Now that the dust has settled, the inevitable post-mortem of Breakpoint 2024 can commence. The annual Solana conference was, by any measure, a resounding success. The backdrop of a green crypto market may have helped to calm nerves and convince delegates to watch the stages rather than their screens, and the content didn’t disappoint.
Amidst all the big picture stuff about the future of Solana and intersection of web3 with AI/gaming/sports, there was plenty of tea being spilled by Solana native projects with betas to launch and news to share. Here’s a selection of the highlights from the September 20-21 Breakpoint event in Singapore.
One of the biggest reveals at Breakpoint, at least from the perspective of Solana devs in attendance, was Xandeum’s blueprint for radically expanding Solana storage. Xandeum has developed a new storage primitive that overcomes the limitations of Solana’s accounts-based programming model and Breakpoint attendees were able to get the complete lowdown on what the tech entails.
Details of Xandeum’s storage layer and also its liquid staking token were shared at Breakpoint by its core team. If its blueprint for scaling Solana comes to pass, Xandeum’s storage layer will become the Solana “hard drive” that allows Solana dapps to access virtually unlimited data. The Breakpoint news wasn’t just for devs, incidentally: Xandeum also took the opportunity to announce the launch of its XAND token.
Breakpoint 2024 was also used as an excuse for Jump Crypto to deploy a new Solana validator client. Frankendancer, as its name may suggest, is not quite the finished article but rather a taster of what’s to come. Frankendancer will allow Solana devs to get a feel for what Jump’s client brings to the party before the final iteration, known as Firedancer, goes live.
Crypto projects are naturally inclined to reveal big news at big conferences and Jump Crypto’s Kevin Bowers made the most of his time on stage. He elucidated on the challenges of running validators on Solana before revealing what makes Jump’s iteration different from that offered by Anza. The availability of an alternate blockchain validator is good news for Solana, providing redundancy while showcasing a solution that wasn’t engineered by a Solana-adjacent team.
Is a blockchain really a blockchain before it has an L2? These secondary scaling networks can be thought of as moons to the L1 planets they orbit. While other Solana projects such as Sonic SVM may dispute this “first,” Zeta Markets, the Solana perps exchange, used Breakpoint to share Bullet, billed as Solana’s first L2.
Bullet will operate as a zk-EVM rollup that’s been engineered with scalability at its core. With the mainnet expected to launch in Q1 2025, the Solana community won’t have to wait long to see what Solana feels like operating on L2 infra. Naturally, Zeta will be running its own perps DEX on Bullet, which will serve as the first proof-of-concept app. If it’s a success, expect other projects seeking to avoid the high traffic of downtown Solana to follow suit either through entering Bullet or building their own L2.
Finally, one Breakpoint 2024 story that must be shared concerns Solana NFT marketplace Tensor which earned plaudits for the vision and spirit of its new roadmap that was shared. The big news is that Tensor has fully open sourced its code, allowing anyone to create marketplaces, dapps, and platforms that leverage Tensor’s tech.
It’s also about to become much more than just an NFT marketplace. Its vision includes games, collateralized lending, trading bots, and even a pump.fun for NFTs which could prove a killer app if it’s engineered with the same pumpamentals and game theory – and if anyone can build it, Tensor can. The Tensor Grants Program was also revealed, providing incentives for devs to utilize Tensor’s code to create new applications.
Amidst all the after-parties, networking, and pitching, there was serious dev business getting done at Breakpoint 2024. While the average degen might not care too much about the finer points of Solana clients or decentralized storage, those who work on the coal face of blockchain development know what it means. Solana is here for the long haul and it’s starting to lure the tech, from tooling to L2s, into its orbit. It’s all very bullish for the rapidly expanding Solana ecosystem.
This post was last modified on Sep 24, 2024, 11:03 BST 11:03