Astar Network has announced a comprehensive update to its tokenomics, referred to as Astar Tokenomics 2.0, aiming to drive sustainable growth and improve user engagement. The detailed explanation of the changes was posted on the Astar Network forum, and here’s a summary of the key aspects:
Current Tokenomics Overview
The current tokenomics of Astar Network involves a fixed inflation rate of roughly 9.5% per year, with each block emitting 253.08 new ASTR tokens. The distribution of these tokens goes to various actors within the network, including the collator responsible for authoring the block and the on-chain treasury.
Problems Addressed
The new proposal aims to address several issues:
High & Fixed Inflation: The current fixed block reward doesn’t adjust based on network utilization or the number of dApps.
Scalable & Inclusive dApp Staking: The existing dApp staking model needs to be more dynamic and scalable.
Native & Ethereum Fee Alignment: The fees between native Substrate and Ethereum are not aligned.
High Treasury & Collator Rewards: The current allocation to the treasury and collators is considered excessive.
Proposed Solution
The proposed changes are comprehensive and include the following key aspects:
Inflation: The new inflation rate will dynamically adjust every year based on the total supply, with an estimated yearly inflation of around 5.8% if the proposed model is deployed immediately.
Treasury: A fixed rate of 5% of the yearly inflation will be assigned to the treasury.
Collators: Collators will receive 3.2% of the yearly inflation, a reduction from the current rate.
dApp Staking: The new model introduces tiers and makes the system more inclusive for new dApps.
Transaction Fees: The solution aims to align Substrate native & Ethereum fees as closely as possible.
Rent Fees: Rent fees will be reduced by a factor of 100, making on-chain storage significantly cheaper.
Summary of Changes
The main modifications include adjustments to the inflation model, dApp staking protocol, transaction fees, and rent fees. Some of the highlights include:
If TVL (Total Value Locked) is not in the ideal range, not all staking rewards will be minted.
If empty slots are present in dApp staking during a period, the rewards for that period will be burned.
Transaction fees will incur a significant burn, with 80% being burned and 20% being deposited to the collators.
The inflation rate will constantly adjust to on-chain parameters.
Next Steps
The Astar Network team has outlined the next steps, including opening up community forum discussion, sharing the implementation plan & execution, and creating comprehensive documentation.
The proposed changes are seen as progressive steps to elevate Astar’s tokenomics for a sustainable future. The adjustments are not considered final and can be modified as needed for the stability and health of the network.
LooksRare, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, has announced an upgrade to version 2. The company revealed that the new platform would reduce fees by 75% and implement several other features. The previous version, LooksRare v1, charged 2% per trade, but this has now been reduced to 0.5% in version 2. In addition, the new version has more gas-efficient contracts, allowing users to save approximately 30% on gas fees versus the previous version of the app.
The LooksRare team explained that in version 2, sellers receive Ether (ETH) instead of Wrapped Ether (WETH) for most sales. The smart contracts also allow for bulk buying and selling orders if a user wants to place multiple trades simultaneously. Furthermore, aggregators can now implement custom recipients, allowing users to buy an NFT with one wallet but send it to another.
Sellers can now list their NFTs for sale in token prices instead of ETH. This includes the option to list an NFT for a fixed U.S. dollar price to be paid in equivalent ETH.
LooksRare v1 will be sunsetted, according to the team’s separate April 7 post. On April 12, the app’s front end will no longer allow users to post version 1 auctions through the public API. All current v1 auctions will be removed from the website at 10:00 am UTC on April 13, and the smart contracts themselves will be disabled through an admin function at 11:00 am UTC.
The announcement of the upgrade has received mostly positive reactions, as many LooksRare users believe the new features will provide a strong challenge to competitors such as OpenSea and Blur. However, some users have expressed doubts that v2 will be enough of a change to attract users from other platforms. These users have cited the lack of good token incentives and the inability to list enough collections as potential issues.
Despite some controversy in October when the company decided to eliminate creator royalties, LooksRare has benefited from the recent boom in NFT prices. The company’s latest upgrade to version 2 shows its commitment to providing users with an efficient and cost-effective NFT marketplace.
Transaction costs are calculated based on the transaction’s data volume and network congestion.
As a block can only hold 4 MB of data, the number of transactions that can be executed in one block is limited. Therefore, more block data is required for a larger transaction. As a result, more significant transactions are usually charged on a per-byte basis.
When you use a BTC wallet to send a transaction, the wallet will typically provide you with the option to choose your Bitcoin fee rate. This charge will be determined in satoshis per unit of data (there are 100,000,000 satoshis in one Bitcoin) consumed on the blockchain by your transaction, abbreviated as sats/vByte. This rate will then be multiplied by the size of your transaction to get the total fee you’ll pay.
If you want your transaction to be confirmed right away, your optimal fee rate may vary significantly. If you don’t mind waiting, spending 2 sats/vByte will usually allow you to confirm your transaction within a day or a week.
Transaction fees also reflect the speed with which the user wants to have the transaction validated. When a user initiates a transaction, it goes into the mempool (transactions that have not yet been put to the blockchain and are being stored in volatile memory).
Upon validation, it is included in the block. Miners choose which transactions to validate and include in the block. When there is a backlog of transactions waiting to be validated, it creates an incentive for miners to process transactions with higher fee rates first. Most miners target transactions with high fee to byte ratios. When network transactions begin to reduce, transaction fees will fall.
Bitcoin exchanges, which connect buyers and sellers, calculate their fees in two ways: either a fixed fee per transaction or a percentage of total transaction volume over the previous 30 days. Exchanges use a tiered fee structure, depending on the total dollar volume transacted in both circumstances.
Fee arrangements are designed to encourage traders to trade frequently. As a result, costs for high-value and high-frequency transactions are correspondingly reduced. Fees for small, infrequent transactions are frequently higher.
Mintable marketplace announced its partnership with Immutable X, a StarkWare-based layer 2 solution for NFTs on Ethereum, to make over 24 million NFTs on Immutable X available for sale on Mintable. This integration will enable users to deposit ETH and ERC-20 tokens with instant confirmation and no gas fees.
According to Mintable’s Twitter thread, Mintable and Immutable X share a vision to scale NFT marketplaces by offering access to NFTs to the masses.
1/We’re thrilled to partner up with @Immutable X – the 1st & leading Layer 2 for #NFTs on Ethereum! All NFTs on Immutable X are now available for trade on https://t.co/NJ1lSPqL1Q!
✅ Zero gas fees✅Instant secure trades✅100% carbon neutral.
Details: https://t.co/TQh7Cggq2z
— Mintable (@mintable_app) December 13, 2021
Although zero gas fees may sound appealing, the size restriction for gasless files is only 300 MB. Anything larger than that will incur gas fees.
Mintable’s blog statement also claimed that neither decentralization nor user custody would be compromised. Since assets are secured on the Ethereum blockchain, the project believes that users will be able to securely manage their NFT trading experience.
Related:Immutable raises $60M for its carbon-conscious NFT platform
According to Immutable X, the project ensures that any NFT activity on its protocol is completely carbon neutral. This doesn’t mean it is carbon emission free, rather that it is purchasing carbon credits to offset any gas consumed on Ethereum.
Robbie Ferguson, Cofounder and President at Immutable , said about the partnership:
“We want to be everywhere NFT fans are and Mintable’s dedication to break new ground in empowering audiences with smart contracts is mind blowing. We are excited to welcome the communities and work with Mintable app to grow NFT marketplaces.”
Mintable also operates a decentralized autonomous organization; the first DAO to run on NFTs and not on ERC-20 tokens. The Mintable NFT DAO relies on MINT voting NFTs. MINT holders can sell their voting NFTs on open marketplaces just like any other NFT.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially proposed the state government to allow businesses to pay state fees with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC).
The Republican governor announced the idea as part of his 2022–2023 budget proposal, released on Dec. 9.
According to the official budget highlights, DeSantis proposed to provide $200,000 to the Department of Financial Services to offer Florida corporations the ability to “pay state fees via cryptocurrency directly to the Department of State.”
“Florida encourages cryptocurrency as a means of commerce and furthering Florida’s attractiveness to businesses and economic growth,” the document reads.
DeSantis additionally proposed allocating another $500,000 to explore the potential of blockchain technology to maintain motor vehicle records as well as authenticate Medicaid transactions and detect potential fraud.
The overall $700,000 proposal is dedicated to enable a crypto-friendly Florida, the budget proposal reads.
Florida has been steadily emerging as a major cryptocurrency-friendly jurisdiction in the United States as one of its major cities, Miami, is being actively promoted as the “world’s Bitcoin and crypto capital.”
Related: Navigating CityCoins: Miami citizens to earn Bitcoin despite the city not holding crypto
Last month, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced that he aimed to be the first U.S. lawmaker to accept part of his paycheck in Bitcoin. The official reportedly owns both BTC and Ether (ETH).
In September, Miami’s city commissioners voted to accept funds generated by the new MiamiCoin cryptocurrency, which was launched by the smart contracts protocol CityCoins in August. Having generated more than $21 million in yields as of mid-November, MiamiCoin will be available to all Miami residents in the form of a Bitcoin dividend, according to the city mayor.
Layer-two (L2) solutions for the Ethereum network have become a popular topic of discussion and speculation on their associated tokens backed the massive rally seen in many of the protocols this year. The parabolic growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sector also led to a surge in the cost carrying out simple transfers and this prompted developers and investors to migrate to L2-supportive platforms.
One L2 solution that saw its token price rise to new highs earlier in the year and now looks poised to make another breakout higher is Polygon (MATIC), a proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that aggregates scalable solutions on Ethereum in order to support a multi-chain ecosystem.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that MATIC hit a low at $1.01 on Sept. 21, and over the past few months the price has been in a steady uptrend, bringing the altcoin above the $2 mark on Dec. 1.
MATIC/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView
Polygon’s ecosystem is expanding and proof of this can be seen in the increase in protocol launches, cross-chain migrations, the launch of a Polygon-focused exchange-traded product (ETP) and a steady uptick in user activity.
Ecosystem expansion
One of the biggest drivers of MATIC price and on-chain activity has been the addition of new protocols to the Polygon network throproject launches and cross-chain migrations.
Most recently, IDEX decentralized exchange announced that it would launching v3 of its exchange on the Polygon network, making it the first hybrid liquidity DEX on Polygon.
Tomorrow. Approximately 12 PM PST.
IDEX v3, the first Hybrid Liquidity DEX will be launching on @0xPolygon.
The Polygon network has seen project launches from NFT projects like the OpenBiSea NFT marketplace and gaming / DeFi platforms like Rainmaker Games, Harvest Finance and Jarvis Network.
Currently the Uniswap community is in the process voting on whether to add Polygon support for Uniswap v3 and after majority yes Phase 1 vote on Nov. 25 the process has shifted into Phase 2.
Rising institutional support
Another reason for the bullish price action for Polygon has been increased interest from institutional investors. Several ETPs for Polygon have been listed in recent months, including the Osprey Polygon Trust in September and the 21Shares Polygon ETP in November.
Polygon is also included on the list of assets being explored by the Grayscale Investments as a potential Trust candidate.
The network has also benefited from a $20 million investment fund launched by Wintermute, a digital asset market maker focused on helping to bootstrap the development of decentralized applications on Polygon.
Currently, the Polygon network is receiving increased attention as it prepares to host a ZK Summit on Dec. 9 where developers will discuss the “current state and future of zk-STARKs and applications of Zero Knowledge proofs.”
Related:IDEX to launch hybrid liquidity decentralized exchange on Polygon
Increase in active users and wallets
A third reason for the bullish price action seen in MATIC has been the steady increase of users on the network as evidenced by the increase in wallet addresses holding a balance.
Polygon addresses with a balance vs. MATIC price. Source: Intotheblock
As shown in the graph above, the number of Polygon wallets holding a balance has steadily increased throughout 2021 and is currently at an all-time high of 282,760.
Evidence of the increased activity can also be found in the data for total revenue generated from fees on the network, which has been steadily increasing over the second half of 2021.
Polygon price vs. total revenue. Source: Token Terminal
As new protocols continue to list on the Polygon network, these stats are likely to rise if new users continue to use the platform to escape the high fees seen on the Ethereum network.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for MATIC on Oct. 15, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. MATIC price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for MATIC spiked into the green zone on Oct. 15 and reached a high of 94 around 48 hours before the price began to increase by 57% over the next six weeks.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
The Bitcoin network’s value settlement efficiency has been improving steadily recently, with more being settled for lower fees.
Over the past week, the Bitcoin network has transferred or settled an average of $95,142 of value for every $1 worth of fees.
The on-chain settlement efficiency has been gradually increasing since May as more has been moved around the network during the bull cycle.
On-chain analyst Dylan LeClair made the observation using data from analytics provider Glassnode. The value is derived by dividing the mean transaction volume by the fees.
Over the last seven days the #Bitcoin Network transferred an average $95,142 of value for every $1 worth of fees.
The median transaction saw $751 of value transferred for every $1 worth of fees.#Bitcoin is the most efficient monetary settlement network the world has ever seen. pic.twitter.com/DzSwxCDKkd
— Dylan LeClair (@DylanLeClair_) November 29, 2021
The final settlement costs amounted to just 0.00105% of the total value transferred of $451.3 billion.
According to CryptoFees, Bitcoin is seventh in the list of networks ordered by daily transaction fees. Its seven-day average is around $678,000 which puts it behind Ethereum, Uniswap, Binance Smart Chain, SushiSwap, Aave, and Compound.
The fee tracking platform currently reports that Ethereum is currently processing $53 million in daily fees, 98.7% more than the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin and Ethereum should not be compared in terms of value settlement and fees as they are two different entities — the former is a store of value asset and the latter a smart contract and decentralized application network.
Ethereum’s mean transaction volume divided by the fees comes out at just $139 in value transacted per dollar in fees.
The settlement efficiency of the Ethereum network has declined as more value has accrued to the network and a much greater demand has been put on it, especially with the rise of DeFi and NFTs over the past 18 months.
Related:Bitcoin network tags record high for daily settlement volume
According to Bitinforcharts, the average transaction fee on the Bitcoin network is around $2.13 at the moment. Comparatively, the Ethereum network’s average fee is a whopping $42.58. As reported by Cointelegraph yesterday, Bitcoin transaction fees are down by more than 50% this year.
The divergence in average transaction fees between the two networks can be seen widening from the end of July.
Average BTC and ETH tx fees, 6M – Bitinfocharts.com
Ethereum’s network fee woes can be circumvented by using layer two networks which have surged in adoption over the past couple of months with a near all-time high total value locked of $6.87 billion according to L2beat.
Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed a new limit on the total transaction calldata in a block to decrease the overall transaction calldata gas cost over the ETH network.
Buterin’s post on the Ethereum Magicians forum, EIP-4488, highlights concerns regarding high transaction fees on Layer-1 blockchains for rollups and the considerable amount of time to implement and deploy data sharding:
“Hence, a short-term solution to further cut costs for rollups, and to incentivize an ecosystem-wide transition to a rollup-centric Ethereum, is desired.”
While the entrepreneur cited an alternative wherein the gas costs parameters could be decreased without further adding a limit to the block size, he foresees a security concern in decreasing the calldata gas cost from 16 to 3:
“[This] would increase the maximum block size to 10M bytes and push the Ethereum p2p networking layer to unprecedented levels of strain and risk breaking the network.”
Some think layer 2 fees on ETH are too high, because each byte of data a rollup uses cost 16 gas. To lower fees, the gas cost could be reduced to 3. This should be a large benefit, with 5x lower fees. However, in the long term, this may mean blocksize is a new network constraint pic.twitter.com/ffbTQ4zXOz
— BitMEX Research (@BitMEXResearch) November 26, 2021
Buterin issued a decrease-cost-and-cap proposal, which aims to achieve most of the benefits of the decrease, and believes that “1.5 MB will be sufficient while preventing most of the security risk.” As an advice to the Ethereum community, he wrote:
“It’s worth rethinking the historical opposition to multi-dimensional resource limits and considering them as a pragmatic way to simultaneously achieve moderate scalability gains while retaining security.”
If accepted, the implementation of the proposal will require a scheduled network upgrade, resulting in a backward-incompatible gas repricing for the Ethereum ecosystem. This upgrade will also mean that miners will have to comply with a new rule that prevents the addition of new transactions into a block when the total calldata size reaches the maximum. “A worst-case scenario would be a theoretical long-run maximum of ~1,262,861 bytes per 12 sec slot, or ~3.0 TB per year,” the proposal read.
However, the community is discussing other options like the implementation of a soft limit. Others raised concerns about the congestion during nonfungible token (NFT) sales, which may require users to compensate for the lack of execution gas by paying a higher total fee.
Related:Layer-two and multichain DeFi platforms see record inflows as Ethereum fees soar
Rising gas fees have resulted in an outflow of users from the Ethereum network to lower-cost Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks.
As Cointelegraph reported on Nov. 04, Etherscan data shows that approving a token to be transacted on Uniswap decentralized finance protocol can cost as much as $50 worth in ETH.
Average Ethereum gas cost. Source: Etherscan
Additionally, Layer-two solutions, which were billed as the protocols that would help solve the fee issue, have been charging high fees due to network congestion amid the onboarding of new users.
isnt arbitrum supposed to be cheap lol what a joke pic.twitter.com/v839tZ4nch
The top cryptocurrencies by market capitalization keep changing over time as the industry matures. Solana (SOL) has seen its value skyrocket so far this year and has been consistently processing over 2,500 transactions per second.
The cryptocurrency’s price, according to TradingView data, is up nearly 13,000% year-to-date as the year started with SOL trading slightly below $2. Solana is now changing hands-on exchanges for around $240.
Solana is a blockchain platform that aims to achieve high transaction speeds at a low cost without sacrificing decentralization. To do so, it relies on a number of unique features, including a “proof-of-history” mechanism. This allows Solana to process an estimated 50,000 transactions per second, compared to Bitcoin’s seven and Ethereum’s 15.
As the Solana network supports smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications have found a home on it. Its ecosystem now has nearly $15 billion worth of crypto assets locked on it, according to DeFiLlama data.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kraken Intelligence manager Pete Humiston noted that almost all crypto assets have benefitted from a year-long bull run, although Solana has seen “particularly strong price appreciation due to its Web 3.0 experience.”
Humiston added that transactions on Solana are “instant, cost a fraction of a penny and the ecosystem is easy to navigate thanks to user-friendly wallets and applications” contributing to its adoption.
Solana’s adoption may be the result of retail investor demand that was priced out of Ethereum, according to Mindaugas Butkus, chief technology officer of Solana-based decentralized exchange Solanax. He told Cointelegraph:
“Growing demand for DeFi applications and NFTs on Ethereum led to exploding gas fees, which made it expensive to use ETH. Transacting on Solana is inexpensive and transactions are processed in no time, making it an attractive alternative for retail investors.”
Butkus added that Solana’s base-level protocols attracted users for the same reason Ethereum’s DeFi space initially did: flourishing innovation leading to a booming ecosystem with a good user experience.
Is Solana a threat to Ethereum?
As the price of Solana surged, many speculators suggested that SOL will one day overtake Ether (ETH) to become the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Solana’s focus on maintaining its decentralization while offering near-instant transactions at a low cost has been a way to attract users, but there’s more to Ethereum than gas fees.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Adrian Kolody, founder of Domination Finance — a non-custodial exchange focusing on dominance pairs — said he believes there are “too many users vested in Ethereum” for it to be surpassed by Solana.
To Kolody, Ethereum is “a truly decentralized network whereas Solana falls more into the SpeedFi category.” To him, there are idealists that refuse to interact with any ecosystem that isn’t that of Ethereum:
“Ethereum would have to totally bottle their promises for Ethereum 2.0 over the coming years for Solana to overtake it, and even if that happens, it is still very unlikely.”
To Kraken Intelligence’s Humiston, it’s in the “realms of possibility that Solana could trade inline with Ethereum this cycle if it maintains momentum and grows its developer and user community.”
Humiston added that Ethereum has a “number of tailwinds of its own” that could justify its price moving up further this cycle. To the analyst, this potential price appreciation is “why diversification among the largest smart contract platforms” is worth considering at this point.
Markus Bopp, chief technology officer of no-code nonfungible token (NFT) platform Unifty, told Cointelegraph that he believes Solana has “great potential technically,” and as it matures and developers organically jump onto its network it “could be a good #3.”
Bopp added that “this will take years moving forward,” and right now it’s “a lot easier as a developer to jump on EVMs due to much lower barriers to entry,” concluding:
“Having said that, Ethereum just can’t compete with the speed of transactions on Solana which developers may increasingly look at.”
Jack McDonald, CEO of digital asset custodian Standard Custody & Trust Company, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum will “always have a prominent place in terms of market cap” thanks to its first-mover advantage and “significant network effects.”
McDonald, whose company brought Solana staking to institutions earlier this month, added that Ethereum needs to get its transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism right and “do it smoothly and in a timely manner, as that will fix their gas fee issue.”
Solana’s 17-hour outage
On Sept. 14, the Solana network went offline for roughly 17 hours after enduring a denial-of-service disruption. At the time, Twitter account Solana Status explained a large increase in transaction load to 400,000 per second overwhelmed the network, causing it to start forking.
1/ Solana Mainnet Beta encountered a large increase in transaction load which peaked at 400,000 TPS. These transactions flooded the transaction processing queue, and lack of prioritization of network-critical messaging caused the network to start forking.
— Solana Status (@SolanaStatus) September 14, 2021
After Solana’s engineers were unable to stabilize the network, its validator community coordinated a restart that brought it back to full speed. That same day, Ethereum layer-two rollup network Arbitrum One reported its sequencer went offline for roughly 45 minutes.
The attacks failed to affect the Ethereum network, which to Domination Finance’s Kolody was to be expected. Kolody noted that Ethereum is “totally decentralized and it is essentially impossible for the network to completely shut down,” which is “why gas fees can become insanely high.”
Ethereum’s resilience, he said, is part of the reason why it will “always have users and developers building on top of it.” Kraken Intelligence’s Humiston noted the incident was a result of “unprecedented demand” that did not scare away investors.
Humiston further noted that once the network came back online, the price of SOL rallied and returned to levels seen before the network went down. To the analyst, this “suggests investors didn’t see the incident as ruinous to Solana’s overall narrative and value proposition.”
If anything, Humiston concluded, Solana’s price action proved that the market “acknowledges the difficulties in building a globally distributed system and expects growing pains as the network scales, evolves and innovates.” To other experts, however, things aren’t as clear.
A network hiccup?
While most experts seemingly agree that Solana’s 17-hour outage was a small hiccup in a nascent network, others believe it may represent a problem that needs to be addressed before further outages occur.
According to a Solana network explorer, the network has already processed over 39.6 billion transactions and currently processes over 2,300 transactions per second. Part of those transactions may, however, be in part “thousands of critical consensus messages” that all blockchains have but don’t process as transactions.
That’s according to Justin Giudici, head of product at Telos Blockchain, who told Cointelegraph that these processes are “typically handled separately from on-chain transactions via a distinct communications channel — for good reason.”
Per Giudici, Solana’s design approach “results in amazing scalability claims” that are “entirely misleading.” Giudici said that in real terms, a lack of separating critical processes “required for each Solana node to run from the real transaction which prevents the correct prioritization of CPU cycles,” which led to the crash.
Giudici sees Solana’s 17-hour outage as a “serious problem” for the network, as he believes that if Solana sees “enough real transactions,” which he said are estimated to be “as little as 200–300 transactions per second” these can “out-prioritize the functioning of the networks core processes due to lack of separation of concerns in the networks architecture.”
Interest in Solana keeps growing
Interest in Solana has steadily been growing, as evidenced by its growing DeFi ecosystem that has steadily been supported with the launch of new NFT marketplaces and collections. Its cheap transaction fees make it an attractive alternative for retail investors, although institutions are also keeping an eye on it.
Standard Custody & Trust Company’s McDonald revealed that institutional investors aren’t the only ones interested in Solana. Per his words, the firm has had “tremendous institutional interest” to custody and stake SOL.
Oscar L. Andrade, founder of Solana-based DeFi platform Bancambios, noted high profile projects built on Solana: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has teamed up with Solana Ventures to launch a Web 3.0 and social project investment fund while Brave founder Brendan Eich announced it will integrate with Solana on its privacy-enabled browser. Andrade told Cointelegraph:
“Reddit and Brave are onboarding millions of users into the Solana ecosystem because they realized it has the potential to help cryptocurrencies achieve mass adoption. Its near-free transactions and instant finality make the use of blockchain technology seamless.”
McDonald predicted the boom will continue as institutional investors continue to invest in Solana and retail investors keep following that trend. Wall Street’s interest in the cryptocurrency has been such that SOL became the third cryptocurrency to hit the Bloomberg Terminal, after Bitcoin (
High transaction fees have been a persistent thorn in the side of investors and blockchain projects since at least 2014 when Ethereum Network co-creator Vitalik Buterin stated in reference to Bitcoin, “The ‘Internet of Money’ should not cost $0.05 per transaction. It’s kind of absurd.”
Fast forward to November 2021 and the simple act of approving a token so that it can be transacted on Uniswap can cost as much as $50 worth in Ether (ETH) depending on the time of day.
Average Ethereum gas cost. Source: Etherscan
Even layer-2 solutions, which were billed as the protocols that would help solve the fee issue, have been unable to escape the high-fee curse of congested networks as new users onboard into the cryptocurrency ecosystem by the day.
isnt arbitrum supposed to be cheap lol what a joke pic.twitter.com/v839tZ4nch
— satsdart (@satsdart) November 2, 2021
Users migrate to low fee networks
As a result of persistently high Ethereum fees, a growing number of users are bridging assets to lower-cost Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible networks. Data from Dune Analytics shows that the total value locked on bridge protocols has been on the uptrend since the beginning of October.
Total value locked on Ethereum bridges. Source: Dune Analytics
As shown on the chart above, the Ronin bridge has become one of the more popular protocols over the past month thanks in large part to Axie Infinity users migrating assets to the lower fee platform.
The popularity of Axie Infinity is shown in the following chart from Token Terminal displaying protocol revenue.
Top projects by cumulative protocol revenue in the past 7 days. Source: Token Terminal
Related:How to take full advantage of the benefits of DeFi and increase high-interest savings
The third-ranked protocol by revenue is PancakeSwap (CAKE), a high TVL DeFi protocol on the Binance Smart Chain that offers significantly lower transaction fees than those found on Ethereum.
A majority of the top gainers in terms of TVL over the past week are also protocols that are either found on Ethereum competitors or offer multi-chain functionality in side-chain environments.
Top projects by TVL trend in the past 7 days. Source: Token Terminal
Avalanche, Abracadabra.money, Yield Yak, Benqi, SpookySwap and Loopring are also multi-chain or Ethereum side-chain compatible networks which have seen a significant bump in TVL in the last 7 day.
Unless something can be done in the near term about the high transaction cost on the Ethereum network, the trend of liquidity being migrated to other blockchains is likely to continue.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
