Original Title: What's next for SOL?
Original Author: Jack Kubinec
Original Translation: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: The Solana Accelerate conference raised four unresolved questions: Slow promotion of the Firedancer client. Kraken frequently supports Solana and is expected to become its main exchange. Solana Mobile launched the SKR token, raising compliance questions. There is an increasing voice of skepticism towards Trump on-site, which may affect the political prospects of the crypto industry.
The following is the original content (reorganized for better readability):
Last week, I spent most of my time shuttling between various conference venues and surrounding events in New York, attending Solana Accelerate. Such conferences typically concentrate on releasing a slew of news, and Accelerate was no exception, bringing important updates on Solana's core infrastructure, Solana Mobile's startup project, and tokenized stocks.
As I mentioned last week, changes have quietly occurred. Competition has intensified, and some previously celebrated areas of the Solana ecosystem are starting to lose their luster. To better understand these potential changes, here are the four questions I am most concerned about after Accelerate:
What is the progress of Firedancer?
Jump released Frankendancer last September, which is a "semi-finished" version of Firedancer, making some improvements to the performance of the Solana client. Earlier this year, it also began supporting Jito bundles, allowing validators to perform MEV operations more efficiently.
Currently, Frankendancer only accounts for 6% of Solana's total staked amount (up about 1% from last week). This Solana client project, developed from scratch, has been hyped for many years, but so far, most validators seem not to have adopted it.
A participant privately told me that Jump and Solana may have overhyped Firedancer too early and too aggressively; perhaps a more low-key development and launch would be more effective.
The key driver for Frankendancer may be financial incentives: its developers announced a staking delegation program during the conference, similar to the one from the Solana Foundation.
Is Kraken going to become Solana's "favorite exchange"?
One of the major announcements at Accelerate was Kraken launching xStocks—a tokenized stock product that includes Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, which will trade on Solana in the future.
This means global investors now have a new way to invest in U.S. stocks, but more notably, Kraken chose to launch on Solana. After all, Kraken also has its own Layer 2 blockchain, Ink, which should logically be prioritized. But I guess they see the commercial potential of the Solana ecosystem.
As an exchange headquartered in the U.S. and long overshadowed by Coinbase, Kraken may have noticed the discord between Coinbase and the Solana community—such as Coinbase directing users to use Base.
Solana is currently the hottest blockchain ecosystem, and becoming the preferred exchange for Solana investors could be a significant business opportunity for Kraken. Over the past few months, they have restored staking functionality for U.S. users, invested some funds into Solana's treasury assets, and now launched tokenized stocks on Solana, clearly getting closer.
What is the logic behind the SKR token?
The Solana Mobile startup project, supported by Solana Labs, announced three major things at Accelerate:
a) The Seeker phone will ship in August;
b) It will adopt a decentralized architecture to challenge Android and iOS;
c) A token will be issued, codenamed SKR.
I was somewhat surprised by the news of this token. After all, Solana Labs has an office in New York and should be particularly cautious about compliance—issuing a token can easily lead to legal troubles. Just look at the turmoil caused by the SEC classifying SOL as a security.
I guess Solana Labs (which is currently incubating Solana Mobile) believes the current regulatory environment is friendlier and may allow SKR to avoid too much regulatory pressure. They also know that the hype around the previous Solana phone was significantly driven by token incentives.
As Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has always said, breaking the duopoly of the App Store is not easy. Perhaps SKR can lend a helping hand.
Is there a rift forming between Trump and the crypto community?
During Accelerate, members of the newly established Solana Policy Institute were also visibly present—they are trying to expand Solana's influence in the political sphere. Speaking of this, I noticed a politically related dynamic.
Former "Unchained" journalist Veronica Irwin tweeted last week: “@RitchieTorres said at Accelerate, 'We shouldn't sell access to Congress or the White House,' and the audience applauded.”
She added, “I was surprised by the audience's reaction—it's rare to see people express dissatisfaction with Trump at crypto conferences lately.”
But just last week, Trump held a dinner for his Solana MEME coin holders, sparking ethical controversies. Congress is currently advancing legislation on stablecoins and the structure of the crypto market, and if the Democrats start to oppose the crypto industry due to Trump's "profit-seeking" behavior, it could be detrimental to the entire ecosystem.
That said, the SEC during the Trump administration did drop many lawsuits against crypto companies. If I had to bet, I would say that given some of his recent pro-crypto statements, this relationship is likely to be maintained.
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