legends.fun

The next Solana billion dollar company is on legends dot fun. Get visible, engage users, prove traction.

[legends.fun @legendsdotfun]

Today 99% of Solana products die unnoticed

They can’t find a market, can’t find users nor capital

Let’s fix that

@legendsdotfun is back with a fresh look

this week we are releasing features that will transform how founders and users interact with Solana products

Notis on 🔔

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I paid $500/month for 6 months to test Alpenglow.

A few weeks after it shipped, the Foundation cut my SFDP stake.

And I absolutely agree with the move.

Directionally.

Some context: I turned off @gotokamai validator 2 days ago.

Yesterday I put my 2-year validator P&L out. Toly replied: lower the VAT by 50%.

@TheWattenhofer (who co-wrote Alpenglow) said it's worth considering now that the delegation program is changing.

So I wrote the SIMD.

SFDP was a subsidy. When the new rules dropped on Nov 6, 337 validators were in it. Roughly half the network, kept alive by ~5% of staked SOL.

Ending that is healthy. But once it's gone, 1 number decides who can afford to run a validator: the VAT. 0.8 SOL a day, flat, burned, whether you hold 5k SOL or 5M.

Roger's framing: the VAT is there to protect against "too many" validators.

Alpenglow already caps the active set at the 2,000 highest staked. We're at 698. That's 1,300 empty seats before "too many" is a problem.

On my own books:
↳ old vote fees: 2 years net 329 SOL, year 2 at −0.7
↳ VAT at 0.8: net 487, year 2 around +118
↳ VAT at 0.4: net ~830, year 2 around +275

Cost to the network: ~102k SOL a year less burned. About 0.45% of annual issuance.

That's the price of keeping the operators who test upgrades and spread stake away from the big hosting providers.

The ask: VAT × 0.5 at every slot-time stage. Same burn, same cap, same stake ordering. 1 constant table behind a feature gate.

Operators: reply with your numbers (stake, monthly costs, what share VAT eats). Or drop them straight in the SIMD discussion below.

The more real P&Ls in it, the harder it is to ignore.

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

2 years running a Solana validator. What does it look like?

1,144 SOL in rewards. 815 SOL in costs.

Net: 329 SOL. Year 2: −0.7 SOL.

The books are closed, so here's the full P&L, line by line.

Revenue
↳ commissions: 320 SOL
↳ block fees: 772 SOL
↳ Jito tips: 52 SOL

Costs
↳ vote fees: ~1.1 SOL a day, every day, whether you produce blocks or not (790 SOL total, 239 of it covered by SFDP in year 1)
↳ servers: ~$1,960/month paid yearly (265 SOL at the price on each payment date)
↳ my time: not counted (I never billed myself, which is how every validator P&L is wrong)

The stake
↳ year 1: SFDP stake, first-year costs help by the Foundation. @phase_ backed me from the first epoch (5k SOL → 16k at peak)
↳ year 2: mostly paid by the returns of year 1 (server + )
↳ @DynoSolPool: 17.5k SOL from June 2025, the biggest pool delegation until Jito
↳ @doublezero: ~7.5k SOL for a few months in 2025
↳ @JPoolSolana: ~2k SOL in early 2026
↳ Aug 2026: @jito stake lands, 31k SOL

@Layer_33_ put break-even for a zero-commission validator around 160k SOL.

None of those pools got me near 160k and yet I've been able to clear some profits thanks to a few random blocks with big fees

Some hidden costs
↳ Before getting your SFDP stake, you are running a validator that makes 0 money, for as long as it takes to get the stake
↳ Early on I had a few restarts on my machine (Ubuntu auto updates), that did cost me a few epochs of stake each time
↳ Getting called by Pager Duty at 3am is real and a weird experience
↳ Getting stuck in a restart and losing too many credits will get your SFDP stake nuked for a few epochs (that moment when your spare node is on an old version that forked away and a restart was 30 minutes)
↳ I had to handle a Solana upgrade in the middle of the ocean once, was a lot of fun (not)
↳ Paying for 6 months of Alpenglow alphanet (+$500/month) and getting removed from the program a few weeks after AG going live

Alpenglow swaps the per-slot vote fees for an admission ticket of ~0.8 SOL a day. Over my two years that's 573 SOL instead of 790, so net 487 instead of 329. Year 2 alone would have gone from −0.7 to about +118.

I decided never to join the shady pools that were enabling sandwich attacks and other dark patterns. Never joined any dark pools or anything that would have manipulated the end user's funds.

What a ride!

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I’ve seen a massive amount of friend’s Solana validators shut down over the years

Every time I told myself: it’s all about being patient

After 2 years of running a validator, which was barely making it (taking all the costs into account with bear market prices) and running perfect ops around it

I finally got this @jito stake and was starting to see a future with Alpenglow where the validator was going to start making money

But one random day just before breakpoint

The SFDP changed the rules of who gets stake

Craziest part is that I understand and agree on the change

SFDP was keeping a big chunk of validators alive, in a blockchain that prides itself at not being a communist chain AND doesn’t need to motivate people to run validators to compete with Ethereum numbers

Solana is going to 200 validators, operated by financial firms and large companies

We are drifting further and further away from our 2021 NFT and DAO ideals 😅

But I guess each dev profile has a role to play at different moment of a chain’s lifetime

I will never forget the Serum fork when FTX crashed (and my Wired article lmao), helping all the companies in 2022 and 2023 stay afloat, winning Colosseum with Tokamai, all the people I met through solana’s amazing events in 2022/2023/2024/2025

My only worry is that the big validators of the top 30 did show a massive inability to keep their operations going when a few months back we almost had a network halt

Not my problem anymore I guess, tho

@solana, of course I still love you

(I hope many people will take this post as a bear market bottom signal)

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I’d be really sad to have to remove the “solana validator” part of my profile

Was so proud to be a part of the block building chain of solana validators

But it seems this last SFDP update will be a rough one for validator around 150k staked sol

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

HAPPY NEW SOLANA CONSENSUS DAY

Alpenglow is live

Sad we are not in London to rejoice together

Time to finality is now officially RIDICULOUS

ACCELERAAAAATE

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I haven’t changed my profile pic since I won the @solana Hyperdrive hackathon and stayed loyal to @RadiantsDAO

But this new @SCUMSOL art hits TOO HARD

And I stay loyal to the doggo, bonk bonk

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I have been following @SCUMSOL for almost 5 years now

When I minted @DeGodsNFT I really liked the art

But when degods went v2, the scum traits designs hit me so hard

I’m glad to be a Slimes holder and to now be in possession of this beautiful piece with its physical

Exciting!

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I shouldn’t say this but

I have no bullish thesis on this bull market for now

SOL? Already bet hard in both previous bull markets
BTC? Same

My main bets are @doublezero, @jtx_trade and @JupiterExchange

But it’s hard to really say why precisely

What’s next for you?

[Lever Cat @LeverCatSol]

The best way to get over obstacles,
is through them.

Cat now brings you a completely reworked @LaunchOnSF trading & info terminal, empowering you to make your own choices.

Leverminal 2.0 beta is now live.
https://t.co/32T2vJ0Pf6

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

Mainnet validator upgraded to 4.3.0 ✅
Testnet validator upgraded to 4.3.0 ✅

COME AT ME BRO

FINAL STRETCH BECORE ALPEN-MFING-GLOW

[hax - ハックス @256hax]

今回のColosseum Hackathon（スタートアップのコンペ）の入賞ポイントについてディスカッションします！

スタートアップとしての勝ち方になるため、特定のチェーンに関係なく、どなたでも参考にできます。

[Lever Cat @LeverCatSol]

A cat with a lever is the most serious of protocols 🐱

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

99% of Solana devs have a hard time monitoring mainnet

So they just… don’t

I’m looking for a few @solana devs to get early access to Tokamai open source edition

Yes, your clankers are first class citizen

Send me a dm or leave a reply down here 👇

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

I’ve bought 100% of my crypto with fiat on @krakenfx

Every once in a while they make me proud I trusted them

And today they did the most important thing for my most important blockchain network, @solana - voting yes on 0002

To a thousand years Kraken empire 🥂

[SCUM @SCUMSOL]

GM

Woke up to find one of my rascally ass collectors @SolanaMalos started a token of one of my characters, El Cucuy and sent me the fees.

Out of transparency I am not endorsing this token. Nor am i trading/selling 🤍.

I will donate some fees to my non-profit @somos_axolotl

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

Just cast my votes with @gotokamai :

YES on SGP-0001
YES onSGP-0002
YES on SGP-0003

Quick personal notes below on why 👇

[Seeker Envelope @seekerenvelope]

Product of the week on @legendsdotfun

[hax - ハックス @256hax]

1/
RFS on Solana Fall 2026

ColosseumとYC Reqeust for Startups(RFS)の動向をもとに、Solanaで今後注目されると考えられる領域を分析して個人的に整理しました。

👇 スレッドにて各詳細を記載します

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

Like @toly would say: Reject modernity. Return to open source

Pretty happy to have pushed my first commit linked to a @solana foundation repo a few hours ago

While building anomaly detection at @gotokamai with our in house Solana specialized AI cyber model, I wanted to redirect users to the list of transactions between two slots so they can actually see what happened during that anomalous window

So I plugged in the latest `getTransactionsForAddress` to the ecosystem explorer and added filtering on top, for much smoother transaction loading:

- fetch transactions between two slots
- fetch transactions between two block times

And of course, the web superpower: those filters link directly in the URL. Very useful when redirecting from your own app

[A N S E L | Tokamai @ansel_sol]

Since their airdrop in 2023, I’ve been a maxi @jito bull

I knew they were going to put those tokens to good use one day

And this day came: JTX is now live

The latest best platform to trade your fav coins

Don’t have your access yet? Use my referral link in the next tweet