Solana: Is SOL REALLY Worth It?! What You NEED To Know!

In a recent interview ftx founder and Ceo sam bankman freed was asked what the Most underrated cryptocurrency is and His answer was solana Now he said this is because of all the Bad press that solana has received in Recent months bad press that even sam Acknowledges was deserved So this begs the question is sbf right About solana today i’m going to briefly Explain what solana is bring you up to Speed with some of the project’s most Important updates and tell you why seoul May in fact be one of the most Underrated cryptocurrencies [Music] Now before we get sunny there’s Something you need to know about this Bunny i’m not a financial advisor so i Can’t help you with your money i’m just An educator who’s occasionally funny so Please contact an actual financial Advisor if your portfolio is looking Runny Also note that i hold sol as part of my Portfolio but it’s not my honey Now if this is your first time in my Presence my name is guy and crypto is my Essence my mission is to create high Quality content that will help you stop Being a fiat peasant Coins tokens news and reviews are just a Few of my lessons So if you want to make sure you don’t

Miss a session smash that subscribe Button and ping that notification bell With aggression okay that’s all you need To know about me let’s see if solana is About to go red or green If you’re unfamiliar with solana here’s What you need to know solana was founded In 2017 by seasoned software engineer Anatoly yakivenko solana was built by Solana labs a software company based in The united states and its ongoing Development is coordinated by the solana Foundation a non-profit based in Switzerland The project raised around 25 million Across various icos in 2018 2019 and 2020 and raised an additional 314 Million dollars from various crypto vcs Last year Solana’s main net went live in the Spring of 2020 though it is still Technically in beta and it’s not Entirely clear when solana will enter Full release Under the bonnet the solana blockchain Uses a novel proof-of-stake consensus Mechanism that leverages a technology Called proof of history that makes it Possible to timestamp transactions Although the solana blockchain is Currently secured by over 1900 Validators transactions are processed by Smaller groups of up to 150 validators Called solana clusters

This centralization along with solana’s Sub-second block time makes it possible For its blockchain to process between 50 And 65 000 transactions per second Making solana the fastest cryptocurrency Now seoul is solana’s native Cryptocurrency coin it’s used to pay for Transaction fees half of which are Burned and the other half of which go to Validators on that note solana’s low Fees are a part of why its blockchain Has experienced so many outages low fees Have made it possible for bots and bad Actors to spam transactions which clog Up the network more about that later Now in addition to paying for fees sol Is used for staking and though there is No minimum stake the hardware Requirements to run a validator are so High that anatoly says you need to use a Data center Luckily delegation is possible with no Minimum stake Staking rewards are currently around six Percent per year for validators and Delegators with a five-day lock-up note That misbehaving validators are slashed Staking soul and interacting with Solana’s ecosystem can be easily done Using the phantom browser extension Wallet which has been downloaded over 2 Million times on chrome based browsers Alone While solana’s popularity was initially

Due to its d5 protocols lately its nft Projects have been luring hundreds of Thousands of users to its blockchain Every day It should come as no surprise then that According to crypto slam solana is the Third biggest blockchain by nft sales Volume behind ethereum and flow More recently solana’s ecosystem has Been pivoting towards payments and Blockchain gaming with the creation of Products such as solana pay which Continue to onboard new merchants and Users circle’s usdc stablecoin has been At the center of this initiative which Makes sense given that solana is Apparently usdc’s official blockchain Now all of this is quite a deviation From solana’s initial purpose which was To become a decentralized alternative to Centralized stock exchanges like the Nasdaq hence why solana is ftx’s de Facto exchange chain The last thing you need to know about Solana is how its long-term transaction History is stored and this is something That we got wrong in our last video About the project We thought that solana’s transaction History was still being stored by a Decentralized storage crypto called Arweav yet it seems that solana recently Switched its transaction history storage To google bigtable

This makes the solana blockchain even More centralized than meets the eye and You can find out more about the Different layers of decentralization in Cryptocurrency using the link in the Description Anyways it’s only been about four months Since we last covered solana but a lot Has happened since then In early may the solana blockchain went Down for what must have been the eighth Time though i’ve honestly lost count as Many others have In a postmortem solana explained that The seven hour outage was caused by a Quote enormous number of transactions Being submitted by bots which spammed The network into submission A couple of days later solana announced The introduction of transaction requests To solana pay making it possible for Merchants to request payments for goods And services within a user’s solana pay App as a cherry on top instagram Announced that it would be supporting Nfts on solana ethereum polygon and flow Keep your eyes peeled for that one In mid-may solana’s wormhole bridge Expanded to support algorand something That not everyone celebrated given fears Around wormhole security recall it was Hacked for 320 million dollars back in February Solana’s magic eden nft marketplace also

Surpassed ethereum’s open sea Marketplace in trading volume for the First time At the end of may solana’s wormhole Bridge expanded to support crypto Projects in the cosmos ecosystem Starting with injective protocol the Chinese government also announced that It would be banning solana’s popular Play-to-earn app steppen causing Steppen’s gmt token to crash In early june the solana blockchain went Down yet again This time the outage was caused by a bug That’s used in cold storage transactions On the blockchain the next day crypto Oracle chainlink announced that it had Added native support for solana allowing Its defy ecosystem to access its Decentralized data feeds for more Accurate crypto pricing Two days later stefan was reportedly hit By a cyber attack which apparently Didn’t affect the solana blockchain Shortly afterwards solana ventures Established a 100 million dollar fund For blockchain gaming and defy in south Korea a timely decision given the Collapse of terror just one month before An independent defy ratings organization Called defy safety also gave solana the Second worst score of any cryptocurrency Citing its blockchain’s constant outages Centralized node hosting services and

Lack of transparency around long-term Transaction history and storage ouch At the end of june there was more solana Drama when the solend d5 protocol Suddenly passed and then unpassed a Proposal to take away the soul of a Solana whale who was at risk of getting Liquidated it’s believed this Liquidation would have crashed seoul’s On-chain price to abnormally low levels Solana’s magic eden nft marketplace also Raised 130 million dollars from various Crypto vcs bringing its valuation to a Whopping 1.3 billion dollars And last but not least solana announced A crypto phone called saga which will Leverage the solana blockchain the Solana mobile stack or sms which is a Developer toolkit for the phone and a 10 Million dollar incentive fund for Developers to create apps for the Upcoming phone including an app store The solano phone was met with mixed Reviews especially since many crypto Phones have come and gone over the years Never mind all the issues with the Solana blockchain itself Anyhow in early july solana got more bad News when a class-action lawsuit was Launched against the project alleging That seoul was sold like a security in This case by solana labs If you watched our recent video about The criteria the sec is using to crack

Down on cryptocurrency you’ll know that This is a big deal as a securities Designation could potentially kill the Project in mid-july research by coin Market cap found that the number of new Wallets on solana was growing faster Than any other cryptocurrency probably Because of its expanding nft ecosystem At the end of july a d5 project called Unstoppable finance argued in a medium Post that solana was more decentralized Than people think and let’s just say it Wasn’t all that convincing In my opinion the only metric that Suggests solana is decentralized is its Nakamoto coefficient which refers to how Many validators are required to corrupt Its blockchain solana has the third best Nakamoto coefficient of all major Proof-of-stake blockchains behind Avalanche and polkadot Now solana also announced the opening of Its first physical store in new york City which founder anatoly jakovenko Believes will bring over 100 000 users To the solana blockchain every month The store features solana merch nfts and Will probably carry the solana phone Once released Now another solano related headline from The end of july was the news that aptos Had raised an additional 150 million Dollars from various crypto vcs bringing Its total funding to 350 million dollars

For context aptos was created by Developers of facebook aka metas failed Cryptocurrency dm formerly known as Libra got that Aptos has apparently labeled itself the Solana killer so watch out Earlier this month solana’s magic eden Nft marketplace expanded to ethereum Where it intends to act as an nft Aggregator rather than a standard Marketplace and because solana can’t Begin a month without bad news some 10 000 solana wallets were suddenly drained Of around 10 million dollars in Cryptocurrency while solana developers Scrambled to figure out what was going On In the end it appeared that a solana Wallet called slope had been saving and Storing wallet seeds in a centralized Manner resulting in anyone who had a Slope wallet or had created another Solana wallet using a wallet seed they Had initially created on the slope Wallet Losing their soul and spl tokens If you were one of the people affected By the hack i’ll leave a link to a form Provided by the solana foundation in the Description i suspect that there may be Plans to compensate affected users in The near future To make things worse coindesk then Reported that sabre one of solana’s

Largest d5 protocols had allegedly faked Its total value locked through various Methods and that its creators the Macalenau brothers are now planning to Do the same thing on the aforementioned Solana killer aptos Yikes For what it’s worth just a couple of Days ago jump crypto announced that it Will be creating a second node hosting Service for solana which means that its Blockchain will become ever so slightly More decentralized Now all the bearish headlines that have Been coming out about solana over the Last four months have predictably caused Seoul’s price to plummet but believe it Or not this doesn’t seem to be the Primary cause of the crash As you can see sol’s price is highly Correlated with btcs which makes sense Given that it’s a large cap altcoin with Institutional exposure Obviously they and the rest of the Crypto market crashed because of Terror’s collapse in early may At the same time seoul’s circulating Supply has increased by anywhere between 15 and 20 million since april according To coin market cap and coin gecko Respectively for the sake of simplicity Let’s assume that seoul’s circulating Supply has increased by roughly 17 Million

With an average price of around 40 Dollars per sole since that time this Means that seoul experienced up to 680 Million dollars of cell pressure from Stakers and early investors which is a Lot during a bear market As far as i can tell most of this cell Pressure is coming from the solana Foundation which has issued over 130 Grants according to an april interview With anatoly jakovinko Now i can’t say for sure because it’s Not entirely clear what seoul’s current Vesting schedule looks like Now some of you might recall that Seoul’s initial vesting schedule was one Of the most aggressive of any Cryptocurrency so much so that it should Have crashed seoul’s price early last Year The silver lining is that the demand Side of the equation is looking good at Least according to the analytics page on Soul scan The number of daily active wallets Continues to hover around 700k and the Number of daily token transfers is still In an uptrend What’s more is that institutional Investment vehicles for solana still Hold around 120 million dollars of seoul Despite the crypto bear market according To just etf with the recently released Coin shares ftx physical staked etf

Alone holding 40 million dollars of sold Seoul’s price action is also looking Interesting from several angles in terms Of raw price action sol could Potentially pull a 2x if the current Recovery rally continues This doesn’t sound like much but if the Rally does continue it would be a larger Percentage gain than other large cap Altcoins that’s why there’s some Legitimacy to sam bankman freed’s remark That solana is underrated and there’s Some more evidence to suggest that seoul Could see a serious rally if the current Crypto market momentum continues Some of you may have noticed that solana Avalanche near protocol and other So-called ethereum killers have been Rallying as the merge approaches This is no coincidence as there are many Traders who are likely trying to hedge Their portfolios in case something goes Horribly wrong with the merge i mean It’s one of the main reasons why i hold Soul as part of my portfolio Now take a look at the soul versus eth Chart on the weekly do you notice Anything Call me crazy but i see a pattern where Soul loses value relative to eth for Around five to six weeks at a time Before seeing a one to three week rally Against eth well it’s been six weeks of Decline and with the merge less than a

Month away we could see another Multi-week rally against eth all while Eth is simultaneously gaining in value Relative to btc and hopefully in fiat Terms too This would translate to that 2x gain for Soul i mentioned a few moments ago Speaking of which if you’re wondering What the merge means for ethereum you Can find out using the link in the Description Anywho even though seoul could 2x in the Near term the fact of the matter is that We’re still in a crypto bear market and This means that the current recovery Rally is unlikely to last What happens to seoul after that Ultimately depends on the project’s Upcoming milestones solana’s upcoming Milestones can be found on the solana Github and in interviews with members of The team Starting with solana’s github i couldn’t Help but notice that there are a few Repositories related to governance that Are seeing lots of commits This suggests that solana devs are in The process of building a governance Dashboard for the solana blockchain As far as interviews go founder anatoly Yakovenko dropped some alpha in april About solana’s long-term aspirations and That’s to have all stocks tokenized and Trading on ftx’s serum decks which is of

Course built on the solana blockchain In a may interview solana labs Co-founder raj gocal dropped some more Alpha and that’s that the project is Turning its focus to blockchain games to Continue its adoption so keep your eyes Peeled for promising projects on that Front During the june presentation which Revealed solana’s mobile phone anatoly Also teased an upcoming partnership with Qualcomm the famous telecoms company Where he spent most of his career Raj mentioned during the same Presentation that solana is in the phone Game for the long haul as they believe This is another route to the global Adoption of its blockchain Naturally this suggests that there will Be a second salana phone and that might Be when the qualcomm partnership comes Into play In a july interview anatoly mentioned That solana is also starting to focus on Privacy and is working to fix solana’s Fee model so that it becomes more Difficult to break down the network with Spam transactions no dates for that i’m Afraid I also didn’t hear any dates about when Solana will enter its full name net and Anatoly has suggested in many interviews That it could be years given that he Likens solana’s development to google

Products like gmail which were Themselves in beta for years so this Brings me to the concerns i have about Solana and my first concern is all the Outages its blockchain continues to Experience Make no mistake if these outages Continue solana will fall out of favor With regular users even though the Crypto vcs and institutions don’t really Seem to care As amazing as it is that anatoly and the Team are working towards fixing solana’s Fee structure it’s only a part of what’s Been affecting its blockchain The other element appears to be Centralization which is getting better In some respects but much worse in Others case in point in an april Interview anatoly admitted that the Hardware requirements to run a validator Node on solana are likely going to Increase as time goes on meaning solana Could become even more centralized and Potentially more vulnerable to Synchronization issues as well What’s scary is that solana’s outages Seem to only scratch the surface of the State of its blockchain If success rate of transactions on Solscan’s analytics dashboard means what I think it does then around a quarter of Transactions on solana fail to go Through even when the blockchain is

Fully functional Now this is actually consistent with my Own experience using the blockchain with Transactions failing every so often To be fair this doesn’t happen nearly as Often as it used to and anatoly and the Team have repeated many times that they Will continue fixing these issues as They go and solana grows i only hope That they address my second concern and That is transparency The solana foundation was allocated 12.5 Percent of seoul’s total supply and Controls the community reserve fund Which received 38 of seoul’s initial Supply in other words the solana Foundation was allocated more than 50 Percent of seoul’s supply and it sounds Like they’ve been spending quite a bit Of it as per anatoly’s comments that’s Why it’s shocking that there have been No transparency reports since june of 2020 and it looks like that was the First one This ties into my third concern and That’s regulation with the sec looking To crack down on crypto projects solana Is an admittedly easy target besides Being based in the united states it Ticks many of the boxes that the sec is Looking at when classifying a Cryptocurrency as a security now to be Clear i am not saying that seoul is a Security and according to the howie test

It’s not a security As i mentioned earlier however it seems The sec is clearly using a different Criterion than it’s supposed to be and That’s where solana could become a Target That said solana’s appeal to Institutions could very well protect it From any serious scrutiny Consider for a moment that ftx is Actively lobbying politicians about Crypto regulations and seems to be Making some serious progress on that Front it’s also important to remember That solana seems to be the preferred Hedge against anything going wrong with Ethereum when it transitions to proof of Stake if there’s even the slightest Sense of uncertainty you could see some Serious capital flee from eth into seoul Out of caution Then again it’s possible that this Capital could instead flee from eth into Ada if cardano’s upcoming vessel upgrade Brings the scalability improvements that Everyone’s expecting you can learn more About what cardano has been up to using The link in the description And that is all for today’s solana Update if you found it informative smash That like button to let me know if you Want to make sure you don’t miss the Next video subscribe to the channel and Ping that notification bell before you

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