Solana Breakpoint: The Biggest Announcements From Day One

Hopes were high for some big announcements, but even the most devout Solana maxi wasn’t ready for this.

September 20, 2024 by Finn Miller

Over 5,700 Solana fans, users, and bulls descended on day one of Singapore Breakpoint. The biggest conference event in Solana history, Breakpoint delivered a wrath of key updates, with crucial developments announced from both native teams and institutional players.

If you weren’t at Breakpoint, here’s what you need to know:

Firedancer Live on Testnet

Solana users and investors alike were delighted to see Kevin Bowers, Jump Crypto’s Chief Science Officer take the stage to deliver one of the network’s most eagerly awaited updates.

Firedancer, the novel validator client promising to bring unparalleled levels of scalability, decentralization, and security to Solana, is now live on testnet.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Bowers also took the opportunity to outline the development history of the client and its evolution from Frankendancer, an experimental synergy of existing software with Jump’s new codebase, to the optimized final Firedancer product.

To rounds of raucous applause from the Solana faithful, Bowers announced that the existing Frankendancer client is now live on the Solana mainnet.

Franklin Templeton Building on Solana

While existing SOL ETF applications find themselves unlikely to be approved in the short term, that doesn’t mean that TradFi giants aren’t eager to launch Solana-based products to their institutional clients.

Franklin Templeton, one of the world’s largest financial players boasting over $1.3T in AUM (Assets Under Management) announced its intention to launch a mutual fund on the Solana blockchain.

Citibank Exploring Solana

Franklin Templeton, 21Shares, and VanEck aren’t the only Wall Street players with an eye on crypto’s most performant Layer-1.

Citibank, the fourth largest bank in the United States, shared that it was exploring Solana’s potential, suggesting that seamless money transfers and advanced smart contract composability present unique opportunities in the future.

Jupiter Makes Big Moves

Traditional Finance may have dominated the headlines, but Solana-native DeFi teams also commanded their fair share of the spotlight.

Jupiter co-founder Siong presented an immense range of updates coming to Jupiter’s expansive ecosystem. Crucial announcements included a refreshed v2 perps platform, the reveal of the Ape Pro memecoin trading platform, further details surrounding the Jupiter mobile wallet, and Jupiter’s acquisition of the SolanaFM explorer.

SKY, Formerly MakerDAO, Deploys on Solana

MakerDAO, one of the crypto industry’s longest standing DeFi protocols, recently rebranded to SKY, migrating its iconic decentralized stablecoin from $DAI to $USDS. Building on top of the momentum achieved with the rebrand, SKY announced a proposal to leverage Wormhole’s cross-chain infrastructure to bridge $USDS to Solana.

Reinforcing SKY’s desire to be present on the Solana network, the protocol announced an rewards campaign to incentivise deeper liquidity on the network. According to SKY governance, the maximum distribution of weekly rewards is capped at 2M $SKY.

The move helps to bring greater stability to Solana DeFi by providing a more diversified range of stablecoin assets onchain.

Continuing the trend of Solana migration, the Huma Finance PayFi network also announced its intention to launch on the network.

Sling Money Raises $15M

Sling Money, a novel consumer app providing instant cross-border payments using Solana, announced the closure of its Series A funding round.

The simplified payments app raised $15M in a round led by Union Square Ventures and currently operates in over 120 countries.

Solana Blinks Integrated with Shopify, Powered by Helio

Helio, a popular Solana payments protocol, announced it was introducing Solana Blinks support for Shopify, one of the world’s biggest ecommerce platforms.

Further closing the gap between the Web2 world and the cryptocurrency economy, the integration allows shoppers to instantly buy products from Shopify merchants directly on 𝕏 using digital assets.

Tensor Stack Goes Open Source

Finally, Tensor breathed fresh air into the Solana NFT scene. The popular trading marketplace announced it was open-sourcing its codebase, allowing developers across the Solana Ecosystem to build on Tensor to create innovative applications.

To further encourage development, the Tensor Foundation announced a grants program designed to support teams building meaningful applications using the Tensor stack. All applications leveraging the stack will collect a 2% fee, with revenue being shared equally between the Tensor Foundation Treasury and app developers.

Richard Wu also used the stage as an opportunity to tease the launch of a new Tensor product, vector.fun.

What to Expect on Breakpoint Day 2?

Breakpoint day one was packed with critical announcements, but there’s still plenty of Solana teams that are yet to take the stage.

Day two promises to be excellent day for Solana DeFi revelations, with teams like Kamino Finance, Sanctum, and Marinade taking the stage to deliver key presentations on their protocols.

Beyond that, attendees can also expect a vast range of keynotes from emerging Solana apps and more of the debates and technical deep dives that’ve made Solana Breakpoint 2024 such a success already.