The Three Pillars of Solana’s Growth

Clone Protocol
5 min readJan 18, 2024

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Exploring Solana’s Strengths

If you aren’t already aware, Solana has been on a rollercoaster ride of a journey since its inception in March 2020. Solana is a powerful blockchain with a multitude of benefits over its competitors. Let’s dive right into what makes Solana special.

  • Solana’s Super Speed

Solana stands out, especially to devs, with its exceptional speed. Today the blockchain is capable of processing up to 65,000 transactions per second, but Firedancer, a validator client designed by Jump Crypto, claims it can support up to 1,000,000 transactions per second in tests. This unprecedented efficiency is enabled by Solana’s novel Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism built to improve upon Proof of Stake (PoS). Such speed not only improves user experience with reduced wait times but is also crucial for DeFi projects and high-volume trading, where rapid transaction processing is key.

  • Low Transaction Costs

Possibly the strongest benefit of Solana is its remarkably low transaction costs. Unlike other blockchains where high fees can make them expensive and inconvenient to use, Solana transaction fees are regularly less than $0.001. This affordability is critical for both small-scale transactions and large-scale DeFi operations, ensuring that costs don’t impede the innovation and participation in the network.

Solana: A Brief History

Solana emerged quickly in 2020 as a leading smart contract ecosystem and a formidable Ethereum competitor. In 2021 it seemed people had finally realized the true potential of the chain, with $SOL reaching a high of $258.78 and Solana hitting an unbelievable market cap of $78.28 Billion. However, Solana’s streak was ended up a challenge that would truly test the resilience of the blockchain and it’s community.

  • Assessing the Aftermath of the FTX Collapse

Solana ecosystem was among the hardest hit by the FTX collapse. The Alameda Research once held 58 million SOL tokens, about 11% of the total supply, creating a sense of deep entanglement with FTX. With the collapse, the community saw a rush to sell off SOL tokens, leading to a drastic plunge in their value​​​​.
The impact was staggering, with the price of the token and the market cap falling approximately 95% to their respective lows in 2022. Solana, once a symbol of pride for its community, found itself grappling with heightened uncertainty and a loss of trust.

Solana’s Path Forward: The Three Pillars of Growth

Despite the setbacks caused by FTX crisis, Solana’s robust technology and tight-knit community have held strong. Remarkably, in the last week since writing this article, Solana briefly surpassed Ethereum in terms of DEX and NFT trading volumes, signaling the blockchain has finally recovered from a bear market that many believed it never could. However, to achieve mass adoption among crypto users and sustained success over Ethereum, there are key areas where Solana needs to focus. The three pillars essential for this growth, as the Jupiter team laid out in a presentation at Solana Breakpoint 2023, are more capital, more tokens, and more users.

  • Injecting More Capital into the Ecosystem

To match Ethereum’s head start, Solana needs to attract more capital, crucial for launching diverse projects and supporting varied trading markets. Lower slippage stemming from markets with increased capital, combined with Solana’s low transaction fees, would make our user experience truly unmatched.

  • Expanding the Token Universe on Solana

Solana, especially compared to Ethereum, currently has a limited token diversity, which can restrict user choices and experiences. If the Solana community wants to achieve max adoption, we will need to fix this problem, whether that be through more Solana native tokens or by making it cheaper to trade tokens from other blockchains with Solana’s faster and cheaper transaction capabilities.

  • Amplifying User Base and Community Engagement

The most obvious, yet most important pillar in Solana’s growth strategy is the amplification of its user base and community engagement. At the end of day, no matter the technology, crypto is all about people. Therefore, it’s essential for the Solana community to extend its appeal beyond its current boundaries and attract users from various blockchains. This broadened appeal is crucial in growing the community and fostering a thriving ecosystem where the Solana blockchain can flourish.

Clone Protocol: Catalyzing Solana’s Renaissance

Clone Protocol is strategically designed to address these pivotal growth challenges and propel Solana’s expansion. Our mission is to harness and amplify the strengths of Solana, finally making mass adoption possible.

  • Mobilizing Capital: The Comet Liquidity System

At the core of the Clone ecosystem is our pioneering Comet Liquidity System (CLS), a game-changer in capital mobilization. With CLS, you can provide liquidity with leverage to any pool using only USDC. Not only this, but that USDC can support liquidity across multiple pools at the same time, allowing Clone to boast one of the most flexible and efficient AMMs in DeFi. This multifaceted approach allows Clone to utilize capital more effectively, resulting in lower slippage and deeper liquidity for cloned asset (clAsset) markets. While the capital efficiency of CLS will undoubtedly help Solana solve the first growth pillar, even more significant is its implication on the second.

  • Token Diversity: How Clone Protocol Expands The Solana Pie

Clone Protocol is meticulously engineered not just for efficiency but to revolutionize token diversity on Solana. Have you ever thought to yourself “I wish I could buy __ token on Solana”, well Clone is your answer! Our platform is specifically designed to create liquid spot markets for assets from other blockchains, enriching Solana’s trading landscape with a myriad of new tokens. Imagine trading any token on Solana, fast and cheap — that’s the power of the platform Clone Protocol promises.

  • Community Building: Driving User Growth with Clone Protocol

By efficiently integrating tokens from other chains onto Solana, we offer crypto users from any blockchain community the opportunity to trade their favorite assets faster at significantly lower costs. We believe that crypto users who are not yet on Solana are much more likely to try the chain if they can use it to trade familiar assets. Through Clone Protocol, we’re not just diversifying Solana’s asset pool — we’re opening doors for new users to discover Solana’s benefits, thereby expanding the community and enriching the entire ecosystem. To stay updated and be a part of our evolving story, follow us on Twitter and join our Discord community below.

Website: https://clone.so/

Discord: https://discord.gg/BXAeVWdmmD

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CloneProtocol

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Clone Protocol
Clone Protocol

Written by Clone Protocol

Hyper-liquid cloned assets, powered by our Comet Liquidity System on Solana 🪐 https://www.clone.so/

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