Updates
Solana Breakpoint 2025 Announcements
Solana held Breakpoint, its annual conference, in Abu Dhabi last week.
For builders, conferences like this are where real momentum shows up. Teams ship. Narratives form. Big announcements get made.
And Breakpoint didn't disappoint. Here are my top three
#1. Firedancer is on mainnet.
Firedancer is a new Solana client that promises 1M TPS.
Even though it has gone live, only a few validators have started running it. To get the full benefits. Until most validators upgrade, overall throughput will still be capped by the slowest participants.
This upgrade will make Solana even bigger and cheaper.
#2. A New Solana Perp DEX by Ellipses Labs.
Early this month we talked about PropDEX.
Ellipses Labs is the team behind PropAMMs, the innovation that helped make Solana the go-to chain for onchain trading. Their new perp DEX builds on those ideas.
Solana completely missed the HyperLiquid and perp sector. The existing perp apps aren't competitive.
Phoenix is a new perp DEX from Ellipses that has learned from PropAMM. So this platform should be on our radar.
During the MON launch, PropAMMs consistently offered better execution than centralized exchanges. That is the direction onchain markets are moving.
#3. Major App Updates
Several top Solana apps announced meaningful updates.
Here are the updates from Jupiter, the DeFi superapp on Solana:
- Announced $1M pool in Jupiter Rewards Hub.
- JupUSD launching next week with multiple integrations
- Jupiter Lend is now fully open source
- Jupiter Verify expands into a trusted data layer
- Acquisition of RainFi to build a money market for every asset
- Order book functionality expected in Q1 2026
Kamino refreshed their brand and announced six new products.
- RWA DEX
- Private credit
- Borrow intents
- Offchain collateral
- Fixed-rate, fixed-term loans.
- Kamino BuildKit
If the above product names sound a bit cryptic, read this thread for better explanations.
There were many more announcements, including Coinbase adding Solana tokens to its in-app DEX trading feature.
But this article doesn't have the space to cover everything. If you want to catch every announcement, here's the playlist with all talks from the conference.
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Stablecoins are eating finance. TradFi institutions are entering crypto.
But there's one core question on top of their minds: Does crypto mean my counterparties see all my revenues and transactions?
Some suggestions, like operating hundreds of wallets, are impractical. Each wallet has separate gas payments and operational overhead.
Others are just promises for now. FHE, TEEs, and standalone privacy chains aimed at the "masses." These approaches either never worked or introduced fatal trade-offs.
Enter Hinkal.
It brings confidential payments to public blockchains for any asset.
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The sender, recipient, and amount will be fully hidden. You can see example transactions here.
Hinkal offers the most seamless privacy today.
Drama
What's Happening With $AAVE?
A new civil war has started in Aave, the biggest DeFi app by TVL
What happened? A recent upgrade on the Aave website added a fee to the "swap facility" and redirected it to Aave Labs.
Is that really bad? After all, the team gotta eat too.
Before this change, swaps were handled by Paraswap, and all referral fees and positive slippage went to the Aave DAO. The new CoWSwap integration is giving all the money to the Labs.
Labs is estimated to be capturing roughly $200k per week that previously flowed to the DAO. (Check the math here.)
This wasn't an isolated incident.
There are multiple accusations of Labs extracting value at the expense of the DAO:
- An attempted Horizon token launch that the DAO rejected
- A Horizon deal that reportedly cost the DAO over $400k
- Speculation around Labs being paid for deployments on chains like Aptos that are net negative for the DAO
- Labs negotiating the MegaETH deployment outside of DAO processes
Now, why should you care about all these? Token price.
The value of most DeFi governance tokens, like $AAVE, is backed by the DAO. So when the teams keep the revenue for themselves, they're destroying the value of the token.
This "Team vs DAO" problem is a widespread problem in DeFi.
- Circle is acquiring the team behind Axelar Network. But $AXL token won't see any benefit from this.
- The $UNI became known as a useless token due to the same misalignment between the Labs/team and the token. (They've now fixed it tho.)
On the other side, Aave Labs can justify its decisions as well.
According to them, the Aave protocol/DAO is distinct from the Aave interface. There are a lot of ongoing costs for running an interface. And the Labs have the right to monetize the interface.
You can read more about both sides of the issue in this forum post. This X article is also good for the broader Aave context.
Ultimately, this is a legal problem.
Right now, most DAOs cannot legally hold assets and act for themselves. (There are some, like DUNA, but even they haven't fully proved out.) So we divide them into two parts: company and DAO.
And this division is creating a lot of conflicts of interest.
If you want a short update on the current state of how DeFi is approaching this problem, read this article.
Ultimately, this is a very hard problem that we're still solving.
For now, as an investor, you'll have to monitor the relationship between companies and tokens in your portfolio.
🚀 DeFi Catalysts
JELLYJELLY, the project from Venmo cofounder, was released in the Apple App Store. The token went up 120% on the news.
ZkSync announced ZKsync Managed Services from Matter Labs. They'll operate everything related to the L2 24/7.
Celo launched the CELO Tokenomics Initiative. They're looking to better link CELO to real network activity and growing stablecoin usage.
Cosmos Hub is inviting proposals from research firms to suggest better tokenomics for $ATOM.
Legend, an onchain mobile superapp, removed its waitlist. It's now publicly available on the App Store in 33 countries.
dYdX has enabled spot trading with zero fees for Solana assets. They're expanding beyond their core perp offering.
Bittensor just underwent its first major supply shift since launch.
Synthetix introduced Wick Insurance. It's a mechanism that delays liquidations for a short window by freezing an account.
Avon describes itself as a real-time credit layer. It has opened up its testnet to the public.
Phantom wallet is offering a prediction market in its interface via Kalshi, a leading prediction market platform.
📰 Industry News
Galaxy Digital has issued its first US Commercial Paper on the Solana.
NASDAQ is moving forward with the plans to enable 23-hour stock trading. This will be a gigantic shift in traditional markets.
YouTube now allows creators to receive creator payouts in PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin. The world is coming onchain.
JP Morgan announced that they're launching their first-ever tokenized money market fund, $MONY, on Ethereum.
Coinbase is getting ready to launch prediction markets and tokenized stocks. These are two hot big verticals.
Circle has signed an agreement to acquire Interop Labs, the team behind Axelar Network. The AXL team won't see any benefit from the acquisition.
😂 Meme
Until next time,
Edgy
Today's email was written by Edgy and Yayya.
DISCLAIMER: I'm NOT a financial advisor. This content is for education and information purposes only. Crypto and DeFi are risky and speculative. Please do your research before investing.
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