3 - 5 minute read
The Solana network is set to see major developments in 2023, according to Austin Federa, head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation. In an interview with Bloomberg on Friday, Federa hinted that the foundation would be focusing on reinvesting in the fundamentals to create opportunities for builders in 2023, adding that the community was already angling towards that direction.
The past half of 2022 was a difficult period for the Solana community, particularly after it was revealed that Alameda’s Research and FTX had entanglements with Solana. However, Federa assured the community that they had taken control of all projects linked to the collapsed crypto exchange and its founder. Sam and FTX got involved with the Solana network in the summer of 2020 when they started building Serum, a central limit order book built on-9chain “that couldn’t be built on any other blockchain network”. Serum would later become the first limit order book deployed on a blockchain.
“That code has been taken over by the community and relaunched as something called Open Book. So that’s kind of what I was talking about the community healing parts of the ecosystem that Sam and FTX were involved in,” said Federa.
Federa went on to note that despite the FTX fallout bringing a lot of doom and gloom for Solana, active addresses and validators had shot up, meaning that “more people are using the network than were before.”
“The interesting part is that the technology wasn’t part of what happened at all’ he said adding, “What we’ve seen is the community and developers around the world really come together and replace the parts of the ecosystem that had FTX involvement and then expand from there.”
Federa also announced that the foundation was working on improving the network’s processes by building a new validator client. “One of those biggest investments is a second validator client which is really a second copy of the system that runs the network. That means that if one system goes down, there is a second system that can step in,” he added.
The new client would help eliminate outages and instability problems that have plagued Solana for the past two years. Furthermore, apart from improving performance, it would introduce optimisations that allow people to build products and services that are just as efficient as their web 2 counterparts.
The announcement sent SOL prices skyrocketing as investors took the news as bullish. In the past 7 days, SOL grew over 43% to tap $24- the highest level since Nov 2022. As of writing, the crypto was trading at $23.60, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Overall, the Solana community has shown resilience in the face of adversity and with the foundation’s renewed focus on reinvesting in the fundamentals, 2023 is shaping up to be a promising year for the Solana ecosystem and its investors.
