The latest Solana Sessions podcast

This month on Solana Sessions, we sat down with Nitesh Nath, founder and CEO of DFlow, a trading infrastructure on Solana that supports both spot trading and prediction markets.

Nath explained why giving more people access to markets is important for users, how turning market predictions into tokens lets them be easily traded, and why Solana is the best place to do this. The discussion also delved into how the network, with improvements, can make for faster trading while simplifying liquidity provisions.

This interview is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign by Token Relations and the Talking Tokens, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. Listen to this episode on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Tokenization and prediction markets are expanding on Solana

Prediction markets have become a prominent new way for users to put their money where their beliefs are on real-world events, from elections and sports to niche local outcomes. As these markets gain traction, deeper integration with DeFi can enable new financial primitives by turning market outcomes into tokenized positions that plug into existing protocols.

At the end of November, DFlow added an API that brings regulated prediction markets to Solana, starting with a direct bridge to Kalshi. “There is a large user base of traders that are active on Solana, and they love being on Solana,” Nath said. “[But] they don’t have access to things like Kalshi, and so we are building a bridge that allows them to access markets.”

DFlow Prediction Markets API tokenizes Kalshi positions as tokens, known as Solana Program Library (SPLs). “Every prediction can be an SPL token,” Nath said. “SPL tokens are a standard that’s adopted on the Solana network, which means they can be plugged into existing infrastructure like borrowing and lending protocols.”

This tokenization allows positions to be traded, used as collateral or integrated into other DeFi apps. The system relies on DFlow’s Concurrent Liquidity Programs (CLPs), which connect offchain Kalshi liquidity to onchain users without degrading the experience. Users submit intents on Solana, and providers then fill them asynchronously, minting tokens for positions and burning them on settlement for stablecoin payouts.

This is a complex system, but Nath explained why he turned to Solana’s infrastructure as the place to build: “The thought process is generally that DeFi and Solana are more efficient financial rails. More markets should be on Solana and someone should build a trading infrastructure to make that possible.”

To date, the aggregated market size of all SPL tokens is roughly $417 billion, with on average 30,000 new tokens being minted every day. DFlow has so far processed $36 million in daily volume across 207,000 traders. Now, with access to Kalshi’s $13.34 million of daily volume, DFlow is looking to boost that number even higher.

In the long term, Nath sees prediction markets expanding beyond headline events into smaller markets, like local weather bets for hedging ski passes.

“Prediction markets are a new method for expressing opinions about what will happen in the world that hasn’t existed before,” Nath said. “It is very likely going to be a very large part of the future of finance.”

Check out the DFlow Prediction Markets API documentation here.

The biggest updates on Solana

Here’s what’s caught our eye this month:

• Check out all the panels from Solana Breakpoint

• Solana’s stablecoin market cap rose to an all-time high of $16.2B on Dec. 13

• JP Morgan arranged Galaxy Digital’s U.S. Commercial Paper (USCP) issuance on Solana (bought by Coinbase and Franklin Templeton)

• State Street and Galaxy Asset Management are launching the State Street Galaxy Onchain Liquidity Sweep Fund, a tokenized private liquidity fund for 24/7 onchain liquidity, on Solana

• Solana DEXs dominated every day in December by volume, making up between 27% and 37% of onchain trading

• Solflare launched Magic AI, an in-app assistant that lets users execute onchain trades using natural-language commands

• Sanctum launched a Solana staking platform that lets users earn rewards in a gamified experience

• Streamflow released USD+, a US Treasury-backed stablecoin on Solana that distributes yield automatically

• TIX launched its RWA ticketing platform, which offers built-in royalties, resale control, fraud protection, and investor yield

• Here are the winners of the Solana Cypherpunk Hackathon

• Applications for Solana Incubator, a three-month program in NYC offering hands-on mentorship and workshops, close on Dec. 19

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This product was built by Token Relations.

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast

This month on Solana Sessions, we sat down with Ben Coverston, co-founder of Harmonic, an open-block building system optimized for validator revenue and throughput that aims to make Solana faster and fairer.

Coverston talked about how he went from discovering Solana’s potential from a single transaction, to creating sustainable systems that help validators earn big rewards while making Solana stronger. We also discussed Harmonic’s focus on building systems that give validators more control and paths to more revenue.

This interview is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign by Token Relations and the Talking Tokens, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. Listen to this episode on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Hovering into Harmonic

High-performance and decentralized markets are crucial for crypto trading given that companies in the sector find themselves increasingly competing with traditional finance. The demand for speed, transparency and fairness have grown as DeFi matures and we see traders implementing high-frequency trading strategies and bringing their order books onchain. Infrastructure on Solana isn’t immune to this, as latency and sequencing can make or break trades.

Harmonic’s Solana-focused system optimizer was founded to address challenges found in decentralized exchanges such as opacity, preferential treatment, and unverifiable rules. But Coverston recognized Solana’s potential early on.

“I remember the first time I sent a Solana transaction and it was faster and cheaper than a lot of centralized applications,” Coverston said. “And that was the kind of the moment where I’m like, ‘okay, markets might actually work on a blockchain’.”

That insight led Coverston to another realization: that blockchains like Solana needed customizable sequencing to make life easier for validators. That’s exactly what Harmonic, an open marketplace for customizable sequencing is solving for. The infrastructure aggregates blocks from multiple builders, then validators can choose the most valuable block that aligns with their preferences for more control and customization.

“Every transaction on Solana gets sequenced by validators, and these validators have a certain set of properties that they want these transactions to have in terms, which makes things messy,” Coverston said. “We’re creating a marketplace where builders can bring features like application control execution to Solana and give choosing power back to validators.”

Harmonic’s goal is to help Solana behave more like an onchain Nasdaq by assisting applications to get over speed bumps in their sequencing behaviors. This has the potential to unleash Solana’s processing, as multiple builders can co-create blocks to achieve faster speeds, while maintaining uptime.

“[We] want to give applications the rules they want, so they can have multiple block builders to give these applications the best experience possible,” Coverston said. “Solana is capable of doing orders of magnitude more TPS than what it’s doing today without any issue, we just need to give the applications the last sprinkle of features that they’re asking for.”

Coverston said Harmonic considers applications as its ultimate customers, gathering feedback from top protocols to align incentives across builders, validators and users. This focus extends beyond trading to perpetuals and lending platforms that need guaranteed liquidations during periods of volatility.

“Apps told us they wish their transactions would get included faster or had more control over what happens to their transaction,” Coverston noted. “[Harmonic] is the intermediary between builders, validators and applications so validators can earn the highest rewards, while doing so in a way that is healthy and makes Solana stronger and faster.”

“This is a joint effort by every single team on Solana,” Coverston said. “But we want to play our part in getting Solana 100,000x users.”

The biggest updates on Solana

Here’s what’s caught our eye this month:

• RWA value on Solana reached a new high of $806M on Nov. 1

• CashApp is integrating USDC on Solana to its payment app in 2026

• Listen to Solana Labs’ co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko’s interview with the Sorare team about why they’re migrating their fantasy sports platform to Solana

• Solana ETF total net assets reached nearly $600M on Nov. 10

• VanEck launched a staking Solana ETF on Nov. 17 under ticker VSOL

• Fidelity will launch its Solana ETF on Nov. 19

• Solana’s Colosseum hackathon saw 1,576 total projects submitted and 3,300 participants across 75 countries globally

• Dupe’s AI deal finder app built on Solana reached number 1 on the list of free apps on iOS App Store in the US

• DRiP added Posts to its digital collectibles platform so creators can inform their followers about their purchases

• Apply for Solana Incubator, a 3-month program in NYC for hands on mentorship and workshops

• BlackRock added $80M to its BUIDL fund on Solana, bringing the total to $254M

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This product was built by Token Relations.

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast

For this month's episode, we sat down with Vidor Gencel, co-founder and co-CEO of Solflare, a non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet focused on the Solana blockchain with more than $15 billion in managed assets and over 4 million active users.

We discuss Solflare’s focus on security, its work to provide users greater access for self-custody and the wallet’s goal to democratize finance. We also talked about the importance of building trust and a sense of community among users, while ensuring safety guardrails are in place for all types of traders.

We also explored Gencel’s journey from discovering and learning all the intricacies of Ethereum with a group of close friends, discovering Solana and creating validator sets, to eventually launching a wallet app on the network in 2020.

This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

A Saga of Startups

Since inception, security has been a major point of conversation in crypto, a topic that’s important to understand before navigating the onchain world. As a result, self-custodial wallets have seen significant adoption as a means for securing assets. From storing digital assets and NFTs to enabling staking and trading, millions of people use self-custodial solutions for greater control. This includes Solana-focused wallets, too.

While blockchain technology was initially designed to democratize finance, and over time it has, things weren’t always this way. Initially, navigating the blockchain required technical expertise or command-line interfaces, leaving many users unable to participate. Solflare was created as a way to get around this hurdle with an eye towards making web3 more accessible.

“Initially, a group of friends and I started spinning up a few of our own validators, and it wasn't anything like something we'd seen before,” Solflare co-founder and co-CEO of Vidor Gencel said on Talking Tokens. “We started building stuff from it and quickly came to realize that Solana didn't have a wallet despite it being a very appealing tech and a very good blockchain.”

The lack of accessibility tools combined with Gencel’s appreciation of Solana's technology prompted the creation of a solution with which users could easily manage their assets. “Before Solflare, a user could only interact with Solana through a command line,” Gencel said. “Obviously, no normal user would interact with a blockchain like that, so we built Solana's first web wallet.”

Gencel initially started developing on Ethereum, but recognizing Solana’s potential early on, the Solflare team pivoted to exclusively develop for Solana, choosing to focus on one chain to maximize the fruit of their efforts. “The Solana-only focus is something that we didn't do accidentally,” Gencel said. “Without the added complexity of other blockchains or other integrations, we could have a much smoother and even more performant wallet experience.”

Since it is Solana-native, Solflare opens a number of doors for people who view self-custody as a path to true ownership, letting them use the wallet for everyday finance, like spending stablecoins or earning yields. “Self-custody is when you are in the final charge of your assets, and that no one can take them away from you,” Gencel said. “[In crypto], your money cannot get frozen essentially.” This means users hold their private keys, ensuring no external entity, like a bank or government, can restrict their funds, unlike traditional systems where accounts can be locked.

The nature of self-custody meant Solflare had to prioritize establishing a layer of trust with its users, and the team therefore adopted a community-first approach, often actively seeking and incorporating user feedback. “We have a very vibrant community of ambassadors that onboard other people and show the power of self-custody,” Gencel said. “These users are not financially incentivized at all, [they’re] here every day supporting the product, using the product, providing feedback.” This focus on community engagement and safety measures helped Solflare establish a foundation of trust with its users.

Solflare further facilitates financial freedom by offering tools like stablecoin integrations and self-custodial debit cards, allowing users to manage and spend their assets without relying on centralized institutions. “The actual stablecoin stays in your wallet right until the last moment when you swipe your debit card on a point of service terminal,” Gencel said. “This means, your money is [not] locked for a moment of time.”

All in, Solflare wants to democratize finance by making self-custody accessible while building a gateway for everyday users to systems that let them thrive beyond traditional banking.

“Our long-term vision is to empower people to truly own their assets in a self-custodial way,” Gencel said. “We are very firm believers in self-custody and, in general, democratizing finance, providing the best opportunities to our users.”

Solflare by the numbers

• Total assets managed: $15B

• Active users: 4M

The biggest updates on Solana

Outside of our spotlight… here’s what’s happening on the blockchain:

• Solana TVL reached $12.3B on Sept. 8, an all-time high for the network

• SOL Strategies, a digital asset firm focused on the Solana blockchain, was approved to list its common shares on the Nasdaq

• Solana Mobile started Seeker Season with Moonwalk Fitness to provide a 20% Fitness XP boost to users

• Galaxy Digital partnered with Superstate to launch tokenized versions of its Class A common stock on Solana

• Time.fun launched a mobile app for its social connections app built on Solana

• ApeCoin partnered with Jupiter to expand its APE token to Solana

• Magic Eden deployed a validator set to Solana in collaboration with Sentinel and Phase Labs

• Phygitals’s weekly revenue earned from gacha grabs and fees/royalties reached an all-time high of $6.75M

• Metaplex released onchain auctions to Solana for new token launch bids and real-time price action

• Public equity on Solana rose 33% to $55.2M from a month earlier

• Colosseum's VC fund allocated $2.5M in pre-seed capital to Solana Cypherpunk Hackathon winners

• Pumpfun updated its fees earning model, resulting in more than $15.57M being paid to creators over the last week

• USDG, a stablecoin backed by firms like Robinhood and Kraken, reached $342.8M in outstanding supply on Solana

• Sign up for Solana Breakpoint in Abu Dhabi from Dec. 11-13 to hear from ecosystem founders, developers and creators

• Backpack launched perpetual futures trading in Europe. Sign up to its waitlist here

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This product was built by Token Relations.

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast 

For this month’s Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Emmett Hollyer, general manager of Solana Mobile.

Solana Mobile, an initiative by Solana Labs, aims to integrate crypto-native features directly into smartphones. It includes the newly launched Seeker phone, an Android device with a built-in Seed Vault for secure private key storage and native support for decentralized apps (dApps) via the Solana dApp Store. 

We discuss how Solana Mobile is creating a device that feels as smooth as web2 devices, while also incorporating web3 elements. We also dive into its goal to make web3 more mobile-friendly by improving usability, security and performance for crypto users and developers alike.

This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Seeking a New Era For Web3 Smartphones 

The average person is glued to their smartphone, while the average crypto-native person is glued to their monitors. Yet, the common problem in web3 is that many apps are not mobile friendly. 

Solana Mobile is aiming to take a swing at fixing that with their latest device, Seeker, designed to make crypto more accessible to people on the go. This new product comes a little over two years after the flagship Solana Saga phone, but is ushering in new elements, General Manager of Solana Mobile Emmet Hollyer said on Talking Tokens.

The device introduces its new Seed Vault technology to secure digital assets, letting users sign transactions with a double-tap and fingerprint scan, similar to how Apple Pay works. 

“We wanted to make it as simple and seamless as possible,” Hollyer said. “It shouldn't feel like when you're doing web2 stuff, it's really easy, but the moment you start doing crypto stuff, it all falls apart.”

The Solana Seeker also looks to make the developer experience just as easy and cost effective. The Solana dApp store, which is home to over 100 mobile apps, doesn’t charge fees to deploy. Unlike web2 app stores that may have restrictions, Solana Mobile slashes that so developers can flourish and feel decentralized, Hollyer said. 

“We’re very crypto friendly - you don't have to water down your marketing material or try to hide your crypto feature and we don’t charge any fees,” Hollyer added. “It’s really all about a team building a great app and submitting it.”

The Seeker device also removes the fee structure that other mobile app stores may have in place. “A lot of crypto innovation is built on the idea that you don't need rent seeking people sitting between users and businesses,” Hollyer said. “Placing an exorbitant fee of 30% doesn't make sense for our ecosystem - it's not something that we think is necessary to keep our vision alive.”

All in, Solana Mobile looks to make Seeker more than just another crypto-powered device, but rather a tool to access financial railways. There will be more dApps launching during “Seeker Season” starting in September, Hollyner noted. Whether it be for new users or developers, Solana Mobile sees the Seeker as a financial railway that removes barriers for developers, enabling more apps that facilitate financial access.

“If we can get to a place where there are a bunch of really compelling, really new apps that get more users using their phones, spending more money, then spending more money brings more devs in because they see an economic opportunity,” Hollyer noted. This flywheel effect can foster a self-sustainable financial ecosystem for users and developers alike, he added.

Solana Mobile by the numbers

• 150K pre-orders

• 80% of sales outside of US

• 100 dApps across 10+ categories

• Cost: $500

The Seeker Hardware Specs: 

• Mediatek Dimensity 7300 Processor

• 8GB RAM

• 128GB Storage

• 6.36” AMOLED Display, 460 PPI, 120 Hz

The biggest updates on Solana 

• Play Solana released its Pudgy Penguins limited edition gameboy with more than 8K total pre-orders across all PSG1 devices

• Pipe Network announced Pipe Firestarter Storage, a full-stack content delivery network designed for Solana to compete against web2 protocols

• Drift, a perpetual futures trading DEX on Solana, recorded an all-time high of $1.01B in daily perp volume on July 18, DefiLlama data shows

• Monthly transfer volume for Solana xStocks rose 73% on the month to $324.27M, according to RWAxyz data

• Moonit deployed an AI protocol that automatically tokenizes internet culture and memes using Jupiter and Meteora technology

• Exceed launched its Solana staking protocol that provides blockchain security rewards and market-based rewards for its users

• One Piece Labs announced its accelerator program designed to empower early-stage founders building dApps on Solana

• Meet up with the Solana community for Breakpoint from Dec 11-13 in Abu Dhabi, UAE

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This product was built by Token Relations. 

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast 

For this month's Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Tzvi Wiesel, co-founder and CEO of Baxus.

Baxus is a global spirits marketplace that lives onchain. It raised $5 million in seed funding to make the spirit and wine collectors market more transparent.

We discuss how Baxus is tackling inefficiencies in the alcohol market, from price mismatches and shady gray markets to turning whiskey collections into onchain collateral. 

We also dive into his founder journey from helping run a whisky festival to founding one of the biggest online rare-whisky trading platforms in the world, why he chose Solana as a network to bring alcohol onchain, and how he is targeting the $2T global spirits industry a Solana-powered marketplace for high-end wine and spirits.

This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana.The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Uncorking the Alcohol Market

Over the past year, tokenization of assets has gained significant mindshare. From assets like real estate and stocks to trading cards and luxury goods - millions of investable assets are being minted every month. And this includes high end spirits, too. 

While rare spirits have historically been coveted collectibles and alternative investments, its pricing may not always be consistent. If you walk into two different liquor stores, you might see the same bottle listed at wildly different prices. This was one of the reasons Baxus was created. 

“If I could pay $80 for [alcohol], and somebody’s willing to pay $900 in the city, I can sell it to them for $600,” Tzvi Wiesel, co-founder and CEO of Baxus, said on Talking Tokens. “This got me thinking of what happens when you can get access to bottles that are priced inefficiently on a global scale.” 

Through this arbitrage opportunity and price discrepancy, Wiesel wanted to create a solution where customers or collectors can enjoy alcohol, while knowing they’re getting the best price. 

There are marketplaces that provide this, without the use of blockchain technology, but they’re missing a number of benefits for the end user and provider, he noted. 

For traditional platforms, in order to pay for goods, you need to use a credit card. Most of the time, it comes with a fee. With crypto, users can buy and sell using stablecoins, removing the associated fee, he added. 

“A number of users who were buying with credit cards were getting hit with a 4.5% processing fee and they wanted to know how they could save that 4.5%,” Wiesel said. “People who never would’ve touched crypto are now buying USDC and on ramping to crypto because it means they could save money on what they want.”

While many blockchains have stablecoin options and can process transactions in real-time, Wiesel chose to build Baxus on Solana because of its low gas fees at less than 1 cent. 

“Part of the reason we’re bringing this onchain is for lower costs, more efficiency, more transparency,” Wiesel said. “So many of our initial users were not onchain users, it was whisky people - we needed to make this as comfortable for traditional buyers as possible.” 

Since it's onchain, it opens up a number of doors for users who view these high end spirits as investment pieces and can use the bottles as collateral. “There are bottles where you don’t want to open this or sell it, but it has value,” Wiesel said. “[With Baxus], I can use a bottle I own as collateral and take a loan, and it creates this market where borrowers get something that's not available anywhere else and lenders get access to overcollateralized high yield loans.”

(Note: This is possible through Baxus’ partnership with Loopscale, which we featured on Solana Sessions last month.) 

All in, Baxus wants to provide transparency for the high end spirits market, while creating a marketplace where customers, collectors or traders can access alcohol globally for whatever needs they want. 

“The global wine and spirits industry is $2 trillion, but the actual value of assets sitting in private hands is closer to $50-100 billion, just sitting in closed off spaces,” Wiesel said. “Being able to bring assets onchain with price discovery and then make it accessible, we can put money back into the hands of the owners and create a new economic asset class for an industry that has traditionally lacked that transparency.”

BAXUS by the numbers

• Transaction volume: $25M 

• App downloads: 150K

• Bottles tracked across collections: 1M

The biggest updates on Solana 

Outside of our spotlight…here’s what’s happening on the blockchain: 

• Check out this video about DePIN projects on Solana, its role for community-powered infrastructures and experiences from Capitol Hill in Washington DC

• Kamino shared it reached $4B in total deposits, while its borrowed amount hit an all-time high of $1.68B according to DefiLlama data

• RWA holders on Solana rose 680% on the month to 57.8K, RWAxyz data shows

• BackedFi issued xStocks, a standard for tokenized stocks onchain, to Solana

• Crossmint launched its wallet software development kit with Solana network integration, among other blockchains 

• Bullish, a centralized exchange for institutional investors, collaborated with the Solana Foundation to integrate Solana-native stablecoins as the primary digital asset used across its services

• GUNZ announced its releasing its token for its web3 game Off The Grid to Solana

• Participate in the Solana Mobile Hackathon and compete for a chance at a $100K prize pool

• Pre-ordered Solana Seeker? Confirm shipping details before they ship out August 4th

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This product was built by Token Relations. 

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast

For this month's Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Mary Goonerate, CEO and co-founder of Loopscale.

Loopscale is building next-generation borrowing and lending infrastructure on Solana using order book technology. The protocol has generated over $1 billion in all-time volume since its public launch, moving beyond traditional pool-based models to enable bilateral credit agreements that mirror institutional finance.

We discuss her founder journey from studying computer science at Duke University to building DeFi infrastructure, why order books represent the future of credit markets, and how surviving a $5.8 million exploit made the protocol stronger.

Note: This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana.The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

ReDeFining lending

The conversation around DeFi is often centered around trading and yield farming strategies. But behind the scenes, Loopscale is quietly rebuilding the fundamental infrastructure of how credit markets operate onchain.

At the helm is Mary Goonerate, who co-founded the company straight out of Duke University after meeting her co-founder Luke Truitt while working on a computer science group project. Their shared interest in alternative economic systems, sparked by reading "The Machinery of Freedom" together, laid the foundation to building a sophisticated lending protocol on Solana.

"Traditional borrow-lend is with a pool-based model," Goonerate explained. "For us, it felt like this huge gap in that after you had Solana, you had this innovation in spot and trading markets with Phoenix and Sierra. You went from Uniswap, which was this algorithmic approximation of markets, to these order book-based markets."

With over $1 billion in all-time volume and growing adoption of their "looping" products, Loopscale is demonstrating demand for sophisticated credit infrastructure in DeFi.

After exploring various layer-2 solutions, the team funnily enough discovered Solana at Bitcoin Miami 2021.

"The moment you start using the chain, you realize the experience is just so much better [on Solana]," Goonerate said. "After I installed Phantom, I was uninstalling other extensions."

But this wasn't just about user experience.

From a technical perspective, Solana's architecture enabled something not possible on other chains, a true order book-based lending, Goonerate said. "Order books are one of those big, only possible on Solana infrastructure pieces," she added. "They're the core of every efficient capital market."

In April, shortly after launching, Loopscale faced a $5.8 million exploit, but was able to recover all the funds within 72 hours through negotiations with the exploiter. This incident was a turning point for the team. "That slow growth is infinitely better than a risky fast growth curve," Goonerate reflected. "There is an inherent pressure to get new products out there."

Post-exploit, Loopscale implemented comprehensive security upgrades and now does full audits for every new feature, she noted.

While retail users have driven much of Loopscale's recent growth, Goonerate sees institutional adoption as the protocol's long-term opportunity. With 68% of SOL tokens staked and billions locked in various DeFi protocols, there's enormous amounts of idle liquidity that can't be productively used in traditional pool-based systems, she added.

This institutional focus extends beyond crypto-native assets as Loopscale is actively working with asset providers like Ether Fuse and Alpha Ledger to support real-world assets as collateral. "We'll see an infrastructural bridge where we have more of the products that are off-chain being actually run on the rails of crypto," Goonerate said.

Despite the exploit setback, Goonerate is bullish on the broader vision of Loopscale. "The exciting thing is about creating this global credit markets layer where more people have access to credit, more businesses have access to credit, at better terms," Goonerate said.

Global credit infrastructure will happen "slowly and then all at once."

Loopscale's sponsored vault product, launching at the end of June, represents a key step toward this vision. It allows any team to launch a credit fund at zero marginal cost, breaking the governance bottlenecks that have limited asset expansion in traditional pool-based protocols.

To outline a future where Solana becomes the backbone for both crypto-native and traditional finance infrastructure, "We want to see credit markets across all these different asset classes," Goonerate said.

Loopscale by the numbers

• Volume (all time): 1.215B

• Total Deposited: 48.72M

• Borrowed amount: $19.18M

The biggest updates on Solana

• Listen to a16z crypto’s podcast with Solana Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko about what sets the network’s culture, values and tech apart from others

• Read a report by Syndica that analyze Solana’s dApp ecosystem and its revenues from May

• Solana signed an MOU with with VARA, Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, to collaborate with regulators from the region

• Solana recorded $135B in DEX volumes, a 32% increase month-over-month, according to Blockworks Research’s May update

• Learn about Moody’s Ratings trial putting a municipal bond rating onchain with Alphaledger to the Solana network

• SOL is available on Avalanche via Wormhole NTT

Join the fun

• Enter the Solana Character Agent Hackathon by SendAI and Dreamnet

• Join SuperteamUK for the London Startup Village from June 9-18

• Sign up for Solana APEX Budapest on June 21

• Learn about funding opportunities for builders on Solana here

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This product was built by Token Relations.

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The Latest Solana Sessions Podcast 

For this month’s Solana Sessions, we sat down with Dialect Founder and CEO Chris Osborn.

Dialect is designed to make the web3 user experience more seamless, intuitive and accessible. Its flagship product, Blockchain Links (Blinks), aims to make onchain transactions and actions easier to integrate. It co-launched blinks with the Solana Foundation in 2024 and has since powered more than 600 integrations for blockchain-enabled applications.

We discuss his founder journey, why Dialect decided to build on Solana, the expansion of DeFi and how blockchain technology could become integrated in consumer apps.

Note: This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana.The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Dialing into Better UX 

Decentralized finance (DeFi) thrives on accessibility and speed. With this in mind, Dialect, a web3 user experience platform, leverages Solana in hopes to make crypto interactions just that, more accessible at a higher speed. 

Traditionally, crypto can be seen as overly and unnecessarily complex because of all the different types of network-specific applications and numerous steps it takes to make a transaction. This showcases how difficult web3 technology is compared to web2 technologies. “The problem [crypto has] is just a really wacky user experience,” said Dialect Founder and CEO Chris Osborne. “Like, you're downloading a Chrome extension, which is not going to work in mobile on Safari, for example. So if you have an iPhone, good luck.”

However, Osborne believes web3 doesn’t have to be this complex and can be alleviated going forward - starting with click reduction.

Dialect’s flagship product, Blinks, is designed to allow onchain actions, like trading or lending, to be performed directly within a wallet or app. By reducing the amount of clicks and friction a user has to endure, Blinks aims to transform how users engage with DeFi.

 “It’s like you Blink, teleport a button right into the environment, so you can take the action right from within your mobile wallet,” Osborne explained. “It's also like a consumer benefit for consumer apps because every extra click that your users are taking, you have massive attrition and fall off, especially if it's redirects to other sites.” 

Since Solana offers one of the highest transactions per second across all blockchains at more than 1,300 TPS. Blinks can offer low-cost transactions, something that is needed to provide instant DeFi actions. In turn, use cases such as yield generation or access to collateral for trading can be easier and faster to access. 

“Instead of making users navigate to products using links, [Dialect] lets products navigate to users,” Osborne said. “Imagine your mobile wallet becomes like your super app for everything you want to do onchain, and be able to discover trending DeFi protocols.”

Furthermore, Dialect leverages Solana’s parallelization, fast block times and cheap compute to deliver real-time, user-friendly experiences. This technical edge let's Dialect create a product that aims to transform mobile wallets into advanced apps that offer curated DeFi opportunities without having to leave the interface. 

Looking ahead, Dialect aims to embed Blinks in every major mobile wallet with the goal of making DeFi as intuitive as tap-to-pay. 

However, Osborne doesn’t mean expanding only within the web3 sector, he wants Blinks to be used within all technologies. 

“Two years from now, I want blinks to be in every major mobile wallet, ones that can power experiences in decentralized exchanges for institutional providers,” Osborne said. “[Eventually], I want the X engineers and the X team to show up and actually integrate blinks.”

All in, Dialect wants to reduce barriers to entry to craft a future where web3 could empower anyone to engage with DeFi effortlessly. “It’s about letting products navigate to you, where you trust signing and execution,” Osborne said. “The goal with blinks is actually to allow any action from anywhere. And so it would be like [Apple Pay] on steroids.”

Taking A Blink At The Metrics 

• Over the past six months, Blinks hit: 

  • 600+ live integrations

  • 160M views

  • 22M interactions 

  • 7.5M transactions executed 

What We’re Watching on Solana 

• Real World Asset value on Solana rose 5.6% on the month to $333.2M, a new high for the network, RWAxyz data shows

• Solana Real Economic Value hit $8.35M on May 14, a quarterly high according to Blockworks data

• Ondo Finance integrated its institutional-grade bridging solution with Solana, amongst other blockchains

• Chainlink Labs released a Build on Solana program with Solana Foundation to provide web3 startups with technical resources and more

• 10K launched its creator app for users to watch content and earn rewards

• VanEck partnered with Securitize to launch VBILL, a tokenized U.S. treasury fund, on Solana and three other chains

• Yala announced its overcollateralized bitcoin-backed liquidity platform to Solana for users to earn bitcoin yield using Solana infrastructure

• In NYC? Stop by Solana Accelerate conference or neighboring activations this week 

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast

For this month’s Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Lucas Bruder, CEO and co-founder of Jito Labs.

Jito Labs is building high-performance MEV infrastructure on Solana. To date, it has generated $1.1B for validators and stakers on Solana, with over 90% of the network’s validators running via its software. In 2024, the company made $650M for the network through fees and revenue.

They discuss his founder journey, why Jito decided to build on Solana, the expansion of DeFi onchain and what users and institutions want.

This episode is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. The podcast is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Scaling Solana with Jito Labs

Speed and scale often dominate the conversation in crypto. Behind the scenes, Solana-focused infrastructure provider Jito Labs is quietly shaping the deeper mechanics of how money moves, and who earns along the way.

At the center of it all is Lucas Bruder, CEO and co-founder of Jito. He’s a firm believer that even today, his team can help build a faster, more efficient Solana.

Jito’s impact is both technical and tangible. With over $2 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) in its liquid staking token (LST), JitoSOL, a validator client that powers over 90% of the network, the company is building the unseen infrastructure that helps Solana operate smoother and rewards those who run it.

A core part of Jito's work involves MEV, Bruder said. “MEV stands for maximum extractable value,” he added. “It's essentially the value that can be created and made by validators by having granular control over the ordering of transactions in their block.”

He simplified this by noting that the order of transactions matters and Jito builds software to optimize this process efficiently. This ultimately makes the network faster while also generating more money for validators and stakers.

The numbers tell the story with what started as $3, yes three-dollars, in MEV rewards back in 2022. That has now grown to over $1.1 billion in value generated for Solana validators and stakers through Jito. This revenue is also being earned by the stakers and validators running the network.

With that said, Bruder’s decision to focus on Solana wasn’t a bet, but a recognition of the opportunity. “It felt like a green field,” he said. From the beginning, he saw that MEV on Solana would require its own playbook.

The company built its validator client, to help reorder transactions more efficiently, which has proven critical for maintaining Solana’s blockchain performance during peak congestion. This was especially the case during the Solana memecoin mania, which spiked transactions in the past year. During this period, Jito adapted fast by “focusing less on the arbitrage and kind of traditional forms of [MEV], and just trying to make people's transactions land easier,” Bruder said.

While the validator client quietly powers the chain, JitoSOL has become its economic engine. With about a 40% share of Solana’s liquid staking market and climbing, the token is now deeply embedded across the ecosystem.

The LST can also be an interesting tool for institutions. Since they seek collateral for trading, rather than just posting Solana as collateral, they can use JitoSol for the same purpose while earning staking yields, Bruder explained. He also believes Solana spot ETFs are on the horizon and hopes to see more clarity on staking and liquid staking coming from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Over the past two years, volatility and doubts have surrounded Solana, yet Jito has stayed committed, Bruder said. “Doubling down on Solana at that time worked out super well for us, and we're gonna continue doing that and just focus on Solana.”

Despite Jito’s success to date and major presence on Solana, the "job's not finished," Bruder said.

“We want Solana to be the place where the IPOs happen,” Bruder stated. “Maybe instead of launching through the New York Stock Exchange or something, it's just on Solana.” He envisions a future where onchain IPOs, token launches, and institutional capital all flow through Solana, with plans for Jito to play a key role in building that reality.

Jito by the numbers

• Jito TVL: $2.217B (+8%)

• JitoSol TVL: $16.97M (+2.66%)

• JitoSol Holders: 170,558

• JitoSol APY: 7.79% (-3.07%)

• Total MEV Rewards: 8.41K SOL (+53.18%)

• Jito Liquid Staking Fees YTD: $461.61M

• Stake weight on Solana: 95.3%

The metrics are accurate at the time of publication. The percentage change is calculated month-over-month.

The biggest updates on Solana

Taking a look at the latest announcements and more on the blockchain…

• The Confidential Balances Token Extensions upgrade went live on Solana mainnet, enabling ZK-powered encrypted tokens with institutional compliance

• Solana’s stablecoin market has grown 733% from $1.5B in Dec 2024 to $12.5B by April 2025 according to Artemis data

• M^0's stablecoin platform is live on Solana, expanding its $M framework to the ecosystem

• Jupiter exchange acquired collectibles platform DRiP, bringing its community into the Jupiverse ecosystem

• SOON’s svmBNB mainnet went live, integrating SVM execution with BNB Chain settlement

• XNET Mobile partnered with AT&T to expand wireless coverage to 9M users on Solana's DePIN ecosystem

• PayPal expands crypto services with the addition of SOL to its US offerings

• Learn about the new Solana Policy Institute (SPI), a non-partisan non-profit entity that aims to educate policymakers on decentralized networks

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.

Each month, we’re diving into one founder’s journey building on Solana, as well as noteworthy network updates to help readers get up to speed.

The latest Solana Sessions podcast 

For the first Solana Sessions episode, we sat down with Backpack and Mad Lads Co-Founder and CEO Armani Ferrante.

We discuss Ferrante’s journey from Apple to Alameda to building multiple startups on Solana. We also dive into his experience operating during the FTX collapse, how that shaped him to operate Backpack’s business, what he’s doing to scale the exchange and more.

This episode is a part of a campaign focused on Solana founders. The podcast is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

Backpack’s climbing a mountain to fill a “hole in the market”

Security and trust are two of the biggest factors crypto users often take into account when engaging with their money onchain. 

And for Backpack, a crypto exchange and wallet, trust is paramount, according to its co-founder and CEO Armani Ferrante.

Providing a form of shared ownership between the exchange and its users is "a very unique relationship and dynamic that's pretty special," he added. "[It's] specific to crypto that doesn't really exist anywhere else."

The 2022 FTX collapse played a huge role in the shift of his point of view. At the time, Backpack lost 88% of its operating capital and while most founders might have walked away, Ferrante saw it as a shift from both a mindset perspective and product one. 

At the time, FTX was one of the largest exchanges globally. “I think a lot of people saw the exchange opportunity the moment FTX collapsed and thought oh - I'm going to go build the next great exchange and fill that hole in the market,” Ferrante stated.

Although Ferrante's first reaction was to not build an exchange, his perspective shifted. 

“I felt like I could build an exchange. No problem,” Ferrante said. He felt that the frameworks he’d have to operate in would be “easy.”

“That’s the big unlock that gave me the confidence to  build a team,” he added. Backpack wanted to bring a more regulated exchange experience to the market at a global scale, to fill a “legitimate hole in the market.” 

“A lot of us think that crypto will eat finance in the same way that software ate the entire world.” Ferrante said. “And that, you know, this whole conversation of DeFi versus CeFi is a momentary thing, and ultimately we'll just think of it all as finance and, and let's go build for that world.”

Ultimately, Ferrante saw Solana as the perfect place to do just that. “Everyone was saying Solana's dead - I was one of the people who was not in that camp,” he said.

Even though Solana was arguably tied in with FTX, as the former exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was an advocate for the network, Ferrante held the belief that it had the most developer possibilities. 

“If you look at it from a pure engineering point of view, [the Solana network] has a really important system design that somebody has to go build, and that somebody will build, and the person that operates at scale will do really well.” Ferrante said. “The world just needs [Solana].”

Looking forward, Backpack wants to be a global company. It’s available in over 150 countries, but Ferrante still sees this expansion as one of the “biggest mountains to climb this year.” It has expanded operations recently in Europe, alongside acquiring FTX EU, and other strategies to grow its presence globally. 

“I think the first mountain that we've climbed was really the most important one which is to be able to serve users all around the world,” Ferrante said. While deemed as “not the sexiest thing in the world,” it’s important to build a regulated company. “I think we more or less have a clear path to get to the top of that mountain.”

Unpacking Backpack Metrics

• Spot trading volume (24hr): $48.2M

• Total assets in reserve: $79.5.M

• Total volume traded: $60B 

• Total transactions completed: 500M+ 

What we’re watching on Solana 

• Solana turned 5 years old and celebrated with these stats: 

  • Total transactions: 408B+ 

  • Network validators: 1,300+

  • Total volume: $987B+

• The network’s stablecoin market cap hit $11.11B, up 141.52% YTD

• Two Solana IMprovement Documents were proposed and completed voting this week:

  • SIMD-228 failed to deny a market-determined emissions schedule

  • SIMD-123 passed so network validators can distribute block fee revenue to their delegators

• Solana Foundation is hosting Accelerate, a weeklong conference with developer workshops and dApp showcases 

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This product was built by Token Relations. 

This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.