🍬 MAJOR Solana Update

Author

Tender Kiwi
July 01, 2022

GM and welcome to SOL Sweet. It's recommended you take your weekly dose of Solana news with coffee. Let's talk about:

  • The latest on Solana's big update

  • Magic Eden just did a stealth mint

  • StepN's not dead yet

  • Extra Sweets

In 2 minutes and 16 sweet seconds

The latest on Solana's big update

A month ago, we talked about Solana's big update being released to testnet.

The update includes three features:

  1. QUIC protocol

  2. Stake-weighted transactions

  3. Fee prioritization

Well, on top of launching a phone (did we mention that?) Solana devs have been hard at work on these updates.

And now, Solana has shared a dedicated upgrades page to help track the progress.

We like this because

1/ it's easy for those who aren't as technical to stay up to date, rather than having to use Github

2/ it's transparent (big yes in web3)

The network has already been showing improved performance. So once these updates go live it should only get better.

We'll be racking up the pageviews on the new upgrades page in the meantime.

Magic Eden just did a stealth mint

Go full degen, of course!

That was Magic Eden yesterday when they dropped a stealth mint on their launchpad. The collection is called Degen Town.

It promises no roadmap, no discord, no real info.

All it asks is "are you degen enough?"

In case you were wondering, a stealth mint is supposed to be unknown or a surprise.

According to Magic Eden's blog:

Generally, a stealth mint approach releases the minting smart contract at the time of or shortly before the NFT mint goes “live” to the public. Some projects may claim to be “stealth” while using it as a marketing tactic to lead to the launch itself. Marketing a stealth mint is counter-intuitive as a stealth launch should fly under the radar all the way up to the public release for open-minting.

Considering ME has been dropping hints all week about this stealth mint, we've got to call them out.

This was a marketing stunt, not a stealth mint.

Definition aside, the project is off to a good start. The floor price is 2x the mint price, and the NFTs haven't even been revealed yet.

Now, let's see how this turns out. But we have to say, well played Magic Eden.

StepN's not dead yet

The darling to-earn app StepN has been doing it tough after their recent break up with China.

But just like Undertaker, they've woken up from their coffin.

StepN's very own DEX DOOAR has now become the biggest DEX on Solana.

And more impressively, the company is still boasting 800,000 daily active users on the move-to-earn app.

This is surprising considering their token and NFT prices have been sliding for the last month.

Yes overall crypto markets are down, but we figured a big part of the downturn for StepN was due to users selling off and leaving.

There's still two weeks before the ban in China officially kicks in, so things could still get worse.

But maybe there's a lot more life left in Undertaker StepN yet.

Extra sweets

Remember the Solend drama last week? Turns out CEX Binance helped them make contact with the whale.

Coinbase is adding staking rewards for Solana. Oh and it's more than Ethereum 😝

The Saber Bros are doubling down on Solana after launching a crypto fund.

Analytics platform Nansen has integrated Solana NFTs.

That's it for this week. Did you mint Degen Town? Hit reply and let us know.

And please forward this to a friend who should be keeping up with Solana. It'll take 10 seconds. Writing it takes us 10 hours. Thanks!

- Toby (@TenderKiwi)