The Solana voting drama was honestly pretty fun to watch ;-)
Here the timeline.
Helius YES โ Jupiter YES โ Figment NO โ Everstake NO โ https://t.co/I9niai9GJm NO โ Kraken NO โ SGP-0002 falls below 66.67% โ Drift/VelocityDEX flips YES โ Kraken large validator flips ~8.1M SOL to YES โ Galaxy moves from mostly Abstain toward YES โ late ballots arrive โ SGP-0002 passes at 72.7%.
For once, governance didnโt feel like some dead forum thread nobody reads.
SGP-0002 was sitting below the 66.67% line, major validators were voting No, people were arguing publicly, @WhiteWhaleLabs was calling out votes, and @mert was apparently doing an absurd number of calls trying to get people to reconsider.
Then things started moving. @JupiterExchange voted Yes, and a few hours ago @solflare joined them.
Drift suddendly flipped to yes and @krakenfxโs big validator flipped.
More votes came in, and suddenly the proposal that looked like it might die actually passed.
And I genuinely love that this is possible.
You can disagree with the proposal, the pressure, Mert, White Whale, Kraken, Drift or anyone else.
But stake actually meant influence. People could see what validators were doing, stakers could override them, public criticism mattered, arguments happened in the open and large operators were willing to reconsider their positions.
That is infinitely more interesting than pretending governance exists while 5 insiders decide everything in a Telegram chat.
Messy, loud, slightly chaotic and very Solana.
Veeery Solana ;-)
But pretty damn cool to watch real onchain governance actually matter.
Congrats, Solana.
For my first post, Iโm sharing a letter @NVIDIA signed on why open models matter.
AI will transform every industry, power every company, and be built by every country.
Open models strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.
The world needs both frontier closed models and frontier open models.
https://t.co/AUKzoQ5Ikb
From $PEPE on Arbitrum to $ANSEM on Solana in less than 30 seconds.
No bridging. No wallets. One account.
@gumonchain private beta is open now.
https://t.co/b0zZrzS9HL $JUP
the JUP token launched a little over two years ago.
since then, we've been through catstanbul, catlumpur, multiple acquisitions, and the team grew from fewer than 20 people to close to 200 people at one point.
one of the biggest challenges for me wasn't technical. it was changing my role.
when the team was small, decisions happened with a handful of people in a room. we could debate, build, ship, and iterate within days.
as the company grew, my days became almost entirely coordination. getting alignment across teams could take weeks. every morning there would be another list of decisions waiting. there was no longer any uninterrupted maker's time left on my calendar. (pg's essay on maker's schedule vs. manager's schedule captures this feeling perfectly.)
for a long time, i didn't realize what was happening.
the first time you're deciding whether to spend millions of dollars, you think carefully about every angle. after making enough decisions like that, they stop feeling extraordinary. your brain starts optimizing for speed. pattern recognition replaces deliberate thinking. eventually, you're no longer thinking deeply about every problem. you're just unblocking the next urgent thing.
looking back, i think i spent a long period operating almost entirely on autopilot. or maybe zombie mode is the better description.
nothing was wrong externally.
eventually, i realized what was missing.
i had stopped learning.
that was probably the biggest problem.
i wanted something that would force me to become a beginner again. i wanted to think deeply again. i wanted to build again. i wanted to struggle with problems i didn't already know how to solve.
that became GUM.
building from first principles again has been one of the most enjoyable experiences i've had in years. i find myself reading constantly, learning something new almost every day, and having technical discussions that leave me with more questions than answers.
the team makes it even more fun. i'm lucky to work with engineers who have built products that facilitate billions in trading volume, security researchers who constantly challenge assumptions, and former L1 engineers who think about infrastructure from completely different perspectives. every conversation feels like an opportunity to learn.
for the first time in a while, i'm uncomfortable again.
and i think that's exactly where i want to be.
GUM's private beta launches next monday, july 6.
i'm excited to start learning from users again.
> ome of the most prominent Solana voices have spent an incredible amount of time relentlessly shilling an entirely different blockchain. Yes, ZEC is it's own Layer 1.
I am literally the only one. I am not the ecosystem, I am one person.
and I am building a privacy layer on Solana out this summer.
Solana will destroy everyone's expectations yet again. I guarantee you this
some confused folks think I left SOL because I talk about not one but *two* coins now
reminder: we run the no 1. validator, no 1. trading infra, no 1. dev platform, RPCs, & soon the no. 1 privacy protocol - on Solana
the *only* Solana exclusive leading provider
pls. trillions.
this part sucks.
the maths feels terrible when you buy a coin down >90% by >95% your position is 50% down.
but this is crypto and assuming your project survives and thrives >90% entry is asymmetric.
opportunity knocks.
conviction matters.
spot only.
big balls only.
still convinced majors havent bottomed. cycle low later in the year. yet im bidding alts down 90% right now.
sounds paradoxical. alts should bleed harder than majors into new lows. but its not that clean. its liquidity and opportunity cost.
alts are their own thing. they sit next to btc and eth but they move on their own micro and macro. that can push them against the broader tape.
some will rip well before majors bottom. they always do.
this is the window. liquidity hasnt come back yet, you get real size at real prices.
then theres opportunity cost. the gap to a coin between down 90% and down 95% feels real when youre watching it bleed. it isnt. if the coin survives and prints new highs that 5% is nothing next to the size you couldve built while the market was bleeding out.
you wont nail the bottom. forget it. what you need is to have done the work upfront. so when the screen is red and everyone around you is capitulating you know exactly what you own and why. fortitude comes from that. so does the conviction to take whats in front of you instead of waiting for the perfect entry that never shows up.
take the bid. build the position. lock it in. let the cycle do the rest.