Original Article Title: Solana Mega Report V2 - Like Apple, but Unlike Apple

Original Source: Four Pillars

Original Translation: BlackShibawolf

See previous articles: "Solana Comprehensive Report: More Than Just the Apple of the Web3 Era (Part 1)"; Part 2: "Solana Comprehensive Report: More Than Just the Apple of the Web3 Era (Part 2)"

The following are some projects in the "Infrastructure and Development Tools" field that are worth paying close attention to, as they are crucial for the future development of the Solana ecosystem.

Backpack

The company Coral behind the Anchor development framework has created Backpack Wallet and the Mad Lads series, both iconic representatives of scalable technology and a positive community in the Solana ecosystem. Both of these products are implemented in the form of xNFTs, which are "executable" Web3 application asset standard plugins. The launch of the Backpack Wallet was to allow users to experience various dApps implemented in xNFT form in an integrated environment. Currently, it provides a seamless user experience for approximately 90 xNFT version applications spanning various fields such as gaming, NFTs, and DeFi.

Phantom and Solflare

Phantom and Solflare are the most widely used wallets in the Solana ecosystem. The Phantom Wallet is known for its user-friendly interface in the mobile environment and NFT management features, while the Solflare Wallet is known for its stylish interface in the web environment and focus on security.

At the recent Breakpoint event, Phantom announced updates to its "embedded wallet," including new features such as login without a mnemonic phrase and a universal Phantom account. Meanwhile, Solflare played a key role in implementing the Seed Vault feature for Seeker Mobile, which is expected to launch in the first half of 2025.

Squads

Squads is an asset management solution layer that provides various smart account standards including asset management, permission settings, and multi-signature, enabling a more secure asset management and operation.

The Squads Labs team has launched the first smart wallet in the Solana ecosystem—Fuse Wallet, which has currently released its iOS version. Fuse Wallet offers multiple features such as two-factor authentication (2FA), spending limits, social recovery, time lock, key rotation, Gas abstraction, and native staking. Recently, they also introduced Fuse Pay, a convenient virtual Visa card for user payments.

In addition, the Squads team announced the Squads Policy Network (SPN) to enable enterprises to manage centralized custody in a zero-trust, decentralized manner. SPN integrates with Jito's (Re)staking to provide customizable and general policies applicable to all users.

Pyth Network

The Pyth Network is an oracle network that provides real-time financial market primary data required for DeFi services on the blockchain. It currently collects data from over 90 first-party data providers and delivers real-time price data for cryptocurrencies, stocks, ETFs, and commodities to developers on over 40 blockchains.

In the future, Pyth Network plans to introduce an Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS) delegation mechanism that will reward Pyth stakers while enabling the network to obtain high-quality data from publishers to support DeFi projects.

Switchboard

Switchboard is a decentralized, customizable oracle network that allows developers to build custom oracles, securely connecting off-chain data to on-chain smart contracts. It also helps developers reduce costs by providing data only as needed and leverages Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to ensure data security and integrity.

Code

Code SDK is an open payment protocol and application that enables developers to easily receive micro-payments from global users. Anyone can charge users a small fee through the "Pay with Code" button in the web environment, where users pay a fee of 5 cents, and developers pay a fixed fee of 1 cent to cover the blockchain transaction cost.

The Code team has been utilizing this technology to build various consumer products, such as they have launched a small payment product called Tip Card (physical/digital), and also introduced Pennypost, which is a content platform that allows users to support individual articles written by creators.

Dialect

Dialect is focused on developing a decentralized messaging protocol stack based on the Solana network. Recently, Dialect partnered with the Solana Foundation to launch a service called Blinks (blockchain links). The Dialect team is currently responsible for key updates to the Blink client SDK and provides support to numerous Blink developers.

Sphere

Sphere Labs is a settlement use case that stood out in the December Solana Summer Breakathon. Sphere offers various features, including cryptocurrency on/off-ramps, on-chain subscriptions, invoicing, payment links, anti-money laundering/anti-fraud measures, and reporting. Recently, Sphere introduced SphereNet, which is a high-performance virtual machine project focused on bridging the gap between regulated entities and blockchain.

TipLink

TipLink is a lightweight non-custodial wallet that allows users to easily transfer digital assets through a link or QR code. In other words, users only need to link their Gmail account or Solana wallet to the received link or QR code to instantly create a wallet and use the assets received through this linked wallet.

Anza

The Anza team is a software development company focused on building the Solana ecosystem. Comprised of many core engineers from Solana Labs, the team has diversified plans through various client initiatives (such as standalone client development like Agave and support like Firedancer) and contributions to other key protocols in the Solana ecosystem (such as token extension features, Solana platform tools and SDKs, etc.), driving broader adoption of the SVM ecosystem.

Helius

Helius is a platform that enables stable blockchain application development for the Solana ecosystem developers by providing APIs, RPC nodes, webhooks, and various developer tools.

Light Protocol

Light Protocol is a team building a ZK Layer within the Solana ecosystem. They collaborated with the Helius team to develop ZK compression technology.

Metaplex

Metaplex is a canonical library that provides various tools to facilitate the creation, sale, and management of digital assets in the Solana and SVM ecosystems, including ownership expression, permission management, compressed NFT creation, deployment management, etc.

The protocol fee collection ratio varies based on users' differing levels of usage of various Metaplex tools. Half of these fees go to the treasury of the Metaplex DAO in the form of $MPLX (Metaplex's utility and governance token), while the other half is used by the non-profit organization Metaplex Foundation for the continued development, security, governance, and management of the Metaplex DAO.

Additionally, the Metaplex team recently launched an index and data availability network called the Aura Network. This network allows users to easily store and retrieve data, as well as manage the state within the Solana and SVM ecosystems, executing multi-program consistent indexes through an enhanced Digital Asset Standard (DAS) API.

Solana Labs

Founded in 2018, the Solana Labs team is responsible for the ongoing development and support of Solana's overall core technology stack, from infrastructure design to client and token standards (such as token extension functionality), aiming to ensure the Solana network operates in an optimized and efficient manner.

Syndica

Syndica is an infrastructure provider for the Solana ecosystem, offering scalable RPC node services and various developer tools. Notably, Syndica is developing the ChainStream API, which enables real-time streaming of Solana blockchain data, and Sig, which is a validator client built using the low-level programming language Zig.

Wormhole

Wormhole is a multi-chain bridging protocol created in collaboration between Solana and Certus One, enabling the transfer of messages and assets across multiple blockchains, including Solana. In particular, Wormhole has the highest liquidity for cross-chain assets on Solana. Wormhole's primary goal is to overcome liquidity fragmentation in the blockchain ecosystem and build an integrated environment where assets and messages can freely move across different networks.

To achieve this goal, Wormhole employs the Native Token Transfer (NTT) framework, which incorporates mechanisms such as burning and minting, Circle's CCTP, and plans to enhance multi-chain governance through the recently launched $W token to further strengthen decentralized operation.

Eclipse

Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer 2 network based on SVM, using Ethereum as the settlement layer. It also utilizes Celestia as a data availability solution and employs RISC Zero's zero-knowledge proofs for validation. Through this approach, Eclipse focuses on ensuring high performance (being able to process as many transactions as possible) while maximizing the feasibility of validation.

Neon EVM

Neon EVM is a project that allows the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to run on the Solana blockchain. The project aims to enable Ethereum-based applications and smart contracts to leverage Solana's advantages, such as fast transaction speeds, low fees, and parallel processing capabilities. Through Neon EVM, Ethereum developers can easily migrate their existing Ethereum applications to the Solana network. Neon EVM can access data stored in Solana accounts, and all (pseudo) Ethereum accounts in Neon EVM are stored in the corresponding Solana accounts.

Rome

The core idea behind the Rome protocol is to enhance the transaction processing efficiency of Rollups by using Solana as their shared ordering layer. In other words, Solana sorts and executes transactions from various Rollups on Ethereum (or Celestia), and Rome then updates the state of each Rollup based on these processed transactions and ensures that these state changes are committed to Ethereum (or Celestia).

SOON

SOON (Solana Optimistic Network) is committed to providing the most efficient transaction settlement solution on any Layer 1 through a high-performance Rollup stack based on the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). Its main products include the SOON stack (a modular framework combining SVM and OP Stack) and SOON Mainnet (a universal SVM Layer 2 deployed on Ethereum).

Termina

In the Solana ecosystem, we see some new projects building on SVM application chains, Rollups, and sidechains. These approaches leverage Solana's execution environment while maintaining flexibility in setting block creation, block space, transaction ordering, and state management systems.

Termina, developed by Nitro Labs, provides an SVM cloud platform service that allows these projects to optimize and configure their technology stack to their needs.

5.2 Finance

Solana is known for pioneering retail-focused areas such as DePIN, mobile wallets, and payments, but it has also made significant strides in the finance sector. As mentioned earlier, PayPal successfully introduced PayPal USD (PYUSD) to Solana at the end of May, joining financial institutions like Visa, WorldPay, and Stripe. Recently, Libre Capital leveraged token extension capabilities to launch an institutional fund on Solana.

Solana's individual DeFi sector has also shown strong growth. Solana's DEX platforms have maintained high transaction volumes throughout the year, sometimes even surpassing Ethereum. Notably, Jito has become a leading LST protocol, significantly increasing the staked SOL amount, with approximately 13 million SOL currently staked on Jito. Additionally, with various LST and re-staking schemes (such as Sanctum) gaining attention, along with the upcoming launches of Solayer and Fragmetric, and the entry of Coinbase's native cbBTC into the Solana network, the synergies within Solana's DeFi ecosystem are expected to become even stronger.

The most striking success story in the finance sector this year is undoubtedly Pump.Fun, a meme coin issuance platform on Solana. Pump.Fun is a platform that allows users to easily create meme coins, effectively capturing the massive speculative demand from retail investors for meme coins. Since its launch in January 2024, Pump.Fun has experienced rapid growth and has become one of the top 10 protocols in all blockchain ecosystems in terms of fees and revenue. In just seven months, the platform's total fees/revenue generated surged from 8 SOL on February 2, 2024, to 700,675 SOL on September 7, 2024.

Of course, it is often assumed that Solana's DeFi ecosystem is only limited to meme coin trading, but in reality, this can be seen as a strength rather than a weakness. It not only demonstrates how deeply rooted Solana's community is, but also proves the network's ability to handle a high volume of transactions, thanks to its high throughput and low latency.

In addition to the mentioned projects, here are some highlight projects in the "Financial" field worth keeping an eye on in the future.

Compute Labs & DBunker

Compute Labs and DBunker are leading a new frontier that combines Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization with a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN), known as DePINFi, in the "Financial" field. Their goal is to lower the barriers to entry for AI computing and DePIN by reducing high initial capital costs, minimizing the need for specialized knowledge, and simplifying the management complexity of physical infrastructure.

Compute Labs achieves this goal by tokenizing GPU through its Computational Tokenization Protocol (CTP) into GNFTs (GPU Non-Fungible Tokens). The protocol effectively financializes computing hardware, which can then be deployed into various DeFi activities, unlocking new value and creating a market for GPU as an asset class.

DBunker, on the other hand, tokenizes physical mining hardware through its platform, streamlining the DePIN process. The platform creates digital assets representing shares of physical mining equipment, enabling users to participate in DePIN without dealing with the complexity of managing physical infrastructure.

Etherfuse

Etherfuse is an RWA platform that leverages blockchain technology to tokenize real-world assets, particularly focusing on emerging market sovereign debt. Its aim is to expand market access and increase liquidity, with a focus on debt from these regions. Recently, Etherfuse secured a $3 million funding round and plans to tokenize more assets, including those from the Mexican stock exchange. Furthermore, it also intends to expand operations into the markets of Spain, Switzerland, and Dubai.

Parcl

Parcl is a decentralized real estate exchange built on Solana, allowing users to trade and speculate on global real estate market prices. This is achieved through Parcl's City Index, which tracks the average price per square foot or meter in various cities, giving users exposure to an entire city's real estate market rather than individual properties.

ISC

ISC (International Stable Coin) is a stablecoin project built on Solana, aiming to provide users with a stable, internationally recognized currency that can be used online and offline. Unlike traditional stablecoins pegged to currencies like the US dollar, ISC is pegged to real-world assets such as commodities, bonds, and stocks, making it inherently inflation-resistant.

Perena

Perena focuses on enhancing the usability, liquidity, and incentives of stablecoins in DeFi. Its mission is to facilitate frictionless exchange of USD-pegged assets and maximize the yield of idle stablecoin liquidity. Perena's stablecoin exchange product, Numéraire, is a decentralized stablecoin swapping exchange that incentivizes deep liquidity, benefiting liquidity providers and the overall market.

Sky Ecosystem

Sky (formerly MakerDAO) is a DeFi protocol planning to expand into the Solana DeFi ecosystem by integrating its USDS stablecoin and SKY governance token through Wormhole. Recently, they announced an incentive program to kickstart and activate the Solana DeFi ecosystem, allocating 2 million SKY tokens weekly.

PYUSD

PayPal USD (PYUSD) is a stablecoin issued through a collaboration between PayPal and Paxos. Like USDT and USDC, it is backed 1:1 by cash and cash equivalents held in banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). PayPal announced a strategic partnership with Solana to leverage its fast confirmations, low fees, and token scaling capabilities to develop the next-generation digital payment solutions.

Drift

Drift Protocol is a decentralized exchange platform built on Solana, with its V2 upgrade focusing on improving order execution speed and market efficiency. Users can engage in various activities such as spot trading, perpetual trading, lending, and passive liquidity provision, and trade in a real-time updated market. It recently launched a prediction market called "BET."

Jupiter

Jupiter is the leading decentralized exchange aggregator on Solana, providing the best and most cost-effective way to trade on Solana. The platform primarily offers features such as limit orders, futures trading, Dollar-Cost Averaging (DCA), fiat onramp, and bridging. Additionally, Jupiter also provides or plans to provide various features, including: 1) the "LFG Launchpad," which has supported the launch of protocols such as Sanctum, Zeus, and SharkyFi; 2) "Ape.Pro," a feature that simplifies the minting and trading of new tokens, as demonstrated by Pump.fun; and 3) achieving "Easy Onboarding Integration" through solutions like Apple Pay, credit cards, and Google Pay.

Zeta

Zeta Markets is a decentralized derivatives trading protocol built on the Solana blockchain. It offers options and futures trading with low margin requirements, allowing traders to buy and sell options and futures through an order book system.

At the recent Breakpoint event, Zeta announced its roadmap as the first super app on Bullet's testnet (Q4 2024) and mainnet (Q1 2025). (Bullet is a second-layer solution compatible with zkVM)

Jito

As mentioned earlier, Jito operates a client called Jito-Solana, focusing on maximizing MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) profits. They are rapidly expanding their share in the Solana ecosystem's liquidity staking market through a liquidity staking token (JitoSOL), which allows them to share the profits generated by their MEV solution. Similar to Lido operating its protocol in a permissionless manner, Jito also plans to apply the permissionless model to the operation of the JitoSOL pool through StakeNet. In July, they open-sourced the code for their staking and restaking programs.

Marinade Finance

Marinade Finance is a liquidity staking platform that allows users to delegate their SOL tokens to Marinade in exchange for shadow tokens (mSOL) that can be used in various DeFi protocols. At the recent Breakpoint event, Marinade previewed its V2 update, which includes improvements to smart contract risk, validator performance, and the introduction of a staking pool market. It also expressed its vision that participants ranging from retail to institutional can engage in a more efficient Solana staking market.

Sanctum

Sanctum is a solution that enables all Liquidity Staking Token (LST) projects within the Solana ecosystem to share liquidity with each other, allowing seamless interaction between each LST (e.g., zero slippage), or users can also earn returns by providing liquidity to specific LSTs through the Sanctum Infinity pool. Additionally, Sanctum plans to add two more products related to PayFi - 1) Creator Coins, which will allow organizations and individuals to easily create, grow, and monetize their communities, and 2) Cloud Card, a card product line that enables users to use SOL and various stablecoins in over 100 countries and regions.

Kamino

Kamino is a DeFi platform that integrates various financial activities, where users can strategize to maximize returns through lending, liquidity provision, leveraging provided liquidity, and portfolio management. Alongside marginfi, Kamino has the highest TVL in Solana's lending support protocol.

marginfi

marginfi Protocol is a decentralized lending protocol on the Solana network. Its product suite includes mrgnlend, which is an overcollateralized lending protocol. In addition to typical lending activities, the marginfi Protocol focuses on enabling users to interact with various DeFi protocols using a "composable DeFi-native protocol."

Fragmetric

Fragmetric is the first liquidity restaking protocol in the Solana ecosystem, aimed at enhancing the liquidity and composability of staked assets. Its primary product, fragSOL, is a Solana-native liquidity restaking token (Liquid Restaking Token-LRT) based on the Jito VRT (Vault Receipt Token) system.

Solayer

Solayer is a leading restaking marketplace in the Solana ecosystem. Solayer focuses on enhancing network bandwidth and enabling on-chain dApps to receive higher transaction priority and block space. Recently, as part of a collaboration with OpenEden Labs, it announced support for restaking SUSDC (a yield-bearing stablecoin).

FluxBeam & FluxBot

FluxBeam is the first decentralized exchange (DEX) that supports trading of all types of Solana tokens, including SPL, SPL404, and SPL22. Users can perform token swaps, provide liquidity, and bridge assets' basic functions. In addition, FluxBeam also offers token creation and management tools, allowing developers and users to easily handle tokens within the Solana ecosystem. It also provides a Telegram trading bot called FluxBot, which includes features such as token sniping and copy trading.

Phoenix & OpenBook

Phoenix, developed by the Ellipsis team, is an order book-based new DEX focused on providing a fully on-chain, instant settlement trading experience. It competes with OpenBook (a community fork of Serum V3) as both offer similar services. In comparison to Phoenix, OpenBook puts more emphasis on community governance and control.

DRiP

DRiP is an NFT issuance platform that focuses on supporting new artists to easily and affordably join Solana. New artists looking to build a fanbase can mint their work into cNFTs through DRiP, offering free NFT art minting. Users can follow their favorite artists, send thank you notes, or donate through Droplets 2.0.

Magic Eden

Magic Eden is the primary NFT trading platform on Solana, supporting a multi-chain environment including Ethereum, Polygon, and Bitcoin engrams, serving as a launchpad for each project or Bitcoin engram. Its upcoming ME token aims to support and facilitate various asset trades across multiple chains.

Tensor

Tensor is a platform tailored for professional NFT traders on Solana, integrating AMM and trading platform functionalities. Users can access real-time data, NFT AMM based on candlestick pricing, and utilize various trading strategies including bulk acquisition, bidding, and NFT listing/unlisting. In addition to these features, Tensor also conducts various reward programs for retail users, competing with Magic Eden for the top NFT trading platform position.

Recently, Tensor announced the open-sourcing of its full codebase, grant program, adjustment of fee model, and a preview of a new product line called vector.fun.

BonkBot

BonkBot is a Telegram trading bot that utilizes routing logic developed in collaboration with the Solana DEX aggregator Jupiter to find the best token prices across various DEXs on Solana. BonkBot is especially useful for trading meme coins and small-cap tokens.

Cube.Exchange

Cube.Exchange is a leading Hybrid Decentralized Exchange (HEX) that combines off-chain order matching with on-chain settlement using Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology to provide an efficient, secure, and compliant trading experience. During the recent Breakpoint, the team revealed plans to launch the Isometric Network, an intent-based network built on top of the technology stack previously applied to Cube.Exchange (i.e., MPC, two-layer validator consensus, multi-chain settlement, etc.).

5.3 Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) leverage various incentive mechanisms to crowdsource, operate, and maintain physical infrastructure through blockchain networks.

The core of the DePIN business model lies in the ability to effectively manage and utilize the data transmitted through the network's hardware or software infrastructure. For example, Helium facilitates network connectivity in a decentralized environment by transmitting data from IoT devices. IO.NET uses GPU/CPU node networks to optimize data processing for machine learning tasks. Hivemapper collects and utilizes geospatial data through dashcams to provide mapping services. As DePIN is inherently data-centric, it requires a robust underlying layer with high transaction throughput, composability, and scalability.

Due to Solana's ability to process thousands of transactions per second (TPS), low latency, cost-effectiveness, a rich ecosystem, and developer community, it has become the preferred platform for major existing DePIN projects such as Render Network, Hivemapper, and Helium. Solana's DePIN sector continues to expand, with significant adoption cases already in place - a key example being Helium, which doubled its active user base in 2024 and has surpassed over 100,000 active users as of July this year.

Below is a compiled list of key developments and milestones achieved in the Solana DePIN space - some projects that overlap both the AI and DePIN spaces will be categorized under the AI domain for explanation.

Hivemapper

Hivemapper is a global mapping network that collects real-time, high-resolution road images using in-vehicle dash cameras and rewards contributors with its native $HONEY token. Hivemapper had a busy second quarter, achieving several milestones such as successfully mapping 25% of the global road network and capturing approximately 28 million kilometers of street-level imagery per month.

In Q2, Hivemapper delivered 5,605 dash cameras and plans to conduct field tests for its next-generation dash camera 'Bee' soon.

NATIX

The NATIX Network is a DePIN protocol for geospatial data mapping, focusing on addressing data access isolation and high commercial costs caused by data monopolies held by large tech companies. NATIX integrates proprietary AI, edge computing, and economic incentives to crowdsource global cameras and create a global decentralized dynamic map (DDMap).

Ambient Network

The Ambient Network is a decentralized infrastructure network for environmental monitoring, with a focus on collecting global environmental data to protect the Earth and its inhabitants' health. Ambient has developed a mobile app called AmbiGO, which incentivizes users to contribute to and map environmental data to drive the monitoring of urban air quality, noise levels, cleanliness, and more.

Shaga

Shaga has won the global DePIN hackathon championship twice and is currently developing a P2P cloud gaming platform. By connecting gaming PCs worldwide to a gamer-driven open decentralized network, Shaga aims to improve latency and reduce reliance on large corporations.

375ai

375ai is building an advanced decentralized wireless and edge infrastructure DePIN. 375ai has launched its first product, 375edge, which is a sensor and edge AI node capable of collecting, processing, and transmitting multimodal data (such as environmental and traffic data). Network participants can earn token rewards by deploying 375edge, collecting, and reporting high-quality data.

Teleport

The Teleport Trip protocol is a decentralized ride-sharing service built on the Solana network, focusing on addressing the centralization issues of existing ride-sharing companies. Through this protocol, drivers can earn higher income while allowing passengers to enjoy the service at a lower cost.

DAWN

The Decentralized Autonomous Wireless Networks (DAWN) is the Solana DePIN protocol developed by Andrena. DAWN is a user-driven decentralized wireless network that provides gigabit-speed affordable home and business network services.

Helium

Helium is a 5G wireless network DePIN that has migrated to Solana to leverage its efficiency and state compression capabilities, making it easier to onboard devices and expand market opportunities. Users leveraging Helium IoT devices pay network fees (denominated in HNT) and then distribute them to hotspot operators. Helium's network can be utilized on various devices, and last year, Helium Mobile launched a $20 per month phone plan offering unlimited data, calls, and texts across the United States.

Additionally, Helium announced the Helium Authorization Program, which allows anyone to manufacture and sell Helium hotspot devices, enabling individuals to generate revenue through authorization fees while also contributing to the growth of the Helium network.

GenesysGO

The ShdwDrive developed by GenesysGO is a decentralized cloud storage platform built on the Solana network. It utilizes a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) data structure to achieve efficient decentralized data storage, management, and computation.

GenesysGO unveiled the first entirely mobile-driven decentralized storage network at the Solana Crossroads event in Istanbul. The mobile version of shdwDrive will integrate into Solana Mobile Chapter 2, enabling Solana Saga users to turn their devices into decentralized storage nodes and earn rewards in GenesysGO's native token, $SHDW.

Starpower

Starpower is a decentralized energy network (DEN) protocol built on Solana, which is aiming to construct a decentralized energy network by aggregating and utilizing energy from various distributed energy resources (DERs) to form a unified and robust decentralized energy network capable of meeting the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence. StarPower has released its first product, StarPlug, which will be used to build its global energy network.

5.4 Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In recent years, the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has profoundly impacted various industries and sparked widespread interest in generative AI applications (such as ChatGPT). However, whether at the infrastructure or model level, many of these developments have been dominated by closed-source Web2 companies. This centralization trend has prompted the cryptocurrency industry to focus on developing open-source alternatives, leading to a surge of new AI projects last year.

The proliferation of decentralized AI has brought significant benefits to Solana, with many DePIN and AI projects choosing to launch on this network. This is mainly attributed to Solana's technical stack, particularly the Sealevel execution environment, which offers clear advantages compared to other blockchains. Solana's smart contract parallel execution capability allows for the simultaneous execution of multiple non-conflicting transactions, effectively optimizing the use of computing hardware such as GPUs and CPUs. This is particularly advantageous for projects that involve extensive data and computational processing, as Solana can coordinate resource allocation and handle transactions at scale, supporting faster and more efficient operations.

While Solana's AI domain is not as mature as DePIN and is still in its nascent stage, there are currently three particularly promising areas worth noting: decentralized computing networks, data, and AI agents.

Here is an overview of key developments in the AI domain within the Solana ecosystem, along with introductions to noteworthy projects.

DAIN Protocol

The DAIN Protocol is a decentralized artificial intelligence network consisting of autonomous agents that can communicate, interact, learn, and collaborate. It aims to address the current fragmentation of the internet by leveraging the collective intelligence of multi-agent systems, providing a unified platform for deploying and using AI agents with multi-module functionality. DAIN recently released their no-code DeFi AI agent, DainTrader, to alpha users.

Matrix One

Matrix One is dedicated to enabling anyone to easily create a personal AI character by providing the necessary interfaces and tools to create multi-module AI agents that can be monetized and integrated in virtual and real-world environments. The protocol aims to address several shortcomings of existing AI character platforms, such as high technical barriers, poor revenue distribution, lack of selectivity, and ownership of AI characters. Matrix One makes creating, owning, and trading tokenized AI characters easier by minimizing the above-mentioned issues through providing developers and creators with a suite of infrastructure tools, such as the Character Studio, 3D Avatar Visualizer, Model Index, and Marketplace.

WayFinder AI

WayFinder AI is a decentralized protocol of user-owned autonomous AI agents that enable them to navigate and operate within on-chain applications and ecosystems. WayFinder AI provides support for Parallel Studios' new game Colony, a platform that hosts AI agents capable of performing various functions (such as creating smart contracts). These agents, through their advanced memory capabilities, can meet users' highly customized needs.

Grass

Grass is a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) that democratizes AI model training through a distributed network of incentivized nodes, where these nodes share unused bandwidth to collect and process network data.

Grass has achieved several milestones in the second quarter of this year. Firstly, they successfully open-sourced a user dataset containing 6 billion Reddit posts and comments on HuggingFace, now publicly available for open-source AI training. Additionally, Grass desktop nodes are now available for higher efficiency, and Solana wallet addresses have been integrated with users' Grass accounts to ensure rewards are distributed to nodes when their data is used for AI inference or training tasks.

Synesis One

Data is the foundation of AI, requiring labeling and annotation to enhance the quality and accuracy of underlying models. In the current landscape, microtasks and compensation for providing raw data are very low, or data is collected by tech companies without users' knowledge or consent. Synesis One is a decentralized Train2Earn platform where anyone can train AI models and receive rewards. Users with Kannon NFTs can participate in data crowdsourcing, data labeling, AI training, and other preprocessing tasks and receive rewards as compensation.

Privasea

As AI becomes an indispensable part of daily life, issues regarding digital identity and privacy are rapidly emerging. This is mainly due to the increasing threat of leakage and manipulation of sensitive information such as financial data, medical records, and personal identity data.

Privasea is committed to using various Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technologies to encrypt and protect this sensitive data. It is worth noting that the Privasea team has developed a dApp called "ImHuman," which allows users to locally store and encrypt biometric data as NFTs to prove their identity and prevent attacks from malicious bots and programs.

Exabits

Exabits, incubated by the Harvard Innovation Lab, is dedicated to developing an "AI-Compute Base Layer" for AI training, inference, and fine-tuning.

Kuzco

Kuzco is a decentralized GPU cluster built on Solana, providing scalable and cost-effective inference services for Large Language Models (LLMs). Kuzco's network traffic is continuously growing, with new nodes joining the network, and it is currently being used by Catena's DecentAI for LLM inference workloads.

Render Network & IO.NET

The Render Network is a GPU network focused on providing scalable and cost-effective 3D rendering solutions for artists and businesses, and it has achieved ongoing success through its OctaneX application. The OctaneX powered by Render Network has been integrated into Apple's latest iPad Pro and was featured in Apple's keynote, as well as producing the opening titles for the HBO series "The Last of Us." Users can contribute or leverage computational power to complete complex 3D rendering tasks and use Render tokens for transactions during the process. The Render Network adopts a Burn-Mint-Equilibrium (BME) model to balance token supply and demand, ensuring price stability for its services.

Similar to the Render Network, IO.NET is a Solana-based decentralized GPU computing network. Unlike Render Network, IO.NET focuses more on inference, parallel learning, hyperparameter tuning, and reinforcement learning. These two projects collaborated in November last year to expand the scale of the GPU vendor market.

5.5 Consumer Applications

As mentioned earlier in the article, after a series of bankruptcy events in 2022 and events that led to a downturn in the cryptocurrency industry, many people became skeptical about the future of cryptocurrency. In this crisis, the industry's focus naturally shifted to a more practical perspective, that is, why blockchain should be used, and the major mainnets also began discussing solutions for real-world adoption.

With strong community support and a developer-friendly tech stack, Solana once again emerged as the most suitable network in these discussions, designed for mass adoption from the start. Therefore, the Solana network not only showed strong growth in the areas mentioned earlier but also demonstrated growth in consumer applications such as gaming and action transaction apps.

Here is a brief list of "Consumer Applications" that embody Solana's user-centric approach.

Echelon Prime

The Echelon Prime Foundation supports the sci-fi card game Parallel TCG and the strategy survival game Parallel Colony, which integrates AI avatars.

STEPN

STEPN is a Solana-based social lifestyle app that aims to connect people globally, encourages a positive healthy lifestyle through its digital NFT sneakers, allowing users to earn rewards for various daily activities. In a recent Breakpoint event, a collaboration plan with Adidas was announced, and the minting of 1,000 pairs of Genesis sneakers was launched at the end of September.

Solchat

Solchat is a Solana-based communication protocol that allows users to engage in text, voice, and video calls in a Web3 environment. All messages and group chat content are stored on-chain, while voice and video calls are made through WebRTC for P2P connections. Solchat is expected to see active use in the upcoming Solana Saga action devices.

Audius

Audius is a decentralized music-sharing platform that bridges the gap between fans and artists, providing users with exclusive access to new music while allowing artists and creators to retain control of their work and receive fair compensation. Audius has signed licensing agreements with all major U.S. Performing Rights Organizations (PROs), including ASCAP, BMI, GMR, and SESAC.

MetaDAO

The MetaDAO Project is a decision market platform built on Solana that leverages the concept of futarchy to enhance governance mechanisms. MetaDAO allows users to participate in governance decisions by trading tokens representing different potential outcomes.

CUDIS

CUDIS is an AI-powered health ring that monitors and provides various health metrics (such as sleep, steps, and daily activity) to give insights into this data, helping users manage and track their health. CUDIS integrates a biometric dashboard, an AI coach, and a reward system for achieving various goals to assist users in reaching their health objectives and provides personalized health recommendations. The first round of CUDIS ring sold out in a hot sale, and the second round is now available for purchase.

ORE

ORE is a Solana ecosystem cryptocurrency based on Proof of Work (PoW), aimed at ensuring a fair and accessible mining model. After winning a $50,000 prize at the Solana Foundation-sponsored "Solana Renaissance" hackathon, ORE quickly became one of the fastest-growing applications on Solana. To address network congestion issues resulting from its rapid growth, the development team introduced ORE V2, with a fixed supply of 21 million tokens, continuously improving to enhance network performance and solidify the token's value.

DeStreet

DeStreet is a social trading application that secured second place in the DAO and community track of the Solana Renaissance hackathon and first place in Bonkathon. This dApp allows traders to build, discover, and share trades on social media through simple links. Trade initiators receive 20% of the total profits, and users can subscribe to their favorite influencers, automatically following their trades, introducing gamification and social reputation elements.

DFlow

DFlow is a Solana-based non-custodial trading platform focused on accelerating on-chain transactions from the application and infrastructure layers through its action trading dApp and liquidity aggregator. DFlow's action app has recently been officially launched and is now available for download on iOS and Android platforms.

Follows.App

Follows.App is a Solana-based social trading platform that innovates in the Creator Economy field through Creator-Fi. The app allows fans (users) to support and invest in their favorite influencers by buying and selling "Follows," providing fans with a unique experience and offering creators new monetization opportunities.

5.6 Community and Culture

La Masia, FC Barcelona's youth academy, is renowned for nurturing world-class players like Messi, Xavi, and Iniesta. Not only have they achieved extraordinary individual success, but they have also brought multiple championships to the club, generating millions of dollars in revenue through ticket sales and merchandise. Just like a football academy, the blockchain community is essential for cultivating grassroots talent, building a shared culture, and driving growth and success.

Similar to Barcelona's La Masia, Solana has built one of the most vibrant communities in the crypto industry. This community consists of passionate Solana network supporters, entrepreneurs, developers, and investors. Through initiatives such as hackathons and grant programs, it has played a crucial role in attracting and nurturing key talent who continue to bring innovation and growth to the Solana ecosystem, creating a virtuous cycle.

Many key projects in the Solana ecosystem, such as Tensor, JITO, Mango, Tiplink, and Dialect, have emerged from Solana hackathons. Driven by a deep loyalty to Solana, these projects have grown to a scale where they can attract new users, partners, and external funding into the Solana network. They also contribute to the cyclical growth of the Solana ecosystem through sponsoring various hackathon events. Additionally, Solana's NFT and meme projects, such as Solana Monkey Business (SMB), Mad Lads, Bonk, and PONKE, were initially purely art or meme-driven expressions. However, these projects have gradually gathered a cohort of individuals who resonate with the Solana ethos, growing into a larger community and initiating various efforts to drive ecosystem development. For instance, MonkeDAO has hosted global gatherings and co-managed grant programs with the Solana Foundation and Metaplex; while Bonk has collaborated with Radiants and Phase Labs to organize Bonkathon, offering a $300,000 prize pool to foster ecosystem innovation.

The following outlines several projects and teams that are shaping the Solana "Culture and Community."

Bonk

Bonk is a dog-themed meme coin symbolizing the resilience of the Solana ecosystem, launched on December 25, 2022, as a Christmas gift. As mentioned earlier, Bonk has contributed to revitalizing the ecosystem through various initiatives, including hosting hackathons and launching projects like BonkBot and Bonkswap. Additionally, in the recent Breakpoint announcement, they revealed plans to launch a BONK ETP in the United States.

dogwifhat

dogwifcoin is a Shiba Inu-themed meme coin featuring a real-life small dog Achi wearing a pink woolly hat. Launched in November, it quickly gained popularity and is currently the largest meme token on Solana by market cap.

MOTHER

MOTHER is a meme coin and community co-founded by the renowned rapper Iggy Azalea. Initially born out of pure curiosity about cryptocurrency, the unique nature of the meme coin community combined with Iggy's active involvement created a synergistic effect. Now, MOTHER aims to be a "godmother" helping the masses engage with the cryptocurrency space in a more fun and familiar manner. Through various initiatives, MOTHER rapidly expanded its influence and has become one of the fastest-growing communities. In November of this year, MOTHER plans to launch Motherland, a crypto casino where users can play slots, poker, and engage in sports betting.

Fidelion

Fidelion is an NFT project set in a 2080 dystopian dieselpunk world. Through outstanding storytelling and brand building, the project continues to expand its IP. Fidelion also launched a passive game using NFTs and a mobile game called Mega Road.

Mad Lads

The Mad Lads series is built on the xNFT standard, exploring the potential of NFTs as decentralized applications. The launch of Mad Lads injected new vitality into the community during a time of distress when FTX's crash left the Solana community in a predicament.

SMB and MonkeDAO

MonkeDAO is the first NFT DAO on Solana, evolving from a decentralized community around Solana Monkey Business, an NFT collection that started in 2021. This organization actively participates in various initiatives, including operating a Solana validator, running a staking pool (i.e., SOL), hosting online events, and investing in early-stage projects, all managed 100% by the community. Through these efforts, MonkeDAO has made a significant contribution to the early success and sustainable growth of the Solana NFT market.

LamportDAO

LamportDAO is a community-driven initiative focused on supporting developers within the Solana ecosystem. As of the time of writing, it has over 4,000 members and actively helps onboard new developers by providing developer resources, supporting technical development, promoting Solana features, and organizing Solana-specific hackathons to integrate new developers into the ecosystem.

Superteam DAO

Superteam DAO is a global community composed of founders, developers, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders collaborating to develop and incubate new innovative projects within the Solana ecosystem. Superteam is a truly international organization nurturing global talent through its 10+ regional chapters, including Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Turkey, Vietnam, UK, UAE, the Philippines, Malaysia, Canada, and Japan.

Colosseum

Colosseum is an accelerator platform supported by the Solana Foundation, responsible for hosting competitive hackathons and providing crucial support to early-stage startups within the Solana ecosystem. Hackathon winners are admitted to the Colosseum program, where they receive help with product launches, opportunities to interact with top-tier venture capitalists, and a $250,000 grant.

Colosseum organized the Solana Renaissance Hackathon, an event that attracted over 8,300 participants from 95+ countries/regions, with 1,070 projects submitted covering areas such as infrastructure, gaming, DePIN, DAO, DeFi, and various consumer applications.

Cubik

Cubik is a decentralized, community-driven platform in the Solana ecosystem that provides support and funding for open-source projects and digital public goods. One of Cubik's main features is the use of the Quadratic Funding (QF) model, which amplifies the impact of individual donations, ensuring that projects with more community support receive a proportionally larger share of funds from the matching pool.

Solana Foundation

The Solana Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing grants, funding, and resources to developers, projects, and initiatives to foster the growth and development of the Solana ecosystem.

Solana University

Solana University is an international student organization committed to promoting awareness of Solana and Web3 through various events and educational materials.

Breakpoint

Breakpoint is an annual event organized by the Solana Foundation, bringing together industry experts, artists, developers, and community members. The event spans several days and offers diverse and engaging talks and workshops. This year's Breakpoint took place on September 20th and 21st in Singapore, with next year's Breakpoint expected to be held in December in Abu Dhabi.

Crossroads

Crossroads is a yearly community conference held in Istanbul, Turkey. The aim of Solana Crossroads is to connect global Solana community members, providing opportunities for networking, talks, and insights into the latest developments in the Solana ecosystem. This year's Crossroads was successfully held, attracting over 3,000 attendees and more than 50 speakers.

mtndao

mtndao is a hackathon hub specifically for developers in the Solana ecosystem held in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, lasting about a month. The event offers various activities such as hackathons, coding conferences, networking events, and even skiing trips. Participants are dedicated to developing new projects and competing for prizes and rewards.

Solana Summit

The Solana Summit is the largest Solana founder, creator, and developer gathering in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, focused on building connections and strengthening the community among Solana enthusiasts. The recent Solana Summit took place in Malaysia from June 20 to 22 this year, with over 750 attendees from 55 countries/regions, and more than 95 speakers and workshop hosts participating in this grand event.

Lightspeed

Lightspeed is a podcast hosted by Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz and Blockworks journalist Jack Kubinec, focusing on innovative projects that utilize cryptocurrency to solve real-world problems. The show invites founders and developers working on platforms like Solana for interviews, with discussions mainly revolving around technology and the current state of the cryptocurrency market.

SolanaFloor

SolanaFloor, supported by Step Finance, is a leading Solana news and media hub covering the latest developments and news in the Solana ecosystem.

Validated

Validated is one of the premium Solana-related podcast programs hosted by Austin Federa of the Solana Foundation, where in-depth discussions with various guests delve into topics such as the future of the network, blockchain, and Web3 technology.

6. Like Apple? No, It's Much More Than That

Many people, including Solana's co-founder Raj Gokal, refer to Solana as the "Apple of the cryptocurrency world," emphasizing its harmony in software-hardware integration and its high regard for performance and user experience. Such a metaphor may help us better understand Solana's vision. However, ironically, what truly makes Solana more remarkable is not its similarity to Apple, but its differences—Solana's strategy is quite the opposite of Apple's.

Apple's core business is hardware sales, with software primarily serving as a complementary tool to drive hardware sales. Even during the launch of the iPod, Apple drove its success through integrating the software iTunes with the hardware experience. In contrast, Solana has taken a completely different direction, aiming to integrate hardware to create a Web3 experience, allowing numerous fully composable applications to organically interconnect. Therefore, compared to Apple's approach, Solana's method is not only more precise but also demonstrates greater ambition. It is dedicated not only to innovating through a convenient user experience but also hopes to bring an entirely new experience through the software itself.

Ultimately, if technology cannot be practically applied, it is worthless. Simply put, one of the main values we expect from blockchain is its potential to become an innovative network infrastructure to complement and strengthen real-world systems.

While Bitcoin and Ethereum have outlined an ideal blueprint for the future of blockchain, Solana is exploring how to realize these visions in practice and actively driving the development of use cases. Perhaps we have been too focused on the blockchain trilemma as defined by Vitalik, limiting our imagination of each blockchain's potential. However, the protocols that will ultimately create the most value are those that deeply understand user and developer needs and successfully provide the corresponding experience.

I would like to extend special thanks to Joe McCann, Richard_ISC, Yash Agarwal, Chaerin Kim, and Ted Schoett for their significant contributions to the section "Noteworthy Projects in the Solana Ecosystem" in this article.

Disclaimer

The following article was written with the support of the Solana Foundation. This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, business, investment, or tax advice. It should not be used as a basis for any investment decision and should not be relied on as accounting, legal, or tax advice. References to specific assets or securities are for illustrative purposes only and do not represent a recommendation or endorsement. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any affiliated institution, organization, or individual. Any changes in the opinions reflected in this article will not be notified separately.

Original Article Link

欢迎加入律动 BlockBeats 官方社群：

Telegram 订阅群：https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram 交流群：https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Twitter 官方账号：https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia