Hey guys and welcome to a very special edition of BitTrude for the species of the enemy. Today we will be talking to one of the biggest Lea ones in crypto, Solana and the future Solana. I am sure most of you here are familiar with Solana but for those of you who want to know a little bit more, Solana is a blockchain platform
design to homes decentralized and scalable applications. Founded in 2017, it is an open-source project currently run by the Solana Foundation based in Geneva, where the blockchain was built and built by San Francisco based Solana labs. So today we have Michelle Janias from
to go here quite as a Solana to share a little bit more of what I've been going on with Solana. Since Michelle has been in this space for a while, I think I'd like to kickstart this EME with question from Michelle. So how do you get involved in crypto and more importantly, why did you choose to build a Solana?
Thank you. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so a quick background of myself. I actually first learned about Bitcoin and Ethereum and blockchain through a friend who back then was an engineer and it was early back in
14 and there was a series of dinners that we've had as a group of friends and every gender this this engineer friend would talk about this thing called Ethereum which he participated in the most early community and development and he just keep talking up kept talking about
about how this would change the world. And I remember it was like the third or the fourth time that we got together as a group and I was just like went home and think that okay this thing is like I've heard about it so many times I even though I don't understand half the things that he was saying like I probably
should look into it. So we're reverse starting a coin-based account a few months later and kind of got myself a couple of bitcoins. And it was a really just like an experiment and it was like something I thought I would never see the money of anymore. And in fact, actually,
I forgot about this purchase and a few years later, I think late 2016 opened my Coinbase account and realized I actually had some that I bought back a couple years ago. So since then like 2016, I've
been following this space on the side and I've always been in the tech and entrepreneur space and a lot of my friends as founders and engineers they're all kind of like have this steady movement to the blockchain space and I'm like oh like you know some of my smartest friends are
all my grading to this thing and working on blockchain and I want to learn more about it. So I started off working with a protocol called Propectoral and discovered Solana during BDC Miami two years ago actually and yeah, having
look back since. So I picked Solana because I think in general there's a need for a fast and low transaction cost offering in the space and Solana is building something quite different from what's out there right now. So
Yeah, so that's just to be reason and also with DeFi, changing how, as we know, from the past weekend's incidents, the financial system is quite fragile and needs a lot of innovation. So, I'm very excited to share more with you all today.
Yeah, and be working with various builders in the space. My role as a Lana foundation is looking at the D5 business development. And so what we do at the BD team is to connect builders and partners like liquidity provider,
investors, VC, or even traditional banks, even though maybe not as much after what's been happening this weekend. So to figure out how to bring innovation, liquidity, and new products onto Solana DeFi. So yeah, I'll pass here.
Thanks for answering those questions. I think what you said made a lot of sense and yeah I think referring to SVP and Soviet and what happened recently is kind of relevant to the conversation especially with regards to the
effect that it also something of a similar nature did happen to Solano and I want to put a time I think with the previous FTA saga Solano was definitely one of the blockchains there was kind of heavily affected by the spread of everything I think are so
Solana definitely came out stronger and I think a lot of people when they think of Solana they think about what is the future of Solana after everything has happened. Solana definitely has been characterized by a strong community and popularity. So what do you think
sets apart from other Leo1 blockchains with regards to the current environment in space. Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like after one of the fun things about being in the forefront of innovation is that things just blow up every now and then.
And then, you know, it's been happening right now and also last year, multiple incidents. So I would say one of the things that Salaana apart is really the first strong developer community that is fair organic and
It's one of the toughest things to do, like what you're doing right now, right? It's also to cultivate community and you know there's no shortcut to it and I really admire you know how this community has been built and is still growing
in the Bayon markets. In fact, the hackathon of the Solana Grizzlython, the latest installation of our biennial online hackathon is closing for submission in a day. And I believe there was
over 5,000 teams registered, which is all time high. And think about it, right? Like what other blockchains can say they have 5,000 people building on it or testing out their network. So I think that's something that's
a very strong achievement especially in a bear market where it could be depressing to build something and then there's not a lot of liquidity or users at this moment in time. So that is one key thing. The other key thing is also
in a technology front. Solana blockchain is still being constantly upgraded, constantly improved to get to the state where it's a stable and fast and low transaction speed low latency.
So there's definitely hiccups along the way and I'm sure we'll touch upon later in this Twitter space at the same time like you know sitting across from the engineers that are building this day in day out there's definitely a lot of innovation
goes into it. So I think any blockchain needs a strong technology advantage and Solana is able to, yeah, continue iterate and shipping features for the network.
I remember first hearing about you guys in 20/20 I think when things began to pick up for Solano and being here in 20/20/20 you mentioned tech people in a lot of that
having helped you navigate the space. I think that's really cool and I think that's very relevant to the conversation that we are having today, especially with regards to the future of Solana. So I think key achievements
You feel that Solana has been in 2022 and anything that Solana has in the roadmap for 2023 with it being close to the end of 2021 now? Yeah, for sure.
key achievements in 2022. I think key achievement for anyone in 2022 is staying alive. So I think Solana has definitely weathered his own fair share of storm and you know there's definitely a lot of things that you know we wish would happen
differently but I would say throughout emerging out of 2022, you know the community has only grown stronger at the end of 2022 actually. A community led project called BONG was launched and I'm sure you guys
familiar with it. And so it rallied the community to a whole new level. And so this is really crystallized from. It's nothing that does a lot of foundation can take credit for. It's really like a community-led project. So I would say
The goal of Solana Foundation is to eventually decentralize itself and to have the community of brawn itself. So when we see successes like bonk that are completely grass root driven, it's really like seeing a glimpse of the future where wow, like the community is rallying and actually
creating really cool stuff. And then going into 2023, one of the key things is really like we're going to go back to basics. So thinking about what are the things that has been working really well. So global hacker houses have been running. So there's
a couple of them happening in Singapore, not Singapore, like in Asia, one in Vietnam I believe this week and then one in Taiwan in May. So and then all across the world as well, a couple of them happening in Europe. So
Do you just support new and existing builders in this space? And then the other part is to on a DFI vertical to really go back to basics and think about what kind of core primitives we can do to support the ecosystem more and
And right now, you know, with liquidity being in a lower level due to the bear market, figuring out how we can support and get liquidity back to our core permittives. So yeah, these are the couple of things that we're thinking about.
Yeah, that's great. I actually been to both Solana, Sackahouse in 2022 and 2021 actually when it happened in Singapore
I think it's really interesting to see Solana being in different parts of the world and actually seeing people show up and know Bill. Hey can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you. Peace.
Yeah, right. So, yeah, I think we'll find with the network. I think it just went down for a little bit, but it's fine. Yeah, so with regards to you mentioning
Okay, we should okay here.
Yeah, I can hear you. Where did I cut?
It's my, I think it was just momentary. So we got to hear the most of it. I think we kind of stopped at Hacker houses.
Oh yeah, exactly. So the other areas that we're looking to achieve is to support D5 protocols, especially the core primitives like stable swap, AMMs, our central
minimum order book primitives to get liquidity back to the ecosystem. So working with builders and also liquidity providers to figure out how to, what are the things that they want to see to unblock more liquidity into the ecosystem?
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's great and actually I've actually been to two Solana Hacker houses. I think once in 2021 and once in 2032 and they both happened in Singapore and I think it's really such a great initiative to do kind of like IRL events
where people can come together from different parts of the world and build together and just meet each other in person. So, with that being said, I think there have been a lot of projects that
I'm not sure if you've ever built a blockchain and I didn't mention some other stuff like BONGs and obviously in the past there were many more projects. So are there any projects being built within the ecosystem that our community can look up for in the coming year?
Yeah, I mean there's so many, you know, the DeFi ecosystem is thriving and a lot of new projects coming out through the upcoming hackathon. So yeah, I think in terms of
Let's see. And in terms of other non-D5 verticals, there's the NFT-5. So, tensors, one of the new platforms that are doing NFT-perpetrating, and then also gain
Actually, there are so many games that are scheduled to launch, I believe, more than a dozen of games are scheduled to launch sometime in this half. So yeah, like if you guys are looking to try out some DeFi protocols, I would highly recommend
to go onto D. Phylamma and go to yeah, D. Phylamma.com/chains/sulana and you can find out all the top D. Phyprodocals by TPL ranking.
Right, that's great. Yeah, great suggestion for people looking to look into Solana. Apart from that, are there any particular protocols that Solana will be focusing on in 2020?
Yeah, for sure. I wanted the areas that we're super excited about is in terms of the what we called decentralized physical networks.
For example, helium is one of them. Helium is basically like allowing people to run their own network and using what they call like a war, starting a wireless revolution. So anyone can buy a hotspot and basically power a
network that is decentralized. So they are actually in the middle of moving on to Solana, migrating on to Solana, I believe end of this month in end of March. So this is just one application
from the decentralized physical network, vertical that were, I'm increasingly, like the team is increasingly excited about. Another one is called Poland. Poland is like a new mobile network that allow anyone to connect
So it's very similar concept as helium, but also using the Solana chains low transactions be in high throughput nature to power usage and network.
that are beyond financial application beyond NFC beyond gaming. And then last another one that's super exciting is the decentralized Uber. So a startup called Teleport is building a way to basically build a right
sharing app that is without the central entity. So yeah, it's still really new and early stage for a lot of these projects, but there's a lot of cool applications that are coming out to utilize the Solana network more.
I think these these also on a really interesting project especially things like that kind of bridge on the digital and physical I think that's definitely something that people have been talking about for a while and I think seeing stuff like this
get more attention and it is really cool. So, moving on to the next question I think they have been kind of like a lot of talk about our projects that are built on Solana and stuff like that. I think the next question
have for you and I hope it isn't a tough one but I think in spite of everything that's happened in regards to FTX. So are there any factors you would say that have continued to help Solana carry on a project you know
whether it's community, the ecosystem and stuff like that. What do you think has been the strongest kind of like suit for our Solana as a project? Yeah, that's a great question.
Yeah, that was definitely like a black swan incident that
you know, no one can really predict. A couple of things that I think has helped ecosystem team continue operating on Solana. One of them, again, like having a strong community, like so once this
This incident happened during the end of break point which is the annual swan conference that happened in Lisbon. A lot of people were still out in Lisbon when that happened.
Somehow, I think in some ways it actually helped the community come together really quickly. Of course, the foundation team also step in to reach out to ecosystem team that may have lost funds.
financial support to certain e-cumstances of projects that are in need of some sort of relief grants. So making sure that they have the support, but it's definitely not just monetary and I would say that part is much smaller when it comes to what has helped these projects
comes through. A lot of it is also putting them in touch with the right partners. Some of the infrastructure providers give some sort of discount for these projects such that they don't need to worry about as much of the high ongoing
operating costs. The other part is also to connect them with the right PC investors that are still interested and still actively deploying capital. So a lot of it has been like you know just crisis support and to make sure that people that have questions
questions are being answered. So I would say, you know, we're definitely not out of the woods yet, like even though like it's been a few months, we're still feeling, you know, there's still like other crisis that are happening, right? So I think as part of the foundation, I'm seeing that a lot of ecosystem teams have
definitely strengthen their flexibility and also strengthen their ability to adapt when it comes to crisis. So yeah, it's a bear market and we really don't know what's going to happen like the next day. So just having an ongoing dialogue would
these teams. And then I think also just focusing on what matters the most and I think for any blockchain like any ecosystem it wouldn't exist without strong builders. So we always try to go back to the roots when it comes to, you know, our ultimate, the ecosystem
system is made up of strong builders. So things like the hackathon, things like the hacker house are things that cultivate the community and to figure out how we can double down on that. So yeah, these are the things that doesn't change in bull or bear market.
Right, thanks for answering that question. I think it's definitely true what you said, especially with having a strong team that's technically ready to take on challenges within the ecosystem and stuff like that. With that being said, I think one of the reasons
why we do these AMAs is to address questions from our community about different projects and also introduce them to different projects. Obviously Solana is a project that most people in crypto would know but I think our community definitely has
questions that they have about Salana. So I think in this next part, I think I'll move on to questions that some members of our community have asked. I'll try not to repeat the ones that you've already answered, because I think some of these questions have been answered.
it throughout the AME and I think I'll just go straight to the ones that have not been answered. So there's a question here that says that Solano has already collaborated with strong businesses such as Google
So how are they going to support the solar ecosystem in the long run and how do businesses such as Google or Stripe get benefits from a relationship like this and what are some examples of
of benefits that come about from a relationship between a traditional business too and a crypto-file. Yeah, that's a great question. Thanks for asking. One of the things that
We always bear in mind is that when it comes to blockchain with enterprises, with larger tech companies, it's, we haven't found product market fit yet, right? So we don't know if blockchain is going to be
replacing the financial rails of the world or is it going to be like gaming? Like we like honestly haven't like the jury is still out when it comes to what is the killer app when it comes to like collaborating
with these larger tech companies. So when we form partnerships with companies like Google, Brave, Circle, and Stripe, a lot of it is to figure out what their main use case are that they can
about that can leverage blockchain. So for example, with Google, the main partnership is to get their partner on their cloud services side and to figure out how we can.
support and collaborate with them on that department. And then with Stripe, it's more on the Google, on the Solana Pay collaboration and figuring out the on-ramp and off-ramp solutions.
How will these parties benefit from their like so yeah like in terms of supporting this lot of ecosystem through these partnerships The idea is to get more usage of the blockchain and also to get How do we support large
scale tech products and use the unique nature of the slotted block trade to power them. So yeah, and ultimately, for example, with the DeFi protocols, they
With more people on ramping from LSAE stripe, they can then access and use these one-of-d5 protocols to manage their finances. So that will be a trickle-down effect.
Right, it's really cool. I think yeah, that's definitely some of the benefits of working with businesses and hiring the businesses through things like some other things like that and definitely something we can definitely
definitely see happening. The next question we have is about how Solana is ready to support active users. So this person says that, you know, on a Solana,
is fast and easy to use. It's the network always ready to support active users and what if many people use the network at the same time and I guess essentially what is the maximum amount of
users that's why I can handle. Yeah, so one good area resource to go to I believe is. Let's see. Yeah.
So a lot of beach.io. So there's a dashboard of what the network is doing right now. And for example, the current TPS transaction per second is 4209.
The blockchain has processed over 153 billion transactions since launch. Long story short, there's still a lot of room for Solana to handle
transactions and the good news is that there's more updates to the network and also the blockchain where it will become easier to operate the validators and increase even and to grow the throughput of
the network as well. So I couldn't, I won't be able to say like the actual capacity. I think that's a great question, but I think we're pretty far away from reaching to that max capacity.
Right, yeah, I think scalability is something that a lot of crypto projects have to think about in the long run. And I think, yeah, it's definitely something to be building towards. Well, I think most of the
questions remaining questions from the community I kind of kind of have been answered by you earlier on with regards to recent achievement and roadmap and stuff like that so I probably won't ask them again because they've really been answered earlier
So I think I just kind of want to move on to the final question that we usually like to ask, I guess, from this space. Do you feel like having a CNO community and
you know, the people who kind of are in a telegram channels and stuff. Do you have any specific message for the bit true community and the people who kind of come onto these AMAs and stuff like that?
Yeah, I think you guys have a great community and you know it's not easy to cultivate that so Congratulations on your team there and so in terms of message for the community I would highly recommend
mind to go ahead and set up a wallet like you guys can use phantom or so flare or a couple others as well and so get this a lot of wallet setup you know try to buy an NFT or
or use one of the DeFi protocols. And yeah, get a feeling of how fast the chain works and how cheap the transactions are. I personally think it's like
It's really amazing to experience first-hand and it's better than hearing it from me. Let me know how it goes. I always love to see new users' first experience.
It can be good, it could also be like confusing. So I think it's always good to hear your feedback and tweet at me or send me a DM. I'd love to hear any feedback on how we can improve our ecosystem, our user experience.
Yeah, thanks for that and thanks for joining us for this year May, I think it's very great that we managed to make time for this despite the time zone difference. I think it's close to the evening where you are and it's just kind of
in the morning where I met. So thank you so much for hopping on to this call and you know I think everyone here really appreciates it and I appreciate you know you sharing a lot about what Sonana has been doing and taking the time out to you know have a chat. So thanks
much we shall. Yeah thanks so much for hosting and thanks for waking up early for this yeah it was a good chat. Yeah well okay have a great evening and I hope to see you again soon yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.