Highlights

Solana Mobile recently used Helio’s Solana Pay x Shopify plugin to support the release of their Chapter 2 mobile device — and saved over $1,000,000 in fees compared to traditional payment methods.

The Solana Pay x Shopify plugin is managed by Helio, a Solana-first web3 payments platform that makes it easier to accept crypto payments.

The plugin merges the speed and efficiency of crypto payments with Shopify’s extensive market and offers low-fee, fast, real-time settlements in USDC, a stablecoin on Solana.

Over 200 Shopify stores adopted the plugin within three months of launch.

Helio is taking the plugin forward by focusing on support of more tokens and advanced web3 features such as token gating and NFT receipts.

When Solana Mobile recently launched Chapter 2 of their web3-native mobile device, they needed a simple payment solution that also fully embraced crypto-powered payment methods. And since they knew demand would be high (the first device — Saga — had recently sold out), they also needed a solution that would not only scale, but would save them from the high fees of traditional payment processors.

Solana Mobile turned to Helio’s Solana Pay x Shopify plugin to give customers the option of making crypto payments, alongside a traditional credit card option. The plugin combines the speed and global acceptance of crypto with the global reach of Shopify. And since the plugin is built on the decentralization of the Solana network, there are no traditional intermediary fees. At the time of publication, about the majority of customers chose to use the plugin and pay with USDC on Solana. To date, Solana Mobile has saved over $1,000,000 in fees. 1

Helio, Shopify, and the Challenge of Crypto Payments

While using cryptocurrency for payments has been gaining traction as  a cheaper, faster, and more accessible experience for merchants, for end users, it hasn’t been easy. Previous solutions have offered limited options that are complex to implement and difficult to use, particularly for users who are new to web3. High transaction fees and high failure rates have resulted in low conversion rates for merchants and a nearly unusable experience for consumers.

Helio — a  Solana-first web3 payments platform — was founded to solve these challenges by enabling both traditional and web3-native merchants to accept payments made with cryptocurrency. Tools like paylinks, checkout widgets, JavaScript APIs, and plugins for ecommerce platforms allow developers, merchants, and creators with no development experience to integrate crypto payments alongside traditional payment methods. 

“With Helio you can accept payment [with cryptocurrency] and  receive money directly from buyers, anywhere in the world, making it a perfect fit for cross border commerce,” said Stijn Paumen, CEO of Helio. “Transactions are handled onchain, so costs are minimal and payments are settled near-instantly. And because the payments are on the Solana network, settlement is fast and reliable.”

In January 2024, Helio took ownership of the Solana Pay x Shopify plugin from its original developer, Solana Labs. It fit well with their vision of a fast, inexpensive, and straightforward digital payment experience. The plugin functions directly within Shopify, providing a familiar checkout experience and allowing customers to pay using their crypto wallets. 

And according to Josh Fried, commerce lead at the Solana Foundation, Helio was a natural fit. “They are an established team that not only understands blockchain but also has a deep expertise in payments,” Fried said. “When it comes to bringing crypto-native payments to mainstream merchants and ecommerce, they just get it." 

The plugin is built with Solana Pay, an open, free-to-use payments framework that operates as a direct merchant-to-consumer payment rail. It eliminates intermediaries and their fees while simplifying the transaction flow. Solana Pay was built to enable fast, easy, and cheap digital payments.

“Combining Helio's blockchain expertise with Solana Pay’s rails and Shopify's reach of nearly 2 million merchants and 450 million buyers was a major step in integrating crypto payments into global ecommerce,” said Jim Walker, CTO, and founder of Helio. “For sellers, the plugin simplifies implementation and minimizes transaction costs. Adopting digital currency payments becomes not just easy but also cheaper than traditional payment methods. ”

Using the app, which requires minimal setup on the merchant portal, web2 and web3 businesses can quickly set up payments on Solana. Merchants can track transactions, issue refunds, integrate with the Shopify product delivery flow, and more by using the dashboard.

Key Performance Stats

Looking Forward to a New Era of eCommerce

Helio's Solana Pay x Shopify plugin has not only achieved high growth, but also improved cost efficiency, transaction success, speed, adoption rates, and market reach. Helio plans to release a new version of the plugin in the coming months with broadening token support and adding advanced web3 features such as token gating, automated know-your-buyer and security, single-tap purchasing, NFT receipts, and more.

"We envision a future where ecommerce is powered by blockchain technology,” said Walker. “The Solana Pay for Shopify plugin not only reduces transaction costs but also accelerates the adoption of digital currencies, foreshadowing a new era of efficiency and inclusivity in ecommerce. We're not just facilitating transactions; we're building the foundation for a global, decentralized marketplace."

Merchants who want to implement Solana Pay in their Shopify storefront can go to Helio to learn more.

Key Performance Stats

A robust community of independent validators forms the backbone of the Solana network. As a permissionless network, anyone can run a validator node at any time, for any reason. This idea is the keystone to the entire concept of a decentralized network: All are welcome, for any reason. It’s what the Solana community should strive for.

At the same time, the Solana Foundation strives to support this community-led network while encouraging high performance, decentralization, and secure node operations. To advance these goals, the Solana Foundation has committed to direct a portion of its treasury to efforts which advance the decentralization and security of the network — most notably, through voluntary programs such as the Solana Foundation Delegation Program. 

As the Solana network, the protocol software, and the community of validator operators evolve and mature, the Solana Foundation evaluates its own efforts to ensure that any incentives or support programs are structured effectively and appropriately. To this end, the Foundation implemented updated programs for new and existing validators to encourage a more secure and self-sufficient network. Read more about these changes here.

Read on for an in-depth dive into the Solana Foundation’s philosophy when it comes to supporting the validator network, and the various programs it uses to do so.

Supporting Key Focus Areas

The Solana Foundation’s network support is focused on four main areas:

Support for a large testnet and time-bound incentives for new operators.

Direct time-bound support for newer or smaller validators on mainnet beta to offset some voting costs.

Matching stake delegations to high-performing mainnet nodes, proportional to the amount of external stake delegations a node has attracted.

Deposits into community-run stake pools to decentralize the Foundation’s own delegation strategies across a variety of community-led approaches.

Testnet Support

Solana testnet is critical for protocol changes, experimental features, adversarial testing, as well as a learning sandbox for validator operators — all of which are important for a strong, resilient Solana mainnet beta environment. The Solana public testnet should maintain the following properties:

Testnet should have a significantly larger node count than mainnet. This stress tests various distributed systems and networking parts of the protocol.

New software releases or forks from the various validator development teams should be run on testnet to ensure stability compatibility with existing software.

Activation of new features happens on testnet before such a feature would be proposed to be introduced or activated on mainnet.

Adversarial and load tests take place on testnet to discover and address potential performance issues.

New and existing validator operators have an environment to test out new configurations, new software or hardware to ensure they have a robust production node on mainnet.

To support testnet as a critical resource for Solana development, the Solana Foundation Delegation Program offers a time-bound (up to six months) incentive for operators to help offset some startup costs to run a validator on testnet. 

Additionally, for any validators who run on mainnet and wish to be eligible to receive stake matching from the Foundation, the Foundation requires that these operators also continually run a well-performing node on testnet, and participate in timely network exercises such as planned upgrades/downgrades or other activities such as a simulated network outage and restart. This ensures a responsive testnet population, and an experienced validator set on mainnet.

Mainnet Voting Support

On Solana, consensus votes are submitted to the onchain Vote program, and are processed in the SVM runtime alongside all other user-submitted transactions. Consensus votes incur standard transaction fees like all other transactions on the network in order to have their result confirmed by the validator set. While individual transactions on Solana are extremely low-cost (a single vote transaction carries a 0.000005 SOL transaction fee), Solana’s short block times of 400ms means that a perfectly performing validator could submit up to 216,000 vote transactions per day, incurring a theoretical upper bound of up to 1.08 SOL in transaction fee costs daily. 

This voting cost can create a financial barrier for some new operators who want to help secure the Solana network. Once a validator has received stake delegations on the network and earns block rewards from transaction fees included in any blocks they produce, these protocol rewards can be used to offset their voting costs.

To help new or smaller validators overcome this initial barrier, the Foundation will run a time-bound program to partially cover a node’s vote costs with diminishing coverage over time to encourage operators to find their way to self-sufficiency. For new operators on mainnet who choose to apply for voting support, Solana Foundation will now cover:

100% of voting costs for epochs 0-45

75% of voting costs for epochs 46-90

50% of voting costs for epochs 90-135

25% of voting costs for epochs 136-180

After 180 epochs (approximately one year), the Foundation will not cover any vote costs for node operators. All vote coverage is contingent upon the node performing well on mainnet, as well as a high-performing associated node on testnet.

Mainnet Stake Matching

The Solana Foundation Delegation Program aims to amplify the impact of stake delegations issued to a node, whether they are from the node operator, a third party delegator, or from an independent stake pool.

For eligible, high-performing validators, the Solana Foundation will now match external delegations 1:1 up to 100,000 SOL. For example, if a validator receives 5,000 SOL from external delegations, the Foundation will delegate an additional 5,000 SOL to that node as long as it meets ongoing performance and decentralization criteria. If that validator’s delegation increases over time up to 100,000 SOL, the Foundation will continually increase its matched delegation. When a validator’s external stake exceeds 100,000 SOL, up to 1,000,000 SOL, the Foundation match will remain capped at 100,000 SOL. If a validator’s external delegations exceed 1,000,000 SOL, the Foundation will no longer delegate to that node.

Any residual SOL held by the Foundation that is committed to this program after all the stake matching delegations are made will be distributed evenly to eligible validators as long as they meet program performance requirements.

The initial matching ratio of 1:1, matching limits, and the pool of residual SOL delegations are all expected to decrease over time as the Foundation increases its deposits into community stake pools, thereby reducing any operator’s reliance on any single delegation strategy or on the Foundation as a whole.

Community Stake Pool Deposits

Numerous stake pools and protocols have emerged on Solana and are growing to underpin many important aspects of the Solana networks’s security and onchain activity. Growth and resiliency of staking protocols are valuable to Solana’s decentralization and enable more people to easily participate in securing the network. By leaning on a competitive set of stake pool operators, the Foundation reduces its influence over the network and its validators, putting more control where it belongs, in the hands of the community which drives it.

Over time, the Foundation intends to deposit a large portion of its SOL tokens across a number of stake pools, which in turn have their own varying validator growth and decentralization criteria.

How to apply

While being a validator and securing the network is open to all, participation in one or more of these programs requires an application and specific program requirements. Interested validators can learn more here.

Making the move from EVM to SVM (Solana) requires understanding several key differences between the virtual machines. This article will walk through several of those differences, including accounts, fees, transactions, smart contracts (programs), and more. It will also explore developer setup including tooling and SDKs. 

By the end, developers will have the knowledge needed to start their Solana journey.

Understanding the Core Differences 

To start, let’s look at the most significant difference between EVM and SVM—the account model design.

Account Model

Unlike Ethereum, Solana was designed to take advantage of multiple cores and support parallel transactions. To achieve this, Solana uses an account model.

An account on Solana is a record in the Solana ledger that either holds data (a data account) or is an executable program (a smart contract or program on Solana). 

Like Ethereum, each account has an address identifier. However, unlike Ethereum—where each smart contract is an account with the execution logic and storage tied together—Solana’s smart contracts are entirely stateless. State must be passed to accounts for them to execute on.

Let’s look at a code example. In the Solidity code below, state is tied to the smart contract with the line int private count = 0.

With Rust (Solana) there is a struct within the smart contract stating initialize_counter. This initial counter creates an account with a count of 0. The account is passed to this counter to increment the count. This keeps state from being kept within the smart contract itself.

With Solana, data is stored in separate accounts outside of the program. To execute the logic in a program, pass the account to be performed on. 

In the case of this counter program, pass a counter account to the program when calling the increment function, and the program then increments the value in the counter account.

Benefits of the Account Model Design

One of the primary benefits of this account model is program reusability. 

With the ERC20 interface on Ethereum, every time a developer creates a new token, they must redeploy the ERC20 smart contract to Ethereum with its specified values. This redeployment incurs a high cost.

But with Solana, it’s not necessary to create and deploy a new smart contract in order to create a new token. Instead, create a new account, known as the mint account, using the Solana Token Program, passing details such as number of tokens, decimal points, who can mint, and more.

And this can be done by simply sending a transaction to the Token Program. Using the Solana Program Library CLI, for example, it’s just a single command:

Local Fee Markets

Another benefit of the account model is that fee markets are local per account. 

On Ethereum, fee markets are global. If an NFT collection goes viral and everyone is minting—fees go up for everyone. But on Solana, since fee markets are local per account, only people minting that NFT collection pay the elevated fees. Users not participating are unaffected.

Fees

Let’s dive deeper into fees. On Solana, fees are broken into three categories: base fee, priority fee, and rent. Let’s look at each.

The base fee is calculated based on the number of signatures in a transaction. Each signature costs 5000 lamports (0.000000001 sol = 1 lamport). If a transaction has 5 signatures, the base fee is 25000 lamports. 

The priority fee is an optional fee that can be added to a transaction to give it priority. This fee is based on the amount of compute units used in the transaction. Similar to Ethereum gas, this fee is a simple measurement of computing resources required for the transaction. 

The final fee, rent, is more like a deposit. When developers create accounts or allocate space on the network, they must deposit SOL for the network to keep their account. Rent is calculated based on the number of bytes stored on the network, and an additional base fee is charged for allocating space. 

Transactions

On Solana, program execution begins with a transaction being submitted to the cluster. Each transaction on Solana consists of four parts:

One or more instructions. Instructions are the smallest execution logic on Solana. They can be thought of like function calls on an Ethereum smart contract. They invoke programs that make calls to the Solana runtime to update the state (for example, calling the token program to transfer tokens from one account to another).

An array of accounts to read or write from

One or more signatures

A recent blockhash or nonce. Instead of using an incremental nonce as on Ethereum, on Solana a recent blockhash is pulled from the cluster. With this blockhash, the transaction is only valid for 150 blocks, preventing long-living transaction signatures from being executed at a much later date.

One other significant difference between Ethereum and Solana is that with Solana, transactions can have multiple instructions (function calls on Ethereum). This means it’s not necessary to create custom smart contracts to chain functions in a single transaction. Each instruction can be a separate function call, done in order in the transaction. Transactions are also atomic: if an instruction fails, the entire transaction will fail.

Transaction Limitations

Like with Ethereum gas limitations, there are compute unit limitations on Solana transactions. 

Other limitations include:

Each account referenced may be at most 12,000,000 compute units used per block.

Instructions can only be called at a depth of 4 before the transaction reverts.

Mempool

Unlike Ethereum, Solana does not have mempools. Solana validators instead forward all transactions to up to four leaders on the leader schedule. Not having a mempool forces the transactions to hop from leader to leader until blockhash expiration, but it also reduces the overhead of gossip across the cluster.

The Solana Developer Environment

Now let’s look at some of the developer tools on Solana.

Programming Languages

While Ethereum primarily uses Solidity for writing smart contracts, Solana uses Rust. If moving from Ethereum, consider the Anchor framework or Neon, both of which can help developers get started faster by allowing them to build in Solana using familiar EVM tools. 

Like Ethereum, there are client-side SDKs available for many of the most popular programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, and Java.

Developer Tooling

Solana does not currently have an equivalent to Foundry, but it does have a wide set of tools equivalent to those used for Solidity. 

For a deeper dive, here is a broader list of developer resources.

Creating Smart Contracts

When creating programs on Solana (or when migrating existing Ethereum smart contracts) there are several core differences—too many to cover here. But let’s look at a few of the most common:

Mapping does not directly exist on Solana. Instead, use program-derived addresses. Like mapping, program-derived addresses give the ability to create a map from a key or account to a value stored on-chain.

On Solana, programs are default upgradable. A smart contract can be upgraded by a simple CLI command solana program deploy <program_filepath>.

When writing a solidity smart contract, it’s common to check for either msg.sender or tx.origin. There is no equivalent to this on Solana. Each transaction can have multiple signers, and the person sending the transaction is not necessarily the one who signed the transaction.

For more information on programs and how to deploy, check out this guide.

Learn More

Those are some of the most critical differences between developing on Ethereum and Solana. There is much more to learn, of course. And the best way to get started is to jump right in! Here are a few resources for next steps:

The Solana Playground where developers can write, build, and deploy Solana programs from the browser

An intro to Solana development using the Solana Playground

A more detailed look at the differences between developing on Ethereum and Solana 

The Solana Bootcamp

Highlights

Homebase, leveraging the Solana blockchain, successfully tokenized a $235,000 single-family rental property in South Texas in March 2023.

The platform raised $246,800 in just two weeks from 38 investors through the sale of NFTs tied to the physical real estate asset.

The Homebase model is meant to broaden participation in real estate investments. Of Homebase’s 76 total investors between both homes, roughly 78% are non-institutional. There was a minimum $500 threshold to invest and the average check size was between $4,000 and $5,000.

Concerns over fees and technical limitations steered Homebase to building on Solana. 

Solana’s user-friendly USDC payments through Circle support allowed seamless property tokenization, crucial for investor confidence and accessibility.

Homebase is now focusing on bringing its learnings to the commercial real estate market.

"Real estate is an important to financial freedom,” says Homebase co-founder and CEO Domingo Valadez. “The gap now between median income and median home price is the highest it's ever been. What can we do to make real-estate investing more attainable for people?"

Three months after its first sale, the company pulled off another successful sale of a similarly priced home in the same area. The second time, another 38 investors shared ownership of a $176,100 home, with an average check size of $4,638.

The intricacies of the Homebase process

Homebase's journey to this achievement wasn’t a straightforward path. Valadez revealed in an article in Blockworks that the team spent seven months solely on legal and compliance preparations.

According to Valadez, the team faced a challenging choice between quick execution and thorough groundwork. While they knew the idea would be a slam-dunk, they wanted to make sure it could also stand up legally. The platform opted for a more cautious route, focusing on developing the right regulatory structure. 

Homebase partnered with the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth to build a previously non-existent token wrapper that would allow for certain oversight measures. Using the Metaplex protocol, the team created the wrapper to modify non-fungible tokens (NFTs), giving Homebase the ability to step in as a third party and freeze, burn and reissue tokens as needed. The wrapper also enforces KYC requirements and a mechanism to escrow funds upon property purchase, with the release of funds contingent upon reaching the crowdsourced funding goal. Finally, the wrapper also encodes a one-year lockup period that would restrict trading within this initial timeframe, designed for compliance with Regulation D.

Choosing the right blockchain

The decision-making process for the blockchain on which to build the Homebase infrastructure was somewhat arduous, says Valadez — particularly because the majority of Homebase’s early investors were not familiar with digital assets.

“As you can imagine, we came in with a thesis that crypto-native people really wanted something like Homebase, but we learned that actually this is an everyone problem, not just a crypto problem,” Valadez said. In the March 2023 sale, for instance, 15 of the 38 buyers created their first Solana wallet specifically for the purchase of the Homebase NFT.

A fractionalized homeownership solution (and its user experience) therefore has to be as seamless as logging into any familiar website, such as a bank portal. Challenges like gas fee fluctuations and technical challenges in other blockchain ecosystems led Homebase to seek a different option.

“Bridging from a Layer 2 blockchain is actually quite complex,” Valadez said. “And there's a period of time in which your money just disappears as it’s transitioning from one blockchain to the other.” Not so great for investor confidence.

Solana emerged as the ideal choice due to its user-friendly interface supporting USDC, which ensured a hassle-free property tokenization process. The suite of tools available within the Solana ecosystem have also provided easy-enough solutions that the Homebase team could walk its early investors through the process. 

“We do all rental distributions in USDC,” Valadez said, adding that the team has partnered with stablecoin issuer Circle to do so. 

Then there’s the process of on- and off-ramp. To keep the fiat-to-crypto exchange process all inside the Homebase platform, the team integrated with onboarding solution CoinFlow. 

“We integrated the on-ramps and off-ramps in the same platform,” explained Valadez. “So you as a non-web3 native withdraw your portion of the property’s monthly rent into your bank account when you’re ready.”

When owners are ready to sell their portion of the property, they can also do that within the Homebase platform.  Here, the use of blockchain technology offers significant advantages. With traditional real estate investments among friends, selling involves complex agreements and permissions. In contrast, Homebase employs tokens representing ownership in the property's holding LLC. This means selling doesn't require approval from other LLC members; it's simply facilitated on the platform. 

When an owner does want to buy, Homebase matches sellers with interested buyers, streamlining the process with online documentation via DocuSign, reducing the typical hurdles found in private real estate markets.

Such ease of use is paramount, says Valadez, who strives to engender confidence in new investors who may not have otherwise considered themselves as players in the real estate game.

‘An amazing experience’

Quietly, at the southern tip of the Rio Grande Valley, Homebase’s venture into tokenized real estate is creating a seismic shift in the industry. Its cautious approach is laying a robust compliance foundation, setting them apart in a market entangled with legal complexities and providing some precedent that we can all learn from.

The decision to build on Solana was clear given Homebase prioritizes user-friendliness, scalability and mainstream adoption. User experience is crucial for attracting investors unfamiliar with digital assets — which are the ones Homebase is best positioned to serve with its product. Solana’s stability, interface, and support for USDC made property tokenization hassle-free and helped the company abstract away the friction from investors’ line of sight.

“I like building on Solana, even in the toughest of winter or bear markets,” said Valadez. “It gave everyone who stuck around really high conviction in the environment, with the other teams building and in the foundation holistically. To be a part of that has just been an amazing experience.”

Building on this foundation, Homebase is now applying its expertise to the commercial sector. The team is now offering back office software for real estate syndicators like EmpireDAO to make commercial real estate investment more accessible. Using blockchain technology and Solana's capabilities, Homebase aims to establish liquidity pools that enable easier trading of real estate assets, potentially transforming how commercial real estate is bought and sold.

Homebase’s aim is clear: making commercial real estate accessible and dynamic while instilling confidence in new investors. It’s not just new tech;  it's a gateway to financial inclusivity.

The Solana ecosystem is moving forward — fast.

The Solana Foundation is pleased to announce that tickets to Breakpoint 2024 are now on sale, running 20-21 Sept. 2024 in Singapore.

The annual gathering of the worldwide Solana community brings developers, artists, business leaders, and users together for an event that brings the distributed Solana ecosystem to life. Breakpoint 2024, the fourth annual event and the first in Asia, will occur at Suntec Singapore in the city’s central business district.

Breakpoint 2024 will once again be a collection of some of the greatest minds in blockchain. This year’s event will include two days jam-packed with workshops, panels, keynotes, and conversations that will ignite change and move the entire web3 industry forward. 

Read on for more.

Propel yourself with exciting speakers and community events

Breakpoint has established itself as a leading blockchain industry event, with past Breakpoints including speakers across both web3 and traditional industries. At Breakpoint 2024, expect innovators at the forefront of web3, including speakers from Helium, Drift, Teleport.xyz, Electric Capital, Tensor, OKX, IO.net, Boba Guys, Helio, Honeyland, and much more. Stay tuned for more speakers!

Beyond the luminaries speaking onstage, Breakpoint 2024 is designed to make space for the entire Solana ecosystem to connect. The event will be full of smaller-scale meeting spaces, networking spots, and workshops. The two-day format also makes room for a number of Solana ecosystem events in Singapore, continuing the tradition of making Breakpoint a more decentralized event. Look for conferences and events from the community, which will be announced soon.

Accessible to all

Breakpoint is intended to be an event accessible to as many people interested in web3 technology as possible, no matter where they are in their journey. General admission tickets for Breakpoint 2024 are $500 USD, and include access to all the talks, learning, and networking that happen on site.

In addition, the Solana Foundation is offering subsidized tickets for developers, artists, and students. These programs offer tickets at a low rate, allowing even newer members of the community to join.

All ticket holders get access to all public areas of the conference, including stages, a community-powered basecamp, networking and learning areas, and more.

Move forward

Breakpoint 2024 is coming soon, and tickets are already selling fast. See you in Singapore!

Interested in sponsoring Breakpoint 2024? Reach out here.

Want to share your knowledge with a workshop or working session? Apply here.

“I come from Latin America, from a small town. I have seen what it is to have a broken financial system,” says Fernanda Orduña Rangel, cofounder of Decaf. “So when I saw this new technology, it was very clear how I could use blockchain to solve a problem that I have experienced, one that I know exists not just in my town, but everywhere.” 

Decaf is a wallet built on Solana that provides financial freedom for people all over the world — especially in places with unstable economies that are not inclusive to everyday individuals. The app allows users to transition between fiat and crypto with the ease of a tap. As of March 2024, Decaf supports over 184 local currencies that can be redeemed at over 350,000 Moneygram locations, bridging the gap between crypto and real world transactions. 

“We’re trying to onboard the next billion people onto Solana and into blockchain,” explains Rangel. “With Decaf, you are able to cash out your stablecoins into pretty much any currency. We’re overtaking traditional systems, using blockchain to provide more freedom and more accessibility.” 

Emerging economies are leading the way in crypto adoption worldwide. That’s because people are seeing the valuable role the technology can play in protecting their hard-earned wealth and spending power. “My cofounder went to Argentina. The taxi driver was telling him it is so hard in Argentina right now because inflation is so crazy. They’re able to buy less and less every time [they go to the supermarket],” explains Rangel. That’s where Decaf comes in. “They saw the solution in blockchain. Now, they are able to protect themselves from inflation and have money to actually live their lives.” 

While many apps built on Solana cater to the cutting edge of web3, platforms like Decaf focus on lowering the barrier to entry for newcomers and creating a seamless experience between the internet, the real world, and web3. “We make the onboarding experience as easy as possible, and then slowly start teaching our users to do more,” says Rangel. “We give them access to a stable currency, but also we let them access investments, so they’re not just protecting themselves from inflation and devaluation, but they’re making money, improving their lives, and [working towards] financial freedom.”

Because Decaf’s user base is made up largely of newcomers to web3, it requires a blockchain that enables accessibility and convenience, one that doesn’t get in the way of user experience. “Decaf is only possible on Solana because of its great composability and performance,” says Rangel. “Solana’s speed and low fees mean we can offer an experience that looks like a web2 product, but is actually cheaper and faster. People don't even realize they’re using blockchain. That is the game-changing thing about Solana.”

Seamless finance for everyone all over the world is only possible on Solana.

DePIN — or decentralized physical infrastructure networking — represents one of the fastest growing sectors in web3, one that is already impacting people’s everyday lives in the real world. DePIN networks leverage incentives to motivate people all over the world to collaboratively provide infrastructure that powers everything from computer rendering to EV charging to telecommunications networks. 

Case in point: Helium is building the world’s fastest growing decentralized wireless network. It’s a mobile service provider that offers $20-a-month 5G connectivity over its community-powered Helium Mobile network… but it’s also about people powering people. “Helium is a network that aligns the incentives between people that want to connect and people that are able to provide connectivity,” says Helium Foundation CEO Abhay Kumar.

“Helium is actually one of the easier blockchain use cases to describe, because there's actual physical hardware on the ground,” explains Noah Prince, head of protocol engineering at the Helium Foundation. “There are two networks – there's a 5G network and there's an IoT network. Basically, anybody can become a cell phone tower, they can put up a hotspot in their house, and then people walking around can use the network.” Hotspot providers are then compensated in Helium’s native token for the connectivity they provide. 

“With Helium, it's a community leveraging what they already have as far as locations and hardware. The idea that you can run something on a community-built network makes everything cheaper,” explains Helium Foundation COO Scott Sigel. “Now, you're talking about $20 cell phone plans, because you're not talking about one large, centralized organization that has to think about the real estate, the operation, the upkeep, the head count, so the cost is just going to continue to come down in cost over time.”

Since migrating to Solana in April 2023, Helium has rolled out its $20 unlimited 5G cellular plan nationwide in the US, expanded coverage to Mexico in partnership with telecom giant Telefónica, and worked with Google to bundle its Pixel 8 smartphone with Helium services and hotspots. The remarkable growth of the Helium network attests not only to the quality of its service and value it provides, but the critical role blockchain can play in unlocking emerging industries. 

“We’re coordinating work in the physical world at a large scale, and token incentives help to solve for that. It’s just not feasible to try to process this over traditional payment rails. It only works with blockchain technology. And at that kind of speed, that kind of scale, Solana's a natural fit,” Sigel explains. “We're thinking about coordination and scalability, but also what the experience looks like for the average user. It needs to be intuitive, it needs to be fast, it needs to be simple. Solana truly is the only blockchain that can power those types of interfaces.”

“Building the world's largest wireless network is a hard enough problem as it is – I don't need a blockchain that's getting in my way — and Solana doesn't,” says Prince. “As the Helium Network grows, we need the underlying blockchain to also grow with it. And Solana is the only real option for something like that.” 

Large-scale, decentralized infrastructure networks like Helium are only possible on Solana.

“My belief is the user experience of the internet is broken, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” says DRiP co-founder and CEO Vibhu Norby. He’s part of a generation of founders building a better way with web3 tech. “Solana is really the foundation of a new internet,” he says. “One that is owned by the people and by the apps and the things that are using it and that are built on top of it.” 

DRiP is an app for earning free collectibles like music, art, videos, and more from your favorite creators. DRiP sends millions of NFTs for free to collectors all over the world — something only possible on Solana — and it has grown into one of the most popular apps in all of web3. 

“I think everything on the DRiP platform is really about helping you discover and be inspired.”

Here’s how DRiP works: You log in the app and start subscribing to creators that you like. In return, they give you their best work. And you own it. Digital media on DRiP spans the full spectrum of internet art — from illustrations, pixel art, and photography to news, podcasts, and even prank videos and live music streams.

“We want you to be able to find things that you're going to fall in love with,” says Norby. “The collectibles are NFTs. They are nonfungible tokens. When you own it, you can keep it, you can share it, you can trade it, you can sell it, you can buy it, you get the full economic expression that we have in the real world, but on the internet.”  

DRiP creators earn directly for every like and subscriber. “On DRiP, we have a concept called ‘droplets,’” Norby explains. “When you subscribe to a creator, you're giving them a couple droplets per month to receive what they're making. It’s seamless. It’s instantaneous. It’s guaranteed. When you add that up across tens of thousands of fans, it becomes real income for them, it becomes meaningful. And that's something you don't get from traditional content platforms.”

At the core of what Solana makes possible for DRiP is accessibility. “We needed to figure out a way to make these collectibles much more affordable, so that we didn't have to charge users,” Norby explains. With innovations that make NFTs affordable to mint and transact over a network that’s efficient and robust, using Solana helps DRiP turn consumers into collectors all over the world, and helps creators earn from their work without sacrificing their revenue share, creativity, or freedoms.   

In particular, the Solana network’s compressed NFTs helped unlock DRiP’s potential. It’s a technology that reduces the cost of minting NFTs to fractions of a cent. “Compression is an amazing feat of engineering and ingenious design. It was a game changer for us,” says Norby. “When we were trying to send millions of NFTs per week, it started to stack up. Now, for every million in collectibles we send out, we're not spending more than several hundred dollars, instead of several hundred thousand dollars. Compression basically allowed DRiP to exist. Without Solana compression, DRiP isn't possible.”

For this emerging generation of Solana builders, the north star is creating an internet that serves the people who use it. “The most important thing on the internet for most people is the content. It's the things that are entertaining us and adding culture to our lives, and that are made by our friends and the people that we love,” says Norby. “I think that we are going to be a part of the solution to that, and the internet will never be the same again.”

DRiP is only possible on Solana. 

The Solana Foundation is committed to supporting the security and evolution of the Solana network and the community of validator operators which power it. As the network and validator community continue to mature, the Foundation is also re-assessing its incentives and programs to help enable the next chapter of responsible growth. With recent changes to the Solana Foundation Delegation Program, the Foundation has determined that it is time to revisit — and rethink — testnet incentives.

Therefore, the Solana Foundation is announcing the conclusion of the Tour de Sun 22 program, effective March 31, 2024, in favor of a more limited testnet incentive program that is part of the Solana Foundation Delegation Program.

Active participants in Tour de Sun 22 will remain eligible for the current incentive structure through the end of March, the final incentive payment for the program will be issued by April 8, 2024, and the program is now closed to new applicants. Outstanding support requests associated with incentives from previous months will be addressed by the end of the day on Friday, March 22, 2024.

Why is the Foundation making this change?

Tour de Sun 22 was created to provide an incentivized testing ground for new validator operators to contribute to testnet. Participation in testnet has been (and continues to be) a requirement for any operators who wish to be considered for receiving a stake delegation from the Foundation on their mainnet beta validator. Tour de Sun 22 and the Foundation’s Delegation Program on mainnet beta were designed to exist in tandem, issues like excessive queue times have led us to revisit the usefulness of the current programs in today’s environment.

The Solana Foundation Delegation Program for mainnet validators has also recently been re-worked to provide better incentive alignments with the validator community and the decentralized network. The new Delegation Program criteria provides time-limited support for a new validator’s voting costs, and provides a delegation from the Foundation based on the amount of external stake a node attracts. This encourages operators to seek external stake from third parties or stake pools, rather than rely heavily on the Foundation as their primary source of stake, which is not a healthy long-term behavior for the network.

Will there be any more testnet incentives?

Yes.  Any future testnet incentives for eligible participants will be issued as part of the Foundation’s Delegation Program, rather than as a standalone program.

What is the new testnet incentive as part of the Delegation Program?

Any validator who signs up for the Delegation Program (or is already signed up) and is not yet eligible for receiving a delegation on their mainnet node may be eligible to receive up to $250 USD in value of 12-month locked SOL per month for up to a maximum of six months for operating a testnet node that meets the program’s performance criteria.

This testnet incentive will be paid to eligible operators once the operator is eligible for receiving a mainnet delegation from the Foundation and runs a well performing node on mainnet for ten epochs. Ongoing testnet participation is still required to continue to receive a stake delegation from the Foundation on mainnet, even after the six month testnet incentive expires.

This aligns positive long term testnet performance and operator behavior with those who are willing to contribute the time and effort to run a performant mainnet node, while still providing an onboarding path for new operators who want to learn on testnet for a few months before spinning up their production node on mainnet beta.

When will the new testnet incentive begin?

Testnet incentive tracking as part of the Foundation’s Delegation program will begin on April 1, 2024.

For current Tour de Sun 22 participants:

If you are participating in Tour de Sun 22 and have signed up for the Delegation Program, but not are yet eligible for stake on your mainnet node from the Foundation, as long as your testnet node continues to have good performance, you will be eligible for the testnet incentive from April 1 until Sept. 1, 2024 (six months of eligibility).

For validators receiving stake from the Delegation Program on mainnet:

Node operators who are currently eligible or receiving some stake from the Foundation on mainnet, are not eligible for any testnet incentives after the final Tour de Sun 22 payment.  Testnet operation and performance is still required to remain eligible for a delegation from the Foundation on mainnet.

For new or future validators:

Validators who sign up for the Delegation Program after April 1, 2024 will be eligible for testnet incentive for the six months from the date they sign up.

I have other questions. Where can I learn more?

Members of the Solana Foundation team will be hosting several AMA sessions in the coming days on the Solana Tech Discord, #tds22-and-server-program, to address any questions or concerns from our community.

March 18, 2024, 20:00 UTC / 13:00 PST

March 19, 2024, 6:00 UTC / March 18, 2024 23:00 PST

March 19, 2024, 15:00 UTC / 8:00 PST

SOLANA FOUNDATION RESERVES THE RIGHT TO: (1) MODIFY OR TERMINATE ANY OR ALL OF THE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS (THE “INCENTIVE PROGRAMS”) DISCUSSED HEREIN AT ANY TIME; AND (2) TERMINATE ANY PARTICIPANT’S RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY OF THE INCENTIVE PROGRAMS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON AT ALL.

The Solana network has been experiencing extremely high usage which has tested components of the network — specifically the implementation of priority fees and the transaction scheduler, both of which play important roles in block optimization. While the network has remained stable during this period of high usage, there are a number of tools developers and operators can implement today to ensure continued high performance, as well as additional changes in the works that will be released in the forthcoming software release to improve network application performance.

Immediate Actions to Improve Network Performance

Implement Priority Fees: Many applications built on Solana today still do not make use of priority fees, resulting in delayed or dropped transactions. Integrating dynamic priority fees into dApps will help address user experience issues. It is a straightforward integration. Read more: https://solana.com/developers/guides/advanced/how-to-use-priority-fees.

Priority fees are also being integrated into the CLI for use in program deployment. 

Exchanges can read use this updated guide for calculating priority fees: https://solana.com/docs/more/exchange#prioritization-fees-and-compute-units 

CU Budget Request Optimization: When a transaction is submitted to the network, developers can specify a compute unit budget for their specific transactions. If no budget is set, a default value is used, which is higher than most transactions require. As there is currently no penalty for requesting a higher budget than the transaction actually uses, many transactions do not use the entire CU budget they are allocated. Requesting too much compute upfront can lead to inefficient scheduling of transactions, as the scheduler does not know how much compute is left in a block until the transaction is executed. Developers should implement better scoped CU requests that match the transaction requirements. Read more: https://solana.com/developers/guides/advanced/how-to-optimize-compute

Use Stake-Weighted QoS: Infrastructure providers should adopt stake-weighted QoS, a core protocol feature introduced last year which allows block builders to identify and prioritize transitions proxied through a staked validator, as an additional sybil resistance mechanism. A guide to stake-weighted QoS is coming soon, and will be linked here once ready.

Optimize Program CU Usage: When a transaction is confirmed on the network, the transaction subtracts a number of total compute units (CU) available in a block. Today the total compute cap on a block is 48M CU, and during times of congestion this cap is often reached. Reducing the number of CUs used in your programs can increase the amount of transactions that can land on the network.

Upcoming Core Protocol Changes in v1.18

The Transaction Scheduler: This component of the validator stack that helps efficiently and economically fill blocks is scheduled for improvement within the v1.18 software release, targeted for mid April. Changes to this component require careful testing. This new scheduler implementation will be introduced alongside the current scheduler in the v1.18 software release, but will not be enabled by default. Validator operators will be able to enable and monitor the performance of the new scheduler and easily failover back to the old scheduler if any problems are detected.

The Solana Foundation will continue to keep the community updated. For the latest information, please refer to the Solana Status X account.

A review of Solana's network performance, and upgrades being made to strengthen the network

The Solana Foundation regularly releases updates and metrics on the state of the network as part of its commitment to transparency. This is the March 2024 Network Performance Report. Past reports include the previous Network Performance Report in July 2023, the Validator Health Report, and Energy Use Report. The Foundation welcomes input from the Solana community on this report. Fill out this form with questions, feedback, and metrics that you’d like to see tracked. 

Overview

The Solana network’s performance has continued to improve through the past six months (Sept. 1, 2023 - Feb. 29, 2024), as measured by uptime, the ratio of non-voting-to-voting transactions, time to produce a block, and average and max transactions per second. However, the network suffered an outage on Feb. 6, 2024. Solana ecosystem engineers immediately began triaging the situation and were able to push a fix that led to the network restarting in a little less than five hours, indicating a well-prepared and engaged validator community that enables the network to bounce back more quickly in times of emergency. 

There are several new features and developments to highlight on the Solana network since the last network performance report in July 2023, including several announcements from Breakpoint 2023, an annual conference for the Solana community:

Network upgrades to better handle high traffic and demand, including the rollout of QUIC TPU, stake-weighted QoS, and localized fee markets. Since these network upgrades, the network has performed well in periods of high stress.

1.17 update for validators. v1.17 of the Solana Labs validator client includes a number of new features and performance updates that will be activated over time. This includes a ZK proof program that will facilitate performance updates that are expected to reduce transaction latency, reduce resource usage by block-producing validators, and lower startup times for validator restarts.  

Firedancer, a new validator client from Jump Crypto, is live on testnet. This new validator client is built from the ground up in C++ and has shown significant performance improvements.

Token extensions represent the next generation of the SPL token standard. Token extensions represent a comprehensive suite of turnkey solutions tailored to meet the needs of enterprises moving on chain.

Over 60% of stake now runs through the Jito validator client. Jito is a validator software client that launched on mainnet just over a year ago. 

The network continues to be run by a robust group of independent validators around the world. The Solana network is one of the world’s most decentralized proof-of-stake blockchains, and one of the most developed on, with 2500-3000 developers consistently choosing to build on Solana. Read on for a few statistics the Solana Foundation tracks to measure the decentralization and vitality of the Solana network (updated as of Feb. 26, 2024 unless noted otherwise).

Details of network performance

In order for a billion people to use and take advantage of the benefits of the Solana network, users need to feel confident in the network’s overall reliability, including the ability to consistently access the network and safety of funds and information. 

The Foundation is committed to tracking network performance over time through quantitative and qualitative measures. For this report, we highlight four metrics for the sake of simplicity and to allow users to easily track these metrics and how they progress over time. We’ve included these metrics, as well a few others, on a Dune dashboard that makes it easy to dig a layer deeper into the data or run your own analyses. 

Uptime

A constantly reliable network is foundational to the trust and continued growth of the network. 

One of the most important measures of reliability is network uptime, or the percentage of time that the network is successfully running and available to use. 100% uptime within a specific period of time means that there were no errors or incidents that caused the network to be unavailable during that period. 

The Solana network has had 99.94% uptime in the 12 month period previous to the publishing of this report (March 1, 2023 - Feb. 29, 2024). 

Below, we snapshot the network’s monthly uptime, measured as the percentage of uptime in a given month over the past 6 months. 

Average monthly uptime:

September 2023: 100%

October 2023: 100%

November 2023: 100%

December 2023: 100%

January 2024: 100%

February 2024: 99.31%

The network experienced a 4 hour 46 minute outage on Feb. 6, 2024. The outage was caused by a bug in the LoadedPrograms function that led to an infinite loop and halted consensus. This bug had previously been identified and was scheduled to be deployed during the v1.18 release cycle, and instead was deployed immediately upon cluster restart. Importantly, during a network outage, all funds are safe. Anza published a root cause analysis report of the outage on Feb. 9, 2024. 

100% uptime is a consistent goal for the network – this sort of reliability and consistency builds trust for users and potential users that the network will be consistently available for use over time, and if there is downtime, that access will be quickly restored. To that end, it’s important to note that on Solana, time between outages continues to grow. Messari’s Jan. 11, 2024 State of Solana report noted that the period between Feb. 25, 2023 and Dec. 31, 2023 was the network’s longest-ever period without a network interruption, at 309 days. [1]

Block time (time to produce a block)

Block time measures the speed of a single transaction, since it measures how quickly the network adds more “blocks” to the blockchain. In this chart, we see the average time to produce a block, how consistent this metric is, and how it changes over time. 

The spike at the end of February 2023 correlates with the Feb. 25, 2023 network outage, discussed in the previous Network Performance Report. The smaller spike at the end correlates with the Feb. 6, 2024 outage. The consistency in the chart otherwise shows the general stability and speed of the network.

Average and maximum transactions per second

Total transactions per second are the most accurate reflection of the current throughput of the network and demonstrate its potential and growth over time. The benchmark throughput is 65,000 transactions per second, based on simple transactions like sending money from one place to another. Actual transactions per second will differ due to the varied mix of complex transactions on the network, and based on demand at any given moment. An NFT purchase, for example, is much more complex than a simple movement of native tokens across wallets. 

It’s important to note that actual network transactions per second is not a reflection of network capacity, but of demand for transaction throughput. In almost all cases, Solana mainnet-beta is operating below capacity.

The chart below is a snapshot of how well the network is performing in real time. It’s segmented into average transactions per second on a given day, along with maximum transactions per second, split out by date. Average transactions per second have remained relatively similar since December 2022, with some volatility that correlates with high network demand. Notably, other blockchain networks may have seen a recent rise in the number of transactions per second and max transactions per second due to an increase in a specific type of transaction called inscriptions. Inscriptions are a type of NFT that are very simple on a technical transaction level, so they don't take up much blockspace or compute. This can inflate the total number of "transactions" that a blockchain can do, where that number may not fully represent the capacity to fulfill “normal” transactions like token transfers and standard NFT interactions. 

Max transactions per second

Average transactions per second

This chart shows a drop in transactions per second in December 2023-January 2024. Large drops like this are not unexpected, particularly in periods with significant activity. This rise in interest and usage in December 2023 aligns with other charts and information tracked by the Foundation. We can see a similar time pattern emerge in these charts of new wallets created and token extension transactions, for example. 

Users can continue to monitor the performance of the Solana network and use reports like this one to help the community track its development over time. Read more on the latest upgrade to the Solana Labs validator client , as well as the recent fork by Anza. See the release schedule which is available through Github.

Network highlights since the July 2023 report

Network upgrades to better handle high traffic and demand. The network is being continually improved and upgraded to address user needs and technical issues. Many of the recent upgrades, such as QUIC, Stake Weighted QoS, and localized fee markets, were in response to specific points of stress, slowdowns, and outages in periods of high activity and demand. Developers are also continuing to test and develop other network upgrades and initiatives, including increasing maximum transaction sizes (currently limited to 1232 bytes) and simplifying the voting logic, which reduces the overall amount of data needed to be transmitted and stored. 

Release of versions 1.16 and 1.17 of the Solana Labs validator client. Version 1.16 was successfully rolled out in September 2023, and version 1.17 rolled out on Jan. 15, 2024. Both these versions include new features, performance updates, and changes to improve resiliency of the network. 

New features include:

Improved runtime support for zero-knowledge math:

Supports 128 elliptic curve operations (equivalents of EIP-196, EIP-197, and EIP-198).

Support for resizeable program data accounts

The capability to broadcast shreds and do repair over QUIC, which will help transition protocols to QUIC

Token extensions. Solana Labs introduced the original Token Program to define a common implementation for Fungible and Non Fungible tokens, making it easier to introduce and work with tokens on the Solana blockchain. Token extensions, a cross-ecosystem effort introduced to the greater public in January 2024, is an evolution or superset of the original Token Program functionality, making it easy to adopt. By adding different extensions to mints and accounts, token extensions introduce new features not possible or not widely accessible in the original Token program. 

Additional Firedancer progress. Firedancer, a Solana validator client being developed by Jump Crypto, is adding features and getting closer to release to mainnet. At Breakpoint 2023, the Foundation and Jump Crypto announced Firedancer was live on testnet — a big step towards release for all users. Firedancer offers potential performance advantages, and having another validator client in the Solana ecosystem reduces risk via a diversity of code: if one validator client fails or has a major error, other clients could still be available for use because they have a different code base. 

Onchain carbon credits purchases. In April 2023, Solana became the first major smart-contracts blockchain to have its carbon footprint measured in real time; TryCarbonara, an independent startup, launched www.solanaclimate.com to track the network’s impact. In December 2023, the Solana Foundation announced it had offset 100% of the carbon footprint of the network for 2022 via onchain carbon offset purchases. 

Upcoming initiatives 

Solana core developers are consistently working on new network upgrades aimed at strengthening the network in the face of massive user growth and adoption. Follow the status of these upgrades.

Timely vote credits: This is a protocol change and governance initiative carried out mostly by validators. The change penalizes validators for voting on blocks late, incentivizing fast voting and improving the health of consensus. The change has been implemented, testing is happening now, and there will be a governance vote to activate it in the coming weeks. 

SFDP changes: The SFDP (Solana Foundation’s Delegation Program) provides support for validators to become self-reliant and sustainable, with the broader goal of maximizing decentralization, network resiliency, and performance of the network. The Foundation recently announced changes to the program, which supports validators at a higher level early on and less so over time as they grow, with a high performance requirement for the validator. Read more about the delegation program here.

Footnotes

[1] https://messari.io/report/state-of-solana-q4-2023

The UX-focused, Solana-native wallet is enabling new user experiences with the latest, innovative token program.

In response to the growing needs of developers, a new era of token innovation has emerged with the introduction of Solana token extensions. These extensions represent a significant advancement beyond the original Solana token program, offering a standardized interface for integration with Solana applications. The result is plug-and-play, regulation-friendly, versatile token functionality that significantly decreases engineering time and resources.

Developed in collaboration with regulated institutions, token extensions unlock advanced functionalities while maintaining compliance and reducing engineering resources. Token extensions are available to all developers in the Solana ecosystem — but it's thanks to the infrastructural support from teams like  Phantom, a crypto and NFT wallet that can be downloaded as a mobile app or a browser extension, that will enable these new use cases. 

Founded on Solana in the spring of 2021, Phantom quickly gained traction for its user-friendly interface design and robust security features. According to Phantom’s Head of Ecosystem Success, Brian Friel, the decision to build within the Solana ecosystem was focused on a combination of a simple, best-in-class user experience. “Our decision to build on Solana was due to our early belief that there would be more chains than just Ethereum. At the time, Solana was very overlooked relative to its potential. We believed a flagship wallet that focused relentlessly on user experience was the missing piece to unlock growth for the ecosystem,” said Friel. 

The decision to build on Solana was unconventional but strategic, leveraging Solana’s high throughput and low fees to stand out in a market dominated by Ethereum. Raul Riera, Phantom’s engineering manager, also credits Solana’s token extensions as a significant factor that has helped them streamline their development process, “This simplifies all the ways we treat tokens in the app because now Solana is giving us advanced tools and guidelines to easily generate a new range of tokens. I believe they have over a dozen extensions - all of which we’re working with individually to improve Phantom every day.”

Building with token extensions

As ecosystem engineers introduce new features into the Solana protocol, Phantom aims to be on the leading edge of all implementations. Token extensions are no different; Phantom has already implemented support for many of them since the early days of 2024. By enabling support of the innovative extensions, Phantom is opening the door for token extension-enabled dApps for their large user base. To date, Phantom now can support teams using the following token extensions:

While each extension is powerful on its own, Friel believes that the most exciting applications come from the potential to combine them, saying “One theme is that wallets up until today have been very simple. Storing assets, sending, swapping, like, you know, basic verbs in crypto. We’re now in a place where the Solana ecosystem can generate a new range of advanced functionality by combining different extensions. These permutations, in turn, have the potential to power the next generation of dApps.” 

Riera continued on the theme of powerful combinations saying, “For us as developers, the most intriguing aspect of token extensions was the potential they offered. With numerous interfaces available, it was evident that the ecosystem could generate a new range of token capabilities by combining different extensions.”

Riera also expressed excitement about the potential that token extensions have for the advancement of user experience on blockchain technology as a whole. As a project that’s dedicated to building excellent user experience, the Phantom team had previously struggled with the amount of time they had to spend working with extensions to get things just right. Riera expanded on this by saying, “Extensions present unique challenges within the user experience. Our UX needed constant adjustments to accommodate a wide range of options, so making sure we made the correct adjustments was always a top priority. Token extensions have unlocked new UX paradigms that create innovative ways projects can utilize their tokens and cut down on the time and resources we need to spend on building great user experience.”

In other use cases beyond UX, token extensions are helping newcomers to the space solve challenges around risk reduction, security, and reliability. Token extensions have the potential to help companies interested in blockchain technology establish responsible governance and rules without needing to create their own smart contracts to implement the same functionality. 

What’s next?

For the Phantom developer team, the most exciting use case that they’re looking forward to seeing more of in the Solana ecosystem is the transfer hooks extension. “Transfer hooks essentially give unlimited potential on what developers can create now for holders,” said Riera. “It's so powerful it could replace other extensions, instead of the memo extension, a transfer hook could check the existence of a memo.” 

Having this built-in token functionality that works across all marketplaces, wallets, and apps is a game changer that has the potential to simplify the development process of developers around the ecosystem and contribute to a better end-user experience in the entire crypto space. Friel continued on the excitement around transfer hooks, calling them “a powerful primitive that opens up the design space for new tokens and can streamline the process of collecting fees from transfers.”

2023 was a big year for the Phantom team as they surpassed a landmark three million monthly active users (MAUs). Looking ahead to 2024, they only see things heating up as the crypto sector continues its rapid growth. With their latest advancements in user experience and functionality, they want to keep users coming back to learn more, do more, and explore the larger ecosystem of Solana projects. 

“In terms of success, the metrics are great, but it wouldn’t feel the same if it wasn't the Solana community driving it,” said Friel. “I would say Solana is pretty much the heart and soul of Phantom. And as we continue to grow and expand, that's who we work closest with. We can’t wait to be part of whatever is next for the ecosystem,” 

Interested in learning more about token extensions? Check out the full range of possibilities on the token extensions on Solana hub.

Learn about Solana Development

This post was originally published by Anza.

This weekend (March 2, 2024) [Anza] forked the Solana Labs validator software into a repo managed by the Anza team located here. Please see our X post here and FAQ here.

If you are not familiar with Anza, we are a new dev shop within the Solana ecosystem consisting of former executives and core engineers from Solana Labs. One of our objectives is to build a forked Solana Labs validator client which will be called “Agave,” as well as contribute to other major protocols within the Solana ecosystem. Our announcement provides further background.

Our objective in forking the client will be to separate future contributions by the Anza team from the previous work at Solana Labs. This is part of our process to support the Firedancer client being developed by Jump Crypto, build dev tools and provide further engineering support to the broader Solana developer ecosystem.

Anza will be joining the Solana Validator Community Call (March 14, 2024 at 11am PST) and the Solana Foundation Core Community Call (March 13, 2024) to answer questions on this topic live. Please feel free to follow our new DevRel lead, Rex St. John, who will be active across various forums to answer any questions you may have. Finally, follow Anza on X to stay updated for future announcements: https://twitter.com/anza_xyz.

Learn more about Solana development

The fork occurred on March 2, 2024.

Highlights

In 2023, tea retailer Boba Guys developed "Passport," a blockchain-based loyalty program that goes beyond traditional models, featuring gamification, exclusive rewards and digital collectibles.

The Passport program relies on Solana’s fast transaction-processing capabilities, which enable it to manage high-volume, small-scale transactions in retail settings.

The Passport program saw 15,000 users join in its first 80 days, with at least one Boba Guys location now reporting as many as 70% of orders made through the program since its launch.

A pilot of the program was a success for Boba Guys — a 67% increase in monthly visits, a 65% increase in monthly spending, and an 800% return on investment.

When you think of retail rewards programs, you might envision stale punch cards or confusing airline points lacking in real incentives. However, the innovative approach taken by Boba Guys with the Solana blockchain paints a different picture of what’s possible.

Founded 12 years ago, Boba Guys is a primarily brick-and-mortar business with 20 locations across the Bay Area, Los Angeles and New York. The company is known for its innovation and customer-focused approach in the industry — so when it was time for the company to launch a loyalty program in 2023, founders Bin Chen and Andrew Chau wanted to transcend the conventional models they were tired of seeing. 

"We always felt like the traditional loyalty programs out there were just basically glorified digital punch cards,” said Chen. 

By building on  Solana, the Boba Guys Passport program can do a lot more. The program rewards participating customers in interactive ways, earning them points for every visit, along with gamified features like loot boxes and loyalty tiers that unlock secret menu items — all improved by using blockchain technology.

Improving the retail rewards experience with Solana

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Looking ahead, there seems to be an even greater appetite among customers to advance in loyalty tiers, Chen says, with many customers aiming for the highest reward level.

"The excitement in our program really peaks with the Boba Connoisseur level,” he said. “To qualify, customers need to spend about $400 at Boba Guys annually.”

According to Chen, there’s already a “double-digit” number of customers who have reached this coveted status. “For them, we offer secret menus, exclusive merch and air-dropped digital collectibles,” he said.

This immensely powerful approach is what Chen considers to be a key factor in mainstreaming web3 and blockchain technology.

Looking towards the future of retail with blockchain

So what are the implications for brick-and-mortar retail establishments across the nation? Chen sees them leveraging the blockchain for even more decentralized infrastructure solutions in the future. 

Chen views the Passport program as both a loyalty program and a stepping stone towards normalizing blockchain technology as a standard item in the retail owner’s toolkit. He also mentions the potential future benefits of blockchain technology, like decentralization, which could offer solutions to common retail problems, such as POS system downtimes.

“I think there's something to be said about this idea of decentralization,” he said, alluding to the imperfect nature of centralized financial service providers. “We've had Square go down in the past, and it's extremely disruptive to not be able to take a transaction in our stores and be held kind of hostage to that.”

He adds that he doesn’t think web3 payments is “a world that we're going to jump into immediately,” but that it's “prudential” for retail companies to “at least know what's out there.”

“Own your own destiny and protect yourself,” he advises.

For businesses considering a blockchain rewards program, Chen recommends giving Solana a hard look due to its speed, composability and active ecosystem. He emphasizes the importance of shipping real, usable products rather than getting caught in hype cycles.

“Solana's ecosystem is deep and broad, with new products and projects launching almost every week that are genuinely useful in real-world settings,” said Chen. “This constant development is what makes Solana stand out.”

Passport, a loyalty program built on the Solana network from Boba Guys, saw an 800% return on investment.

On 2024-02-06 at 09:53 UTC Solana Mainnet Beta block finalization halted.

Solana is fast, secure, and censorship resistant blockchain infrastructure supporting the fastest growing ecosystem in crypto.