I'm hearing some hype about Solana. The hype suggests that Solana can do what Ethereum does -- all of it -- but faster, more affordable, and more scalable.
This is a huge claim. Is there any truth to the idea that Solana can compete with Ethereum? Will there be Play2Earn opportunities on this blockchain?
Looking at Solana
A glance at Solana's homepage shows the most important thing for any blockchain: A slick website. (lol)
Why is Solana better than other options? They claim 8 core innovations... I think most great companies only have one or two key innovations that allow them to grow, but EIGHT? That's a lot of stuff. Throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks?
Today is not the day for me to dig into eight different innovations on blockchain technology and assess their veracity. This is a surface level overview. Let's keep moving.
The Dapp Ecosystem
One of the big hype factors around Solana seems to be the ecosystem of Dapps that is emerging. The people behind Solana are throwing funding grants around and recruiting aggressively to get more developers into their world.
Here's a glance at just a few of the Dapps listed on their site:
A lot of it is DeFi stuff which I have no way to really use.
SOL Survivor sounds interesting. It calls itself a game, although the description says it's just a "text-based fighting game" which sounds lackluster.
Still, maybe I can try it out for a near-future post. It's something.
One that I've seen around recently though is Audius, a music hosting Dapp. Here is Solana's claims about Audius:
Checking out the reality of Audius, I see a very generic music hosting site. It does have big names, but there's no social portals to connect with any communities. Honestly this is exceedingly generic, we've all seen social media "disrupters" like this that don't really do anything except offer a sleek interface. I'm skeptical tbh
I still might give Audius a try. Since I have some new music to release later this year anyway, it wouldn't hurt to get set up on there and "dip my toes" into the Solaris ecosystem. Who knows, maybe it's better beneath the surface.
Initial Thoughts on Solana
Going forward I hope to see if there are gaming projects developing on this blockchain. Stuff like Audius is cool, but to me it doesn't represent any steps forward considering we already have big-scale protocols like LBRY offering decentralized hosting of content.
Based on Solana's claims of affordable and scalable transactions, it would be perfect for play2earn games.
Unfortunately, there are no games being developed as far as I can tell on the website's listing of Dapps. If you look at the tags, they mostly represent different flavors of DeFi.
My main thought on Solana is that it looks interesting, but is indistinguishable on the surface from other blockchains I've heard about over the years. I do see some smart people getting excited about Solana so maybe the fundamental technology is a true step forward. I don't know.
What I do know is it never hurts to take a little time to look into new things. Blockchain world is teeming with new projects, best I can do is try to check them out one by one.
Do you like Solana? What excites you (or deters you) about it?
