Attractive projects of the Solana ecosystem (Part 1)
Project Name: Solana (SOL)
Project Introduction: Solana is a base layer or Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure, which mainly aims to solve the scalability problem of the current blockchains. At present, the Solana network uses 1000 validator nodes to provide a block time of 400 ms and process 50,000 transactions per second.
In the second half of this year, Solana achieved a good ecosystem performance. At present, there are more than 400 ecosystem projects, including DEXs, lending, insurance, NFT, Metaverse, etc. According to MEXC Global, with the development of the ecosystem, its ecosystem asset SOL has risen from 22.12 USDT to 215.41 USDT since July. This is anincrease of 873.82%.
Official Website: https://solana.com/
Other than Solana, what are the key projects of the Solana ecosystem that deserve attention?
Project Name: Raydium (RAY)
Project Introduction: Raydium is DEX based on Solana. Users can exchange assets in AMM liquidity pools or with the on-chain central limit order book’s shared liquidity that is supported by Project Serum. At present, the Total Value Locked (TVL) on Raydium has reached US $1.477 billion USD, and the total transaction volume has reached US $18.6 billion USD.
The key advantages of Raydium are:
1. Gas is faster and cheaper: It uses the efficiency of the Solana blockchain to achieve faster transaction volume and gas fees than Ethereum, and these fees are only a small part of the capital.
2. Central limit order book with full ecosystem liquidity: Raydium provides chain liquidity for the central limit order book of Serum DEX, which means that Raydium allows access to the order flow and liquidity of the whole Serum ecosystem.
3. Trading interface: For traders who want to view TradingView charts, set limited orders, and better control transactions.
Official Website: https://raydium.io/
Project Name: Saber (SBR)
Project Introduction: Saber is a cross-chain stable asset and multi-asset transaction protocol on Solana, characterized by providing slippage transactions and solving impermanent losses.
In July this year, Saber completed a seed funding round of $7.7 million USD, led by Race Capital with participants such as Social Capital, Jump Capital, Solana Foundation, and CMS. Race Capital also participated in the investment of Solana and FTX.
Official Website: https://saber.so/
Project Name: Cyclos (CYS)
Project Introduction: The Solana ecosystem AMM protocol Cyclos is considered to be the most effective limit order system currently in use and deployed on Solana.
Users can concentrate liquidity, build a single price curve of their choice, and allocate their assets on this basis. Then, they can trade for the combined liquidity of all individual curves.
Users can configure their assets within the specified range to become LPs and receive a transaction fee rebate as a reward for added liquidity use.
Previously, Cyclos completed $2.1 million USD funding, and the investors include MEXC Labs, CMS Holdings, Hashkey, Solana Capital, Illusionist Group, etc.
Official Website: https://cyclos.io/
Project Name: Serum (SRM)
Project Introduction: Serum is a decentralized transaction protocol of the Solana ecosystem based on the Order Book, which mainly introduces artificial SBF.
Serum allows users to trade based on the “Order Book” mechanism via the scalability problem of the Solana blockchain. In addition to pre-listing, its high transaction speed and low handling fees also make high-frequency trading possible.
Serum has a cross-chain transaction protocol, and also issues Serum USD endorsed by various stablecoins to avoid a single point of failure. In the long run, Serum’s future benchmarking model should be a “decentralized version” of the FTX Exchange, and will become a spot and derivative trading platform on Solana.
At present, Serum’s partners include a series of SOL ecosystem projects such as the AMM protocol Raydium, the front-end platform Bonfida, the application scenarios Maps.me 2.0, lending protocol Oxygen, etc.
Official Website: https://projectserum.com/#/
Project Name: Slope (SLOPE)
Project Introduction: Slope is a community-driven transaction protocol of the Solana ecosystem and a decentralized DEX based on the Order Book model.
At present, Slope’s products include Slope DEX, Slope Wallet, Slope Starter, and Slope DAO, these products complete the closed loop in the market demand. Slope Wallet is a cross-chain wallet on Solana, the first wallet to access NFT and DeFi applications in the system, and the first mobile application to provide services based on Serum; Slope Starter is a public sales platform, which will effectively help the cryptocurrency project to complete fund-raising, receive community attention and support, and accumulate community members; Slope DAO is Slope’s community autonomous group. Through Slope DAO, community members can provide transaction depth for the project. In addition, all community members can participate in project governance (such as product iteration, smart contract upgrade, IDO project review, KOL qualification review, platform token distribution, etc.).
Official Website: https://slope.finance/#/
Project Name: Oxygen (OXY)
Project Introduction: The Oxygen protocol is a decentralized Prime Brokerage protocol, which imitates the main broker service designed by traditional finance for “institutional investors.” Oxygen is a lending model based on the “capital pool structure”: the capital pool hosts many people’s assets. Oxygen makes lending popular through its license-free, low communication cost, and scalable prime brokerage. For DeFi users, Oxygen makes the use of funds more efficient.
Oxygen’s usage scenarios include:
1. Generate income: Users deposit funds and earn income from them;
2. Lending: Users can borrow assets from the fund pools and pay interest to the fund pools;
3. Trading: Users can trade with the decentralized exchange platform, Serum in the capital pool;
4. Synthetic products: Collateralize the assets in the capital pool to trade more complex-structured synthetic products.
Official Website: https://www.oxygen.org/
Project Name: Apricot
Project Introduction: Apricot is a comprehensive DeFi lending protocol based on Solana, which provides users with diversified services, including over-collateralized floating rate loans, fixed-rate collateralized loans, and DeFi components.
The Apricot loan launched by Apricot is a collateralized loan protocol with low liquidation penalty and high predictability, and provides a 2-hour liquidation guaranteed Apricot Rescue, which provides guarantees for the borrower to liquidize their position in a short time.
Apricot launched three products: Lend, X-Farm, and Assist. Among them, Lend is a decentralized lending product; X-farm is where users can borrow stablecoins with up to 3x leverage which can be deposited into the liquidity pool to obtain income; Assist is an automatic deleveraging tool, which can reduce the liquidation risk by partially deleveraging through preset parameters when the price of collateralized assets fluctuates. Users can set when to activate Assist and sell or purchase assets by setting Assist Trigger and Target Levels.
In August this year, Apricot obtained $4 million USD in funding. The investment institutions include MEXC labs, Delphi Ventures, Lemniscap, Solana Capital, Advanced Blockchain AG, etc.
Official Website: https://apricot.one/#/
Note: This article is for information sharing only and does not constitute any investment suggestions. In the second part of “What are the projects that are worth the attention in the Solana ecosystem?”, we will share the key projects in Solana ecosystem, such as social networking, GameFi, asset management, aggregator protocol, cloud computing and so on.
