Long time since I have done a blog post on cryptocurrency and / or crypto related subject matter. I feel compelled to do one today after having come to a decision I have been putting off for a month or so....
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After a decent amount of research into the Solana project I made the decision to make a long term investment in Solana. I purchased a decent amount at prices ranging between $23 and $47 and moved them off to cold storage
I did always have concern about centralization but decided that the teams vision of decentralizing over time was acceptable as long as they could solve the Transactions per Second (TPS) and consensus mechanisms in the interim.
Solana's relentless pursuit of speed and scalability has transformed the blockchain landscape. But at what cost?
Solana has long touted itself as the blockchain network built for speed and scale. "Move fast and break things" has been the unofficial mantra guiding its breakneck development.
Unveiling the truth behind Solana's innovative facade, a closer examination exposes the underlying reality that lies beneath its cutting-edge veneer.
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First red flag was the FTX debacle but I made excuses for it being 'the human factor' as was the case with Terra Luna.... so I hung in there. Then came the first major outage .... the 'fix' was what bothered me more than the outage itself. Centralized and fungible screamed my brain !!
Is Solana a House of Cards ready to collapse?
In the ever-evolving landscape of blockchain networks, Solana has emerged as a contender for the title of Ethereum's successor.
Launched in 2020, Solana has marketed itself as the "most performant blockchain”, touting its ability to process over 50,000 transactions per second.
Solana's TVL soared to over $10b in late 2021, only to plummet to under $300m a year later, before a brief resurgence to just under $5b in March.
Solana's sizzling growth masks a sordid underbelly of security lapses, rampant speculation, and an explosion of scam projects tainting its supposed innovation.
2022 saw Solana pummeled by a relentless barrage of exploits, leaving the network battered and staggering.
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Mid December I sold half my bags which safely recouped all my outlay (average price was around $72)... but despite this I still felt uneasy...
The year began with a $4.4m private key exploit on Raydium and reached a crescendo with the Wormhole bridge hack, which ranked #5 on the Rekt leaderboard after losing a staggering $325m.
March saw Cashio's infinite mint vulnerability cashing out $48m, while Nirvana Finance suffered a $3.5m flash loan attack, leading to the first conviction for hacking a smart contract.
The Slope wallet breach robbed over $5.3m in user funds and as the crypto market cooled, Solana saw a brief reprieve in exploits.
The final nail in the coffin for me is this Meme mania on the Solana ecosystem.... playing havoc with throughput, rug pulls and real degen behavior
2024 ushered in meme coin mania for Solana, a speculative frenzy spawning a scammer's paradise of rug pulls and crypto cons.
One project that was not meant to be a scam or a rug, turned into a hot mess this March. While attempting to burn the liquidity pool and tokens set aside for an airdrop, the developer behind Slerf accidentally burned $10m worth of tokens.
Solana's bargain-basement fees and lightning speeds unleashed a wave of speculative projects and meme coins, such as the infamous dogwifhat.
Vapid meme coins devoid of any utility have ballooned to hundreds of millions in TVL, artificially inflating Solana's metrics while papering over the network's festering issues.
But degen behavior can be an addiction and Solana has turned into a bit of a crackhouse for users addicted to gains.
Most of all the above I was aware of in a disjointed way... but my favorite YT channel @investanswers (James) continued to support SOL as a project and I do believe he is astute and well intentioned.... but my towel is now being thrown into the ring.
The investment was not bad as it has doubled again since my first 50% sold so I have no gripe there. I just believe that in the long term there will be better projects to invest into which fall more into the 'ethos' of Bitcoin.... decentralized, nonfungible and peer to peer !!
Thanks for sitting through a long thesis .... please go and read the full article which inspired me to do this blog... and which also tilted my decision in the favor of SELL ....
Stay safe, stay free and love the one you are with ....
I feel like it's been a long time since you did a blog post in general but I've been really struggling to keep up for a while ^_^;
Hope life is going as well as juggling crypto :D
hello my busy friend !! I am studiously looking after my health as I want to still be alive and kicking when your project is completed and available for consumption.
How are you and your loved ones? all surviving and thriving?
I don't think I will finish it in my lifetime the rate I'm going but that's not going to stop me from trying ^_^;
Yep everything is fine, as I described to some friends not that long ago, I do have a perpetual headache from trying to do logistics all the time (I'm really bad at logistics so I feel like I'm just dog paddling in rough waters trying to keep my head up right now) but everything and everyone is otherwise fine and going good :)
Great to hear .... world is crazy at present.. not much sense of normalcy so may be a good thing I back in Africa... but I so miss Italy darn.