[Exclusive Interview] Tom Lee & Chae-rin Kim "Solana Is Still Growing After FTX Crisis"

In 2021, the concept of Web 3.0 was introduced to the public as NFT and DApp emerged as the trend of new technology. Solana(SOL) heated up the market with emerging technology projects at the center.

Solana has emerged from the Ethereum-dominated market ecosystem as one of the next-generation power forces in the era of Web 3.0. Solana is definitely the one that grew the most among blockchain projects during last two years.

However, last year, the collapse of FTX, a major partner of the Solana Foundation, caused Solana's price to plunge, which is suffering from tremendous growing pains. Blockstreet, blockchain-specialized economic media, had a chance to get exclusive interview with Tom Lee, Asia representative of the Solana Foundation, and Chae-rin Kim, ecosystem development representative of the Solana Foundation at '2023 Xangle Blockchain Week'.

Q. Last year, the price of Solana (SOL) fell significantly due to the FTX bankruptcy. Prices are rising this year thanks to the Solana-based 'Meme coin' BONK, and it is questionable whether the rise of Solana can be continued as BONK is the meme coin. Is there a differentiated strategy in terms of price increase of Solana this year?

The Solana Foundation's main strategy is to build a major ecosystem that contains Web 3.0, that is, to form a 'Web 3.0 native' ecosystem. The price of each Solana is also important, but there has never been a special strategy for a short-term price increase.

It is clear that Solana's main partner, the FTX bankruptcy, has damaged the Solana Foundation and the Solana brand, and that Solana's price has also fallen. However, despite the big crisis, Solana is showing its rise again after bottoming out around a solid community.

As for the Bonk. The Solana Foundation did not prepare the Bonk separately. Bonk, who drove Solana's price rise, also gained popularity around the solid Solana community, and this is only what made the price rise.

There is no price increase strategy for Solana. However, It could be claimed that the the Solana Foundation is focusing on the fundamental Web 3.0 concept itself. Web 3.0 means 'decentralization' that means individuals form communities and constitute an economic ecosystem.

We, Solana Foundation, think Solana prices will naturally increase if the foundation provides a pleasant environment for community members to work based on the basic spirit of Web 3.0, rather than drawing up a special price-raising strategy. Currently, the number of users of Solana Network has tripled compared to before the FTX bankruptcy.

We know that the measure of technological development does not directly lead to price increases. However, if a technology is adopted on a large scale, it will inevitably be used, and we would like to say the principle that it will generate great demand and also reprenset a price increase. we think technology is more a matter of adoption than a matter of cognition. we think this mechanism will be proven if many developers use Solana and expand their own and vigorous ecosystem based on Solana network.
Q. The community's suspicions about the design of the Solana network itself continue to these days through several incidents last year in which the Solana network was suspended. It was true that rumors that Solana was a marketing-oriented project rather than technology could not be avoided over the Solarana network outage. Can you explain the Solana network stability problem, and above all, the network design itself that has caused numerous disruptions?

First of all, there was no algorithmic problem to answer the critical question.

It was only an error due to the surge in projects created based on Solana, the number of DApp activities increased accordingly. Although Solana has experienced the FTX crisis, Solana still remains in the second to third place in the NFT and DApp fields.

If there were problems such as technical errors in Solana network, developers would not have looked at Solana-based projects, and DApp would not have been able to attract users of the same size as it is now. In fact, we think that if someone had developed DApp based on Solana or experienced Solana network, the one would have rarely doubted Solarana technology itself.

Solana's technical fundamentals are solid. It's just that there's been a lot of rumors about varius issues. Solana's current transaction processing rate (TPS) per second is significantly higher, maintaining stability.

After the FTX crisis, Solana performed three upgrades consisting of ▲ Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) ▲ Stake-weighted QoS ▲ Local Fe Market, which provided an opportunity to make Solana's technology better, and also confirmed Solana's solid community composition.

Q. Recently there was an article that the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating Solana developers for inflating the size of lockup deposits (TVL). Transparency has emerged as an important factor as the cryptocurrency market has recently lost trust due to various unfavorable factors, so please explain about the incident. And how do Solana Foundatio plan to deal with criticism of the foundation's transparency in the future?

In fact, it can be seen that for those who have experienced blockchain ecosystem activities, it is difficult to say that TVL represents the exact amount of funds held by the foundation. This is because anyone can participate as it is an open-source ecosystem.

The Solana Foundation does not claim the foundation's financial transparency with TVL. It is true that the TVL level was high, but the issue related to TVL is not directly related to the foundation. TBL is just only a figure that many people refer to.

The foundation is trying to maintain transparency by announcing the exact amount of damage after the FTX crisis. It is making efforts to communicate with investors by disclosing the honest figures through blogs and various communication channels.

Q. Solana-based NFT(Non-fungible token) project 'DeGods' and sister project 'y00ts' recently announced to leave Solana and migrate to Ethereum and Polygon. Why do you think these major NFT artists are leaving Solana? What is Solana's plan for this?

The expression of leaving Solana is not accurate. There were only projects who continued their activities in other networks through bridges. As it is the era of 'multi-chain', various projects are already continuing their work in and out of the chain. As such, it is not accurate that they leave Solana. They just continue to work on other chains for the stability of their projects. It can be understood as a concept of project expansion.

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