Solana developers have managed to dissociate themselves from bankrupt FTX and Alameda. The consolidation of the Solana community has allowed for the creation of replacements for the ecosystem objects that previously played a significant role for
FTX or Alameda. For instance, the decentralized exchange OpenBook has become the successor to Serum, a key liquidity provider for the ecosystem. Despite losing over 96% of its value in 2022, Solana's native token (SOL) looks attractive to investors again, judging by its market capitalization growth.
One of the key factors that make Solana appealing to DeFi and NFT platform developers, as well as expanding these areas in the crypto industry in general, is the record-low transaction fees on the Solana network. In the case of Ethereum, even when using network scaling solutions such as Arbitrum or Optimism, almost any network interaction scenario costs several dollars per transaction, which is uncomfortable for the mass user and, as a result, slows down the technology's dissemination.
Comfortable platform usage on Solana is possible even with minimal liquidity, around $10 or less. The low network fees are also important for games and social media applications that can operate on the Solana mainnet without any overlays. Similar decentralized applications for Ethereum are being created on second-layer blockchains, which require additional networks that meet the necessary requirements, such as Nova on Arbitrum.
In February, Helium Network protocol developers, with a market capitalization of over $180 million, planned to migrate it to Solana by the end of March but later postponed it to April, citing community unpreparedness. The delayed expected date negatively impacted the project's native token price (HNT), which plummeted by over 21%. However, if Helium's migration to Solana does happen soon, the ecosystem can expect a significant influx of new liquidity and additional activity from new community participants.
The second significant recent event for the Solana ecosystem was the Grizzlython hackathon, whose organizers recently closed the application process. The competition attracted 800 new projects, with the possibility of receiving up to $5 million for development. The success of even a small number of hackathon projects can lead to the emergence of innovative infrastructure products in the ecosystem.
