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Solana Mobile Saga Launches On 14 April

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Solana mobile Saga’s launch is finally out. The team behind the project set 14 April at 10am Pacific Time as the timeline for the product release.

Users are urged to pre-order Saga before it’s too late because production units will be releasing on the above mentioned day, the official handle stated via Tweet.

The team will also hold an Q&A session on Twitter Spaces at 10am PST to answer queries on the upcoming launch.

In June 2022, Solana Mobile, a division of Solana Labs, first unveiled Saga, it’s flagship Android phone with features that were intricately intertwined with the blockchain.

As per the press release issued then, the product was unveiled in a New York event alongside the Solana Mobile Stack, an Android framework that enables developers to build sophisticated mobile experiences for wallets and apps on the blockchain.

At the time, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs, reportedly admitted that he had been thinking about enhancing Web3 accessibility and usefulness on mobile for years, especially in light of his past experience as a Qualcomm engineer.

Yakovenko cited the fact that the new phone will serve as the benchmark for a Web3-centric smartphone and demonstrate the full breadth of the Solana Mobile Stack’s capabilities.

The team’s primary objective is its widespread adoption, and hoped to see every significant manufacturer incorporate it.

Yakovenko referred to it as mission to bringing cryptocurrency into the masses, but it remains to be seen whether Solana Labs is successful in getting Apple or even major Android producers onboard with the product.

“It’s just a matter of them deciding that crypto is important enough,” he said then. “From my point of view, we could be very successful in enabling a billion users to self custody just by changing the minds of those folks.”

Meanwhile, despite recent network woes, the Solana blockchain’s smart contracts have continued to grow.

Solana’s Unique Contracts Rise

As per data from Artemis, the number of unique contracts put on SOL’s network in March 2023 was at its highest in the year.

As of March 6th, 2023, over 139 new smart contracts were deployed compared to 92 at the beginning of the year.

A smart contract is an automated program that runs on the blockchain and whose main function is to automate the execution of contracts between parties.

Solana Emerges As The Top Choice For A Decentralized Project

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The Solana blockchain has been proposed as the foundation for the burn-and-mint equilibrium [BME] model by Render Network, a decentralized GPU solution.

The decision to expand to a new L1 is being made to help scale the network to meet its technical demands and implement the BME, as stated in the blog.

After reviewing a number of layer-one networks, community mood polls revealed that Solana [55%] had overwhelming support, followed by its current platform, Polygon [14%].

Factors that were used to evaluate blockchains were: developer community, throughput, liquidity, transaction fees, programming languages, integrating smart contracts, speed of implementation, and the maturity of the project. 

There has been a recent emergence of protocols that incentivize people to do verifiable work similar to the verifiable GPU compute work performed on the Render Network. Solana has attracted a higher share of such projects including Helium, Hivemapper, and Audius.

As the first active implementation of the BME on any blockchain, the Render network is also closely monitoring the migration of the decentralized wireless communication network Helium to Solana, which is scheduled to take place in April.

On Feb 17, developers of the Helium network announced that the wireless network will shift entirely to the Solana blockchain by March 27.

The migration will see HNT, MOBILE, and IOT issued on the Sol network, which will continue to be the tokens in the Helium ecosystem.

The Upgrade’s final phase will start on the scheduled date of March 27 at approximately 15:00 UTC.

The move is in response to a September community voting in which 81% of Helium community members supported migration.

Having said that, it is encouraging to hear that platforms are adopting the layer-1 blockchain because, in the past, a lot of important projects have shut shop or switched to other blockchains.

Solana Lead The Altcoin Troupe

As reported by TronWeekly, Solana NFT marketplace Formfunction announced via Twitter that it will shut down on March 29 due to operational woes.

The firm called it an “extremely difficult decision”, but it was made after considerable deliberation and thought.

Meanwhile, on the price front, Solana was among the top-performing altcoin as it grew by 26% in less than a week. The surge has been attributed to the latest developments in the European banking sector that drove the asset north.

Solana’s Unique Smart Contracts Rise Despite Network Woes

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In spite of recent network woes, the Solana blockchain’s smart contracts have continued to grow. As per data from Artemis, the number of unique contracts put on SOL’s network in March 2023 was at its highest in the year.

As of March 6th, 2023, nearly 140 new smart contracts were deployed compared to 92 at the beginning of the year.

A smart contract is an automated program that runs on the blockchain and whose main function is to automate the execution of contracts between parties.

A unique contract, on the other hand, is a special kind of smart contract deployment that uses a contract code intended to be one-of-a-kind and unreplicable.

These are used to produce one-of-a-kind digital goods, such as collectibles or artwork, in the context of non-fungible tokens [NFTs]. 

A new NFT collection on the network might appear shortly given the rise in the deployment of unique contracts on Solana.

However, the NFT sales statistics are a bit concerning, as data from CryptoSlam showed that Solana’s NFT sales volume fell by about 30% over the previous month.

Despite the plummeting figures in the volume metric, the number of NFT transactions per program on the blockchain increased in recent times.

One of the biggest NFT marketplaces, Magic Eden, also revealed a comparable rise in transactions per program for Solana.

Additionally, according to data from DeFiLlama, SOL’s network values surged in the TVL count over the past few days.

Anatoly Yakovenko, the CEO and co-founder of Solana, recently presented a roadmap that emphasized speed and scalability improvements while noting that maintaining stability remained a difficulty.

Solana Founder Laid Down A Plan Addressing Network Outage

According to the blog post, till the 1.14 release, core engineers were trying to resolve real-time issues that were affecting the network’s speed and usability.

These issues included invalid gas metering, lack of flow control for transactions and fee markets, spiraling ram, storage, and restart overhead, TronWeekly reported.

“Over the last 12 months, Solana Labs and third-party core engineering teams have also been working to improve the network and will continue to do so with a focus on stability,” the blog read.

Yakovenko’s announcement came after the previous week’s 1.14 network update where the network faced a slowdown in block production on Feb. 25.

The incident caused massive disruptions to transactions and forced validators to downgrade the software in a bid to restore network performance. 

Polygon, Shiba Inu Now Available On Robinhood Wallet: Details

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Polygon [MATIC], Shiba Inu [SHIB], Solana [SOL], etc are among the crypto assets that have been added to Robinhood Wallet for all iOS users globally, the company announced via a blog post.

The crypto exchange revealed that over 1 million users have signed up for the waitlist and it is now available globally via the Apple App store where it has already been downloaded in more than 130 nations.

Robinhood Wallet is a multi-chain, self-custody, Web3 wallet that enables users to hold and trade cryptocurrencies, and connect to a number of decentralized applications [dapps].

Since the time it entered the beta era last September, the crypto wallet has undergone several notable changes based on customer feedback.

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Polygon, Shiba Inu Now Available On Robinhood Wallet: Details 2

In addition to Polygon, Robinhood Wallet now supports Ethereum and more than 50 ERC tokens, such as SHIB, SOL, UNI, USDC, and many others without the need for a waitlist or invitation code.

We’ve added support for NFTs on both Ethereum and Polygon, so users are able to safely view and store their favorite collections. 

According to Johann Kerbrat, general manager of Robinhood Crypto, the response to Robinhood Wallet has been overwhelmingly positive when it initially debuted in beta. The startup wants to make Robinhood the most dependable, affordable, and user-friendly gateway to cryptocurrency.

Besides iOS users, the firm also stated that Android compatibility will arrive later in 2023.

The partnership between Robinhood and Polygon began in August 2022, when the platform implemented support for MATIC deposits and withdrawals on the Polygon proof-of-stake [PoS] chain.

Robinhood’s First Non-Custodial Web3 Wallet Was On Polygon

Then in Sept 2022. the trading platform tapped Polygon over Ethereum for its first non-custodial crypto wallet.

That being said, the leading layer-2 scaling protocol for Ethereum has rolled out its first decentralized ID product powered by ZK proofs.

After nearly a year of announcement, Polygon launched a zero-knowledge decentralized identity solution to the public.

The new ID service utilizes zero-knowledge proofs [ZK proofs] that use cryptographic techniques to allow users to verify their identity online without the help of any third party.

It also claimed that is its first ZK-based digital ID tool that allows users to hold credentials locally on handheld devices such as smartphones, and that users will no longer need passwords

The team further stated that Polygon ID was built to “solve the issue of digital trust.”

Solana CEO Unveils Plan To Improve Network Upgrades

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CEO and co-founder of Solana Anatoly Yakovenko have outlined a plan focusing on improvements for speed and scale while acknowledging that maintaining stability remains a challenge.

Up until the 1.14 release, core engineers were trying to resolve real-time issues that were affecting the network’s speed and usability, according to the blog post.

These issues included invalid gas metering, lack of flow control for transactions and fee markets, spiraling ram, storage, and restart overhead.

“Over the last 12 months, Solana Labs and third-party core engineering teams have also been working to improve the network and will continue to do so with a focus on stability,” the blog read.

These measures include building an additional validator client that works on increasing the network’s throughput, efficiency, and resiliency.

Transitioning network communication to QUIC, a more advanced networking protocol as well as improvements to RPC infrastructure to reduce their load, it added.

Yakovenko’s announcement centers around last week’s 1.14 network update where the Solana network faced a slowdown in block production on Feb. 25.

The incident caused massive disruptions to transactions and forced validators to downgrade the software in a bid to restore network performance. 

The technical outage began at around 6:00 am UTC, prompting validators to downgrade to version 1.13 to restore transactions in the network.

The choice to restart the network on version 1.13.6 was made because, despite the downgrade, normal operations remain suspended.

Solana CEO Shut Down Rumours

The Solana Foundation stated in a post on February 27 that it was still unclear what caused the 20-hour network outage.

Yakovenko, however, responded to claims that the network disruptions were brought on by a large number of validator messages and the on-chain voting system clogging its consensus layer on Twitter.

The co-founder referred to the theory as “pure stupidity,” but he didn’t specifically refute DBCryptoX’s assertion that 90–95 percent of Solana transactions consist of these validator messages and on-chain votes, which DBCryptoX claimed had contributed to “bogging down the system.”

Brandon Tucker, the growth lead at the liquid staking protocol Marinade Finance, chose to see things in a different way.

According to him, an upgrade to the technology will significantly enhance the SOL blockchain and “slash” future network freezes, even though Solana’s numerous outages continue to be a stain on the blockchain.

The Solana blockchain was successfully revived twice after going offline for 20 hours.

Binance’s PoR Gets A New Upgrade; Adds SHIB, SOL

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Crypto behemoth Binance has deployed zk-SNARKs to its proof-of-reserves [PoR] verification system. This also comes with the addition of four new tokens- Shiba Inu [SHIB], Solana [SOL], Poladot [DOT], and Chiliz [CHZ], bringing the total number of verifiable assets to 13 popular tokens on Binance.

Binance plans to add more tokens to the PoR system in the weeks ahead and will continue to make the verification function more reliable, secure, and private.

Per the blog, the new upgrade is part of its efforts to ensure transparency of user funds. zk-SNARKs, a zero-knowledge verification method that is aimed to keep sensitive information private and more secure, to its PoR System.

The latest move came amidst growing concerns over the safety of investors’ funds on crypto platforms. Earlier Binance had released a PoR system purely based on Merkle Tree- a cryptographic data structure that can be utilized for verification.

After finding that the Merkle Tree-based system alone was not ideal for user privacy, the team added support for zero-knowledge proofs.

Binance’s Addition Of Zk-SNARK Is Aimed To Build Trust

Zk-SNARK which stands for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge”, is a cryptographic proof that allows one party to prove it possesses certain information without revealing that information.

This proof is made possible using a secret key created before the transaction takes place.

Binance has also decided to make the zk-SNARK system open-source in order to build greater trust in the platform. 

The platform faced a lot of scrutiny after its auditing firm Mazars quit in the aftermath of the collapse of FTX. Mazar helped Binance publish its first Bitcoin proof of reserve report.

The platform’s Asia-Pacific chief Leon Foong told Bloomberg News on February 8 that given that major accounting firms are still learning about the cryptocurrency industry, a thorough audit of the exchange’s reserve may be “some way off.”

According to Foong, the difficulty Binance is having in disclosing its complete audit report is related to the constraints imposed by legacy accounting companies.

“Number on, it’s not their core competence. And number two, obviously there is a lot of scrutiny if they get it wrong.” Foong added.

These limits include a lack of agreed standards for challenges like price volatility that rocks the crypto sector.

Further, Foong disclosed that Binance is working to separate its collateral from customer funds and publish a more comprehensive proof of reserve statement.

Solana Price Spikes As Brave Announces dApp Support

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Solana’s price witnessed a spike as the layer 1 blockchain forged a new alliance with the open-source web browser Brave.

Announcing the same, Brave software revealed that it has incorporated Solana dApp support into its browser to allow users to connect to top Solana applications like Magic Eden, Orca, Jupiter Exchange, and others for DeFi and NFT-related transactions.

SOL’s value increased by more than 6% in less than 24 hours as a result of the development. The 11th-ranked cryptocurrency, which was trading at $23.7 at the time this article was written, appeared to be beginning a new price rebound.

Solana’s ties with the privacy-focused browser, go back to late 2021 when the duo announced a joint collaboration to enhance wallet features across all versions of the browser for a better user experience.

The integration aimed to add support to Brave’s then 42 million active users and 1.3 million creators, making it the default browser to the layer 1 blockchain for all cross-chain activities and decentralized applications [DApps] support.

That said, the most recent integration was made possible on both the browser’s mobile and online versions. Users can earn small rewards in the form of a Basic Attention Token [BAT], and in its “all-encompassing and flexible” platform.

Most significantly, given it reaches the browser’s approximately 62 million active users worldwide, the relationship is considered a glimmer of hope for the once-hyped Ethereum killers.

Solana Looks To Regain Its Losses

Additionally, this occurs as the L-1 scaling platform has a strong start to 2023 after spending most of 2022 in decline as a result of the crypto winter. Additionally, SOL’s exposure to FTX contributed to its stock falling sharply in the wake of the FTX scandal in November 2022.

SOL, which is making its way back to the top, has benefited from the recovery in the cryptocurrency market as well. Despite being below its all-time high [ATH] value, it has improved in 2023.

A number of cutting-edge projects that Solana has started have piqued the curiosity of the cryptocurrency community.

For instance, the Solana Mobile stack and Saga phones will be unveiled, SolanaMobile said on Twitter. The goal of this mobile gadget is to give people quick access to the blockchain. They promised their customers that it would be available in early 2023.

Solana-based DeFi Withdrew Its App Due To Liquidity Crunch

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Everlend Finance, a Solana-powered DeFi will wind up its app platform, according to an official announcement on Feb 1.

Users have been asked to pull out their assets as quickly as feasible from the DeFi-based lending protocol. The team assured that the software will keep running until all withdrawals had been processed.

Additionally, it would switch the app to withdrawal-only mode.

Further, the team shared its plans to cover all raised and unused funds within the next two weeks.

Conceived in 2021, Everlend is a Ukrainian lending platform that secured financial backing from leading investors such as Serum, Everstake Capital, and GSR.

By the end of the first quarter of 2023, the firm plans to transition into a community-controlled DAO.

The team stated on February 1 that the most recent action was taken despite having ample runway to carry on in the current business environment.

But due to a liquidity crunch, the Solana DeFi lender was forced to reconsider its position, and continuing to operate in these conditions would be a “gamble”.

This comes at a time when another Solana-based DeFi yield platform too wind up its front-end app in January due to crypto headwinds.

Solana Defi ecosystem took a major hit in 2022, being left in a “maimed position,” as Ben Sparango admitted recently.

Sparango, the head of Strategic Business Development at Solana Foundation spoke about the Foundation’s aspirations for 2023. He said his main focus would be reviving the ailing DeFi sector and ramping up the financial use cases such as payments.

Solana Founders Plan To Revive The DeFi Sector

The co-founders of Solana laid out their vision for a decentralized future in a blog post on January 31. They said that Solana’s high throughput rivals that of the New York Stock Exchange and will boost the potential of cryptocurrencies even further.

“We believe that Solana making block space abundant and cheap will leapfrog crypto into its full potential,” they said.

Additionally, several of the data and bear market activities were emphasized. One such these is the significant growth in SOL validators last year. A second validator client developed by a third party is also being tested. In the test simulation, it boasted a staggering 0.6 million transactions per second.

Solana (SOL) Products See 13-Fold Increase In Investments In One Week

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CoinShares recently reported a significant increase in funds flowing into investment products related to Solana (SOL). These products attracted a staggering $1.3 million in the past week alone, a thirteen-fold increase from the previous month.

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Source: CoinShares

This spike in interest suggests that investors are once again showing confidence in the Solana project, despite recent doubts about its future in the cryptocurrency market.

It’s worth noting that this surge in inflows came in a week where the price of SOL rose 55% in a week, and Since December 30, the price of SOL has experienced a remarkable recovery, as reported by TronWeekly yesterday.

It began the new year by soaring from $8.3 to $24 on January 15, an impressive increase of 195% in two weeks. However, the data from Coinmarketcap shows that SOL is now trading at $23.55.

SOL 7D graph coinmarketcap
Source: CoinMarketcap

Additionally, the CoinShares Report also reveals that digital asset investment products saw minor inflows of $9.2 million last week. In comparison, trading volumes remained low at $866 million, indicating that the recent rally in digital assets was not investment product-driven. 

This led to a weekly gain of over 13% in assets under management, the largest since October 2021. Bitcoin had the most significant inflow of any asset at $10 million, but short-bitcoin investment products saw outflows of $1.5 million. 

Whereas Ethereum broke its 8-week streak of outflows with an inflow of $5.6 million, likely due to the overall improvement in sentiment. Multi-asset investment products continued to see outflows of $3.2 million, its 7th week of outflows totaling $16 million, suggesting investors are becoming more selective in their investments. 

Among Solana other altcoins, Polkadot saw inflows of $0.4 million, and XRP saw outflows of $3.3 million, reversing gains from the previous week. Blockchain equities also saw positive sentiment, with inflows of $3.8 million.

Transaction Priority Fees for Solana Network Users

Solflare, the revolutionary wallet on the Solana network, has made a game-changing move by introducing transaction priority fees for its users.

This allows them to prioritize their transactions by paying higher gas fees, even during times of network congestion. This move makes Solflare the first wallet to implement this feature in a user-friendly way.

Vidor Gencel, the co-founder of Solrise Finance, took to Twitter to shed light on the importance of this new feature. He stated:

In-wallet transactions will automatically be prioritized with the current market price for fees, ensuring that your transactions are included faster than those in other wallets.”

This is a vital feature for crypto users, as other wallets may leave their users stranded during peak network activity due to a lack of proper prioritization. Solflare, however, ensures smooth and seamless transactions by adapting to the network conditions in real time.

Furthermore, this new feature not only benefits the users of Solflare but also contributes to the overall stability of the Solana network by preventing users from overwhelming the network with repeat transactions.

The introduction of transaction priority fees by Solflare is a revolutionary step in the crypto wallet industry, and it sets a new standard for user convenience and network efficiency.

Solana’s Price Doubled Since Dec: Here’s Why

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Ethereum killer- Solana has been on a remarkable price recovery since Dec 30. SOL kickstarted the new year, rising from $8.3 to $24 on 15 Jan, a staggering increase of 195% in just 2 weeks.

This is significant because the altcoin had a disastrous 2022 after plummeting over 90% and dropping out of the top twenty coins, per CoinGecko data.

But with the recent rebound, the token even edged out Polygon’s MATIC and jumped back in the top ten categories for a brief amount of time.

The token is currently exchanging hands at $24.7, surging by over 7% and 51% on the daily and weekly index

Furthermore, the 11-ranked token experienced its largest trading volume since the week of the unprecedented fallout of crypto exchange FTX, which greatly affected Solana and the majority of the crypto market in November.

But the event also triggered SOL’s price to reach its maximum level. The token registered a surge of 21% over a single day last weekend.

Another major driving factor responsible for the price rally was the recent unveiling of the Solana-based meme token called BONK, as reported by TronWeekly.

This sparked a buzz around Christmas and drove the price of SOL to a seven-day high at the start of the new year, contributing to Solana’s recent run of positive news.

Solana: BONK’s Value Skyrocketed To Over 3000% In the First 7 Days

Coin aficionados linked the debut of a new dog-themed coin BONK to the OG meme coins Dogecoin [DOGE] and the Ethereum-based token Shiba Inu [SHIB].

Data from CoinGecko revealed that BONK saw a startling 3,300% increase in the first week of the year, albeit to $0.00000487.

Despite the token’s price dropping 69 percent last week due to a subsequent five-trillion token burn, it still commanded a market cap of $57 million. In fact, it even increased by 20% in price during the previous 48 hours.

In addition to that, data from Delphi Digital highlighted the total number of active wallets on Solana has jumped to 83,000 from almost 45,000 per day. Market experts believe this has coincided with the rise of a new meme coin, within its ecosystem.

BONK rallied by over 130%, bringing back interest into the ecosystem. However, it has since crashed by over 38% in the last seven days.