1. Breakpoint - A Huge Pump

Solana Breakpoint 2023 is the annual conference of the Solana community held in Amsterdam from October 30th to November 3rd. Many projects in the Solana ecosystem updated their project progress, technical improvement, and new road-maps at the conference. With Breakpoint as a catalyst, Solana welcomed a huge pump. As of November 21, 2023, SOL has risen 140%, and its ecosystem has also witnessed an overall rebound. Many people have begun to believe that the current Solana has shaken off the shadow of FTX , embarking a whole new narrative as a monolithic blockchain.

2. What are the Secondary Market Hotspots for Solana Ecosystem?

According to the data from CMC and CoinGeko, we have selected 80 Solana native projects that meet our standards for trading volume and market capitalization to find out which Solana projects investors have focused on from Breakpoint to now (November 21). The following content only focuses on projects that have issued tokens in the secondary market.

First, let’s assess the overall market condition of Solana ecosystem:

The total market cap of the dePIN sector is currently the highest, mainly contributed by Rende's recent migration to Solana. The second is DeFi sector. In terms of the number of projects, the ecosystem is mainly composed of DeFi (36 projects) and GameFi (15 projects). Although there are lots of projects in these sectors, the market value is generally not high. Especially for DeFi, the average market cap is only $28.23m. This presents that many high-quality protocols still have great upside potential. Finally, the project amounts and market cap of SocialFi and NFT types are very low, since most leading protocols in these sector have not yet issued tokens.

In general, the main focus of the Solana ecosystem remains concentrated in the sectors of dePIN, DeFi, GameFi, and MEME, which can also be seen from the trading volume (refer to figure below).

Let's take a closer look at the performance of individual projects:

Price Movement - Nosana ranks first, combining three hot narratives - AI, GPU mining, and Solana. After its team showcased the project at the Breakpoint conference, it achieved a price increase of approximately 33 times. Meanwhile, Considering trading volume, other notable performing projects include Bonk, Only1, Shadow Token, and Elumia Crowns.

Trading Volume - Render occupies the first place in trading volume, followed by recently launched oracle project, Pyth Nework. At the same time, we found an interesting new MEME project - Myro, whose project token and Bonk's are the two tokens with the highest price increases and large trading volumes.

Findings and Thoughts:

Solana's ecosystem attention and speculation are mainly focused on DeFi, MEME, and dePIN, making these three sectors worth continuous monitoring.

For DeFi projects, it's worthwhile to explore existing projects, especially those that experienced a significant dip during the FTX incident but are still making progress with active teams.

On the contrary, in the dePIN sector, newer projects are more worth keeping an eye on. Leveraging the unique design of the Solana public chain, these projects have greater imaginative and design space, offering a larger opportunity to find narratives distinct from other similar protocols in the market.

Lastly, the leading MEME project, BONK, has seen a 5.9x increase in price, while the market capitalization of other MEME projects in the sector is still relatively low. There is significant potential for growth, and perhaps we can anticipate a storyline similar to the surge of SHIB following DOGE.

3. Projects Worth Watching in Sectors:

dePIN

Benefiting from Solana's state compression technology, dePIN projects can significantly reduce the cost of minting NFTs representing real-world hardware (multiple NFTs can be minted for just one cent$). Therefore, Solana is the preferred ecosystem for many dePIN projects.

In addition to keeping an eye on new projects, there are currently only four projects in the dePIN ecosystem, each with its own unique features. Render and Nosana focus on GPU computing power sharing, while Synesis One is involved in AI model training (Train to Earn). They are on track on the narrative of blockchain and AI integration. Hivemapper and Helium, on the other hand, concentrate on decentralized dashcams and decentralized wireless networks.

In general, the narrative of blockchain + AI seems to offer higher certainty and potential. For those with a preference for lower risk, Render is worth considering. Despite Nosana's 30x increase since November, its circulating market cap is still relatively low at $26 million, making it worth keeping an eye on.

Synesis One, falling into the category of hidden gems, currently is not receiving much attention. As a protocol with Train-to-Earn concept, it allows users to use their own machines to train models provided by the platform and receive rewards from the platform for training. The Synesis One team is now working on better integration with its Web2 project, Mind AI, in the near future.

DeFi

We used Twitter activity as a starting point to find teams and projects that are still actively building during bear market. Out of 36 DeFi projects collected, 17 remain active. The others either have minimal engagement or have ceased operations.

Among the 17 active projects, the most prominent is the recently launched star project Pyth Network, considered a blue-chip asset in the Solana ecosystem. Orca, Solend, and Marinade could be recognized as blue-chip projects in the Solana DeFi space. Their recent fundamental data (TVL and user numbers, etc.) have been increasing rapidly. For more details, you can refer to the Solana data dashboard on DefiLlama (https://defillama.com/chain/Solana).

In the relatively low market cap category, notable projects include GooseFX, Prism, and Hadeswap.

GooseFX is an all-in-one platform currently offering derivative trading, liquidity yield pools, and NFT trading. Its liquidity pool product has shown significant progress, utilizing dynamic one-sided liquidity provision technology, offering LPs higher profit shares - USDC and USDT can achieve an annualized return of around 40% now, which is quite substantial. It aligns with the Real Yield concept. Currently, most pools are at full capacity.

Prism is a CLOB & AMM hybrid spot and derivative Dex, also providing Dex aggregation for spot trading. The platform's trading volume has been growing rapidly, with daily trading volumes exceeding $40 million for major pairs like SOL-USDC in its derivative business.

Hadeswap is interesting; its initial product was an NFT AMM similar to Sudo Swap, but its development was moderate. Fortunately, the team changed direction and introduced OranFi (@OranFiBTC) - a launchpad for BRC20, and Midas - an NFT backed stablecoin project. Its social media presence remains very active. Considering their FDV of only $9 million, it's worth adding to your watch-list.

For more information on recent secondary market and social media data for Solana DeFi projects, please refer to the chart below.

MEME

In this current upward trend, the MEME sector has shown remarkable performance, with Bonk firmly holding the leading position and achieving a 5x increase in price. It is also worth to pay attention that Binance recently has listed two perpetual trading pairs for Solana projects - PYTH and BONK - which have the potential to drive the growth of other projects in the Solana MEME sector.

Currently, Solana's MEME projects haven't seen many highly novel entries, with the predominant themes centered around dogs and frogs. It is pudent to keep a special eye out for any new MEME projects that bring a more unique style to the table.

Among the existing projects, except Bonk, the valuations of others are not very high. Among the them, Samoyedcoin and Myro are particularly worth paying attention to.

Samoyedcoin, an adorable white Samoyed MEME, was once a leading project in Solana MEME sector but has been surpassed by BONK. However, its community is still highly active, with each Twitter post receiving tens of thousands of views on average and a good presence within the Solana community. The team is very active in operations, frequently collaborating with other Solana projects and participating in offline events. Its current valuation is approximately $31 million with good daily trading volumes.

Myro, named after the dog of Solana co-founder Raj, is a new MEME token gaining relatively high community attention recently. Focused on MEME images with frequent AMA sessions on Twitter, Myro closely aligns with the Solana SHIB narrative. Its current valuation is $16 million.

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Solana Ecosystem Momentum: Unveiling Top Players and Next Wave of Opportunities