to build a friendly multi-chain wallet for Solana ecosystem users. Especially in terms of underlying capabilities and ecological support, we have established a Solana project to focus more resources on building the Solana ecosystem.
In terms of underlying capabilities, due to the surge in transaction volume on the Solana chain at the beginning of the year, the transaction failure rate suddenly increased. After in-depth research on the characteristics of the Solana chain, we have done in-depth research and support on the optimization of transaction speed and transaction success rate. It became the first wallet on the market to access Jito's third-party service, and also worked with the Solana community to build the best priority fee solution. The transaction speed has increased from 10 s to 2s. The transaction failure rate has been reduced from a maximum of 70% to a minimum of 0.8%. In terms of Solana asset analysis, OKX has also made great changes. Currently, the three terminals can support real-time analysis of assets on Solana, and there is no need to manually add token contracts to view your 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 tokens 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, OKX Web3 wallet also integrated Blinks at the first time. You can purchase Crypto shared by Blinks through the OKX Web3 wallet, and you can also create Blinks in the OKX Web3 wallet and share it to your Twitter with one click. At the same time, we have also launched Meme mode for Meme users, which can achieve transaction speeds that are completely comparable to the fastest trading robots on the market, and you can also view the most real-time token prices in the OKX Web3 wallet. For Sonic, the most popular SVM in the current Solana ecosystem, we have also recently completed the integration and became one of the earliest wallets to try out the Solana L2 and Gamefi ecosystems. We jointly launched exclusive activities for Sonic and OKX, which have gained a lot of participation and exposure from Solana users.
As one of the important communities of Web3, we hope that Solana will continue to maintain its technological leadership in the future, expand the ecosystem, promote user growth and community building, promote Web3 to mainstream users, and allow more Web2 users to enter the world of blockchain and experience the innovation brought by encryption technology. We believe that the encryption industry will exist for a long time, which depends not only on the development of encryption technology and application scenarios, but also on innovation and integration with the real world.
Disclaimer
This content is for reference only and does not constitute and should not 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, involve high risks, may depreciate in value, or even 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 professional for your specific situation. Not all products are available in all regions. For more details, please refer to the OKX Terms of Service and Risk Disclosure & Disclaimer. OKX Web3 Mobile Wallet and its derivative services are subject to separate terms of service. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with local applicable laws and regulations.
