This week, $SOL, alongside other digital assets, suffered heavy losses as the entire crypto market cap dropped to $2 trillion. The token plummeted by 8.7% in the last seven days and was trading at $189.
The Solana ecosystem continues to grow remarkably, solidifying itself as a strong Layer-1 competitor to the Ethereum network. Also, the network continues to record the addition of more projects on its network and is gaining attention among institutional investors.
Here are last week’s updates from the Solana ecosystem.
1 – Solana Announces Squid Prize
Last week, Solana announced the Squid Prize, a biannual event that celebrates people who made significant contributions to the Solana community.
1/ It’s time once again to award the Squid Prize, the biannual celebration of the people who make the Solana community great.
This time, we want to hear from you. 🧵 https://t.co/rUgUB6S6Ni pic.twitter.com/0OGK1ccEIB
— Solana (@solana) December 3, 2021
The blockchain platform announced the event via its official Twitter account. According to the announcement, the recipient of the award will receive a grand prize of $20,000 in USDC-SPL. Also, the winner of the Squid Prize will get the unique Squid Prize NFT.
The award, which aims at rewarding outstanding individual contributions to the Solana ecosystem, will close nominations on December 17. Also, the Squid prize initiative was first won by a Solana supporter with the Twitter handle of @fordudesake.
Furthermore, the award will also be passed to another community member every six months.
2 – Grayscale Launches Solana Trust Product
Grayscale Investments has launched a Solana trust product, providing investors with passive exposure to the SOL digital asset.
Grayscale was featured in @CoinDesk's article about the new Grayscale #Solana Trust. More here: $SOL https://t.co/UFWOReO8hy
— Grayscale (@Grayscale) December 6, 2021
Announcing the new offering via an official blog post, Grayscale noted that the product will offer eligible investors exposure to $SOL.
Notably, the Grayscale Solana Trust is the asset management firm’s 16th product in its suite of investment offerings. The addition comes months after Grayscale rival Osprey Funds launched a Solana trust product.
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein stated that the product launch took place due to high demand from the firm’s clients. Currently, other single-asset products Grayscale offers exposure to include Bitcoin, Ether, Chainlink, Filecoin, and others.
3 – Crowny Partners With Raydium
Crowny has entered a strategic partnership with Raydium in a bid to secure easy and flawless migration to the Solana network.
Breaking news🔥
Crowny partners up with @RaydiumProtocol for the flawless @Solana migration!🚀
✅Read more about ‘Why Raydium’ on our Medium: https://t.co/bKs8O3ziHQ
— Crowny 🔗 Our Beta App Is Live (@crownyio) December 2, 2021
According to the announcement, Crowny partnered with Raydium because it is the leading AMM and DeFi platform on Solana. Crowny noted that it chose Raydium because of its unique liquidity pools which will benefit both traders and liquidity providers.
Solana’s cheap gas fee and fast transaction time was another reason for the Crowny and Raydium integration. Also, Crowny noted that the migration to Solana will allow its native token ($CRWNY) to be listed on a decentralized exchange (DEX).
“We are sure that after the migration, our current (and new) $CRWNY holders will come to the same conclusion as we did: Crowny made the right choice going for Raydium,” Crowny added.
4 – Derivatives Network Hxro Raises $34 Million
Last week, Solana-based institutional derivatives platform Hxro Network announced it successfully raised $34 million in a token round.
Hxro, via its official Twitter account, disclosed the funds raised. The round was led by Susquehanna International Group (SIG DT Investments), Jump Crypto, and Blockchain Capital.
Also participating in the fundraising was Alameda Research, Chicago Trading Company, Solana Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Commonwealth Asset Management, and others.
2/ This round is further validation of Hxro Network’s community-based vision to build the most robust and scalable decentralized derivatives primitive available in the marketplace.
— Hxro.Network (@HxroNetwork) November 30, 2021
Dan Gunsberg, co-founder of Hxro Network, noted that Hxro is focused on bringing the world over to crypto. He added, “Our belief is that to really establish a real footprint for decentralized derivatives, you need to have these types of firms that have the domain expertise.”
5 – Drift Protocol Launches Mainnet
Solana-based decentralized protocol Drift has officially launched its open mainnet. Moreover, users can now carry out on-chain perpetual swaps on Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum tokens.
Drift Protocol is now LIVE in Mainnet & OPEN for all traders!
Trade SOL, BTC and ETH perpetual swaps on Solana's mainnet now 👾📈 ➞ https://t.co/dC21xOKYfX pic.twitter.com/HSLqyisvnP
— Drift Protocol (👾Hiring,👾Hiring) (@DriftProtocol) December 2, 2021
According to the announcement, users can now trade on Drift platform without holding the Drift Alpha ticket. Meanwhile, the exchange revealed that it has recorded over $100 million in trading volumes since the alpha launch.
Solana Price Update
$SOL fell by 5.6% over the last 24 hours and was trading at $189.5 at the time of publication.
SOL, according to Coingecko, had a market cap of $58.5 billion with a 24-hour trading volume of $2.38 billion. Currently, SOL has a circulating supply of 307 million SOL coins and a total supply of 508 million.
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