Those are all important categories, and @Solana is well positioned to win them, with elite teams attacking each from every angle.
But one vertical matters more than all the rest in the 21st century: the market for the world’s dominant non-sovereign SoV + MoE.
Long term, the entire DeFi ecosystem will converge and grow on the network that SoV asset is natively issued and primarily traded.
Most people are unaware that Solana is going to seriously compete within that vertical as well.
If @world_xyz manages to bring serious prediction market share to Solana, and @jtx_trade and @PhoenixTrade do the same on the perp DEX side, the last two missing pieces of the puzzle are finally filled, leaving one chain that hosts everything retail and institutional finance could ask for, all in one place.
At which point I genuinely struggle to see what reason is left for most other chains to even exist.
Lo, memecoins bloom, then wither on the vine;
But @Ore, once struck, outlives the jesting signs.
Forsake the trenches, where false fortunes shine.
Descend, good sirs, and enter thou the mines.
I’m not yet convinced that privacy should be embedded directly into the L1 protocol, given the added complexity and the potential for inflation or soundness bugs.
It’s also not obvious to me why sufficient privacy can’t be implemented one layer above instead.
And I’m somewhat skeptical that Zcash can develop a robust DeFi ecosystem natively on its own chain.
Today, accessing DeFi with ZEC generally means using wrappers, bridges, or intent-based cross-chain systems, which reintroduce trust assumptions/external dependencies, which undermines part of the point of the asset.
Just my strong opinions loosely held though.
One aspect of Zcash I like is that its privacy network effect scales with usage. As more users hold and transact $ZEC through shielded addresses, the shielded pool grows, the anonymity set deepens, and privacy therefore improves for all users inside.
Vires in numeris.
While the broader VC market trends towards an all time low, @Colosseum's startup funding rate is now at an all time high.
As funds shift focus beyond crypto, it has never been clearer that blockchains exhibit the potential to rearchitect our institutions of money and markets.
We are doubling the size of our next accelerator cohort due to the significant increase in talented founders submitting to our hackathon and Eternal sprint.
The startups receiving investment from our VC fund and joining the batch at our San Francisco HQ will be announced soon.
@CloudKingTV@4oko4ow@Peak3trades@arbitrum@portfi_@colosseum No problem. Also know that judging is ultimately a subjective process.
We miss great projects sometimes, so don’t take our word as final validation on whether your product will succeed or not.