🍬 Bears Market 🐻

Author

Tender Kiwi
April 29, 2022

GN and welcome to SOL Sweet. Slight technical glitch with the email today! Let's get you caught up with the Pepsi of blockchains. This week:

  • Okay Bears were more than okay

  • Maple brings "undercollateralized" to Solana

  • Quick hits

  • A cool multi-wallet tool

All in an easy 2 minutes and 3 seconds 👇

Okay Bears were more than okay

Where were you April 26th, 2022?

That's the question my grandkids will ask me one day when they're watching Okay Bear #3761 on their TV glasses.

I'm exaggerating, maybe. But that's what it felt like watching a historic Solana NFT launch this week.

So, what exactly happened? Let me try to explain.

But first, Okay Bears is a collection of 10k bear NFTs on the Solana blockchain. The project claims to be "building a virtuous community that will transcend the internet into the real world."

They look like this guy:

Okay Bears #3761

Okay Bears #3761

No he's not mine. Yes I missed out on a 100x gain. 

Honestly, I caught onto the project pretty late. But it was hyped. Over 90k Twitter followers and probably a billion Discord bots members. The potential was there.

And so was the fud (fear, uncertainty, doubt).

We've seen these projects with big followings fizzle out before. Heck, even Frank from DeGods questioned the project.

Anyway, the mint went ahead to mostly whitelisted members followed by a smaller amount to public sale.

3 minutes after the public sale opened, the whole thing was sold out. And that's when things blew up.

What happened next was historic. As the bears hit the secondary market, they pumped.

Some numbers:

  • 187k SOL volume ($18.4M)

  • #1 traded NFT project in the 24hrs after it minted (ACROSS BOTH ETH AND SOL 😱)

  • ATH (all-time high) 380k SOL volume on Magic Eden in the same time period

Staggering. But what does it mean?

According to two of the biggest Solana NFT influencers, Iced and SOL Legend, it proves Solana is ready for 10k collections and can attract the same kind of liquidity as Ethereum.

But they also cautioned that it wasn't necessarily new liquidity buying Bears. Holders of other top projects like Cets on Creck we're selling to raise liquidity to buy Bears.

Overall, it has to be good for the Solana ecosystem though.

For a further breakdown of what makes the project attractive, read this thread.

I think everyone will be watching closely to see where things go now. Especially after such a rocket ship launch.

Maple brings "undercollateralized" to Solana

Maple Finance launched Monday on Solana with a $45M fund ready to deploy.

The crypto lender was already operating on Ethereum to the tune of $1.2B (yes billion) in loans.

And they plan to increase up to $300M worth of liquidity available to Solana borrowers by the end of the year.

But what is an undercollateralized loan?

Good question. Think of it kind of like an unsecured loan in the real world. Instead of having to put up collateral (crypto) you can take a loan based on creditworthiness (ability to pay it back).

But there's a catch.

The loans are only available to institutional borrowers and you need to apply and be approved.

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of Crypto?

The ethos of DeFi is to eliminate the middle man with smart contracts. Not follow traditional methods from the existing financial system.

Despite all that, it is a good thing for Solana.

More liquidity will allow more building in the ecosystem. Even if it does have a rich-get-richer vibe.

Quick hits

Solana-based DEX Lifinity raised $9.6M.

Ethereum vs Solana: a high level comparison.

A cool multi-wallet tool

If you have multiple Solana wallets holding NFTs, this tool might be useful.

Launched on Product Hunt, the tool lets you track your entire portfolio across 5 different wallets.

Like we said last week - builders be building!

And that's what we love about Solana and web3 in general.

Ok that's all from me. Hit reply and tell me what you're keeping your eye on. Or if it sucked, tell me why.

And follow me on Twitter @TenderKiwi

- Toby