Austin Federa, head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation, says the washout of FTX hasn’t hindered the network from attracting users and developers.
In spite of the FTX contagion, Federa told CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” Tuesday the network has seen an increase in on-chain activity.
Federa said the network has shown real staying power for users and developers alike.
Solana price gains as community interest fires up after dog coin bonk
According to a Solana blog post from November, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt FTX, supported Solana with great enthusiasm. FTX and Alameda Research, a trading firm owned by Bankman-Fried, purchased SOL tokens from the foundation and Solana Labs six months after the platform first went live with a test network for $58 million.
As some Solana-based decentralized-finance (DeFi) projects leave the ecosystem, Federa said that “initial attention” may have contributed to the network’s rise and turmoil.
Nevertheless, Federa said developers continue to join the network, even as non-fungible token (NFT) projects like DeGods and Y00ts leave the network. The NFT project Bonk (BONK), whose “airdrop” included distributing a large number of its tokens to Solana users, pushed SOL up 20% on Tuesday.
“There aren’t really any projects migrating off of Solana that require the network’s performance and power,” Federa explained. “There is a lot of stuff you can only build on Solana, so those developers keep building on Solana.”