today, Solana changes forever

we've solved the biggest data/RPC problem that exists

solana historical/archival data — has now been redesigned

quick context:

today when you query historical data (getBlock/getTransaction/getSignaturesForAddress), it hits Google BigTable

this is i) slow, ii) expensive, iii) inflexible for queries

e.g., you physically can not get the first tx for a Solana address without looping back endlessly from the latest tx

for busy addresses, this can take thousands of RPC calls — extremely slow, expensive, and annoying

also, imagine you wanted to get the most recent 100 txs for an address, how do you do it?

you first hit getSignaturesForAddress to get all the tx signatures and then call getTransaction on each tx to get its details — this can take 1,001 RPC calls in the worst case

not anymore

we have built a new distributed archival storage system that is 1,000x faster, more flexible, and more scalable

the best part? we're introducing a new API method:

getTransactionsForAddress

with this method, you can now:

i) combine getSignaturesForAddress and getTransaction calls into just 1 call instead of 1,000

ii) you can search in reverse order without needing to traverse

iii) you can search historical transactions by time and slot ranges (e.g. get me all the txns from January 5th, 2025 until February 5th, 2025)

what's more:

- getBlock calls are now 10x faster
- getTransaction calls are now 10x faster
- getSignaturesForAddress calls are now 10x faster

10x lower latency, 100x fewer RPC calls, and 1000x less code

enjoy!

docs below enjoy: helius.dev/docs/rpc/gettr…

hold up wait, i totally missed this

but if you look at basescan

there was a period of rougly 500+ blocks with 0 user transactions (i.e., an outage)

am I reading this wrong or why was there absolutely 0 coverage for the biggest L2 in crypto being down? example block: basescan.org/block/20071525

some upcoming things:

- 2 killer consumer features
- Frankendancer (Solana client w Firedancer networking stack)
- ZK compression (Solana 1,000x cheaper with zk)
- Firedancer (no comment needed)
- Mythril (full node client w lower hardware reqs)
- Sov rollups on Solana oh and ore v2

this is arguably the best application of crypto I've seen yet — everyone needs to talk about it more

traditional mapping is a monopoly, expensive, and inefficient

how it works is that Google has cars that drive around and gather data periodically and charge super high fees since this data is very hard to get

with crypto, you can give people all around the world the ability to earn by adding dashcams to their cars and map the world in real-time

the result is that you get:

i) much fresher mapping data (Google Maps might take months to re-map something!!)

ii) much better economics

iii) much better composability and network effects

the end result is a much better real-time world map than any centralized institution can provide

the team behind it is @Hivemapper and they're building on Solana this is so sick — crypto enabling better real world systems

the situation is escalating fast i am confident this will change her mind on crypto

hot take

OG ETH crowd (who genuinely care about the future of crypto, not just their own bags or twitter engagement) will actually come around to appreciate SOL

now that tourists & predators have been washed out — only the real ones who want a better future will be left ETH & SOL approach scaling much differently —but I don't see why that has to be a fighting point

the *real* problem is that crypto apps barely have PMF

it doesn't matter who can scale to handle the next billion users...if there's not a billion users who even want to use this

There's a lot of noise / negativity out there due to the market - it's easy to ignore some of the positive signs and signals behind the scenes.

Let's take a quick look at some promising SOL charts 📈 Users

Even though the price of SOL (and all crypto assets) have tanked - it's promising this hasn't resulted in a drastic loss of users.

With over a million active wallets - we're much better positioned for the next cycle.

There have been some problems with Solana lately.

In actuality, it's almost always the *same* recurring problem.

Here is a short & simple explanation of what's happening (for non-technical people) and what it means for the future 🧵 1. SOL's software makes it easy for bots to spam/flood SOL validators.

2. When validators are spammed, they become overwhelmed and do their job (producing & verifying valid blocks) less effectively.

As a result, they're less likely to include your txns when producing new blocks

The Solana NFT ecosystem has grown by an insane amount in a short amount of time.

As a result, it's hard to keep up.

Here is an overview of the land for analytics, tools & infrastructure for Solana NFTs, whether you're a builder or a trader 🧵 First, the obvious - marketplaces:

- @MagicEden (best marketplace on Sol imo)
- @opensea (dominant ETH marketplace coming over to Sol)
- @SolanartNFT (OG marketplace)
- @fractalwagmi (gaming focused)
- @solportio (community focused by @SolportTom)
- @SolSeaNFT (OG marketplace)

There are a lot of misconceptions about #Solana and its performance / decentralization.

This is made worse by people not knowing where to check for stats regarding the network.

Here are some sites you can check out to view some data & insights about SOL 🧵 - Solana Explorer (explorer.solana.com)

Probably the most well known explorer for Solana, you can check out the current TPS of the network, the live transaction count, the current block height and more.

When I first started analyzing #Solana NFTs, there weren't a lot of tools available - I had to do a lot of manual work + scripts.

Fortunately, that's starting to change.

Here are 10 tools that I use which will help you make more informed NFT decisions 🧵 1. @solanalysis - one of the first analysis tools on Solana. You can get a quick overlook of the ecosystem in a dashboard view along with total marketcap, 7 day trading volume, floor prices and more.

There has been an *insane* amount of FUD regarding #solana recently.

While it is absolutely fine (and encouraged) to criticize Solana for its various design decisions and tradeoffs - most people have been perpetuating flat out lies.

Let's dispel some myths.🧵 1. Consider this tweet:

https://twitter.com/Justin_Bons/status/1469375120124882951

Claim: "There is good reason why blockchains before SoL did not take this route" referring to deterministic block creation.

What he doesn't tell you:

- Most PoS chains literally have the same mechanism

The NFT community LOVES to talk floor prices.

But no one really talks about the revenue the projects themselves raise. Both from mint and from trading fees.

Are there any correlations between floor prices, trading volume, and mint revenue?

I analyzed 25+ Solana NFTs 👇 First, if we look at the amount of SOL raised from minting, we this graph.

This graph is interesting as some of the high revenue projects here haven't done great and some of the low revenue ones have done very well.

(This isn't to say a high revenue project won't do well)

There's a lot of hype around gaming right now.

@solana with its high TPS / low fees is the perfect 🎮 platform

This has led to a TON of projects in the ecosystem, making it impossible to keep up.

I've compiled a list of the ones with *gameplay footage* to reduce the noise 🧵 1. @AuroryProject - One of the most well known projects in the space and deservedly so.

Aurory is an RPG game where players acquire creatures (Nefties), train them, and duel them against other players (like Pokemon). Also, great team IMO.

Gameplay:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1455981507810635780

#Solana twitter has been talking a lot about how many NFTs a project should mint.

People think projects with a 10K supply are doomed to fail.

Also, what if most of the NFTs are hoarded by a few whales? Does the decentralization of holders matter?

Let's take a look 👇🧵 First, let's look at # of tokens.

Most people in the space think that NFTs with 10k supply are bad and that lower supplies are better.

Well - as you can see from this graph, there is absolutely no evidence to back up those claims!

...or is there?

You often hear:

"NFTs are in a bear market right now because the price of #Solana is going up"

But is this actually true? Are the prices of NFTs actually inversely related with the price of SOL? Or is this just cope / copium?

I did a *VERY* rough analysis to find out👇 How?

1) I tracked the avg sale price of 6 random NFT collections everyday for the last month
2) Calculated the % change in their avg prices day-to-day
3) Took the avg of the % changes and aggregated into 1 data set
4) Plotted it against the % change in the price of SOL

Graph 👇

With the #Solana NFT market getting crowded lately, I decided to go over 120+ upcoming NFT projects in the space and analyze ALL of their roadmaps.

Most of the roadmaps are very similar - but some are quite unique.

Here are some themes and insights from my research 🧵 Theme #1: Deflation/Burning

With the hype and success of @DeGodsNFT, it seems some projects were taking notes. Almost 5% of the roadmaps that I looked at mention burning their NFTs to reduce supply!

Have @DeGodsNFT started something here?

Exciting times.

There are many great #Solana NFT drops today, including @Danuki_Dojo and @DeGodsNFT 🚀

Unfortunately, there will likely be some scam drops and rugs happening today as well.

Here are some tips to make sure you don't get scammed when dealing with NFTs today. Thread 🧵. 1. Burner wallets!

If you see a mysterious dark alley IRL, do you walk into it with your life savings with pockets full of cash? No. (right?!)

Similarly, don't walk into mysterious digital alleys / projects with all of your crypto life savings.

Use a burner wallet!

⏬

One of the scary things about the #Solana NFT space is you never *really* know who's behind the projects

Will they rug? Can they deliver on the "roadmap"? gmi?

Well - what if I there was a project with an all-star team and an already proven concept?

Enter @photofinishgame 🧵 What is it?

A digital horse-racing game which lets players buy, sell, breed, train, and race horses against each other.

All while earning real money.

Think @zed_run, but no gas fees. Built on #Solana.

(Image from the team's previous game)