Dear Bankless Nation,

It hasn't been the most up-only of summers for the crypto markets, but things are far from quiet out there.

Today, we're taking a look at all of the announcements that have been surfacing around the Solana ecosystem as of late, and giving you a quick breakdown on some of the bullish conditions there.

-Bankless team

3 Bullish Solana Announcements

Bankless Writer: William Peaster | disclosures

Is Solana the most undervalued chain relative to its potential? It's hard to say!

In the depths of a crypto bear market, you’ll take what wins you can get, and Solana has notched a few big ones in recent weeks.  

So, while many alt-L1s seem rudderless, Solana is racking up advances. Let's dig into a few of the bullish news events and see whether there's much to get excited about around the network...

🪙 Visa Expands Stablecoin Settlements

Global payments giant Visa just made waves in announcing the expansion of its stablecoin settlement capabilities to Solana. 

The expansion will begin with collaborations with merchant acquirers Nuvei and Worldpay. Specifically, Visa will tap its Circle account to facilitate settlement payouts to these acquirers in the USDC stablecoin over Solana. 

The move builds on tests that Visa first initiated in 2021 with Crypto.com, which oversaw cross-border USDC payments on Ethereum. The new initiative with Solana aims to provide faster and more cost-effective solutions to merchants that are dealing with blockchain tech. 

“This is a huge deal,” Nic Carter said on the news. “Writing on the wall: stables will become the de facto interbank settlement solution via card networks. Even my non-crypto fintech friends are fired up about this.”

🫂 Maker’s Planned Codebase Embrace

Maker is among the oldest apps on Ethereum, and outside of Lido it’s currently Ethereum’s largest DeFi app. As such, Maker has become a decentralized institution in the Ethereum scene and an example of the best that early DeFi has to offer. 

Maker is in the process of implementing Endgame, a multi-year governance and tokenomics upgrade, and it’s been known for a while that Endgame will entail the creation of a new blockchain, codenamed NewChain. 

Most just presumed it would be a layer 2 (L2) scaling solution, which is why many were surprised on September 1st when Maker co-founder Rune Christensen called for an exploration of forking Solana to serve as the NewChain foundation.

While all user-facing products like DAI would remain on Ethereum and L2s, Christensen argued NewChain could serve as the Maker backend and “will allow the ecosystem to use hard forks to gracefully recover from the most severe form of governance attacks or technical failures.”

Why Solana then? L2s can’t employ hard forks, which is key to the Endgame vision. Beyond that, Christensen also noted the technical quality of the Solana codebase and being able to rely on the developer talent in the Solana community. 

Not everyone is buying this vision, though. For example, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin dumped MKR tokens on the news, citing “weird directions.”

But whether you love it or hate it, Maker’s Endgame plans are now bullish for Solana if Christensen’s NewChain fork plans stay on course. In the very least, it’s a big validation of Solana’s tech stack, and the pipeline of people and resources Maker can bring into the Solana ecosystem over time is considerable. 

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✅ Shopify x Solana Pay

"Shop till you drop with Solana and Shopify," Anatoly Yakovenko, the cofounder of Solana Labs, recently said. 

That's because Solana Pay, a payments protocol developed by Solana Labs, was just approved and integrated as an app by Shopify, one of the biggest global ecommerce companies. 

The integration paves the way for the millions of businesses that use Shopify to tap into a streamlined crypto payments solution. The protocol eliminates intermediary bank fees, chargebacks, and holding times, enabling direct payment settlements in USD stablecoins compatible with Solana. 

An added advantage of Solana Pay here is it enabling Shopify businesses to launch web3 commerce experiences, from token-gated offers to NFT loyalty programs.

All that said, this integration not only positions Solana at the forefront of ecommerce crypto solutions but also signals a broader shift towards mainstream adoption of blockchain-based payment systems for retail users. 

Action steps

• Keep an eye on Solana: Track the Solana DeFiLlama dashboard
• Watch ETH vs SOL vs ATOM: The Blockchain Trilemma with Mike Ippolito
• Catch up on yesterday’s tactic: Getting Started with Avocado Multisig