Community power: the Bonk Inu and Homebase projects are pumping Solana

SolanaSolana is a public blockchain and direct competitor to Ethereum (for which it was named the "Ethereum killer") that uses a unique consensus algorithm known as Proof-of-History (PoH). Solana is considered faster and cheaper to use than Ethereum, which makes this blockchain more suitable for small projects and startups., despite the bad times, seems to start to come back to life little by little. Even Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, believes that blockchain has excellent prospects. These are the words he used to support his network’s competitor on December 30, 2022:

“Some smart people tell me there is an earnest smart developer community in Solana, and now that the awful opportunistic money people have been washed out, the chain has a bright future. Hard for me to tell from outside, but I hope the community gets its fair chance to thrive.”

His words proved to be literally prophetic.

Solana’s problems

Since the beginning of 2022, the network has had at least six serious technical failures, leading to downtime in blockchain generation. In addition, Santiment analysts reported that traders began to lose interest in the Solana native token (SOL) due to media revelations about fake activity around the ecosystem.

In addition, Solana suffered from the collapse of FTX. About $643 million in SOL came under the control of liquidators as part of the bankruptcy process of Alameda Research, a subsidiary of FTX. 

Also in November, the Solana blockchain encountered a blockage of stablecoin deposits/withdrawals by several major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Crypto.com, OKX, Binance, Bybit, and others.

The negative information and technical problems have caused SOL to lose value. While SOL had a price of $33-36 on November 6, it collapsed to $13 four days later. And by the end of the year, it was down to $9. The price was this low for the first time since February 22, 2021.

Solana also started to lose the largest and most famous projects, which moved to other blockchains: among them are the NFT marketplace MagicEden, Phantom Wallet, NFT collections DeGods, and y00ts. 

Bonk+Homebase=SOL🚀

It would seem that things could get only worse. But first, Buterin’s tweet raised SOL by 22%, and then by the end of the year, the loyal and extensive community showed what their real power is.

Then, new promising projects started to appear on Solana. Most prominent was Bonk Inu (BONK), a token launched at the end of the last year by the decentralized organization BonkDAO, based on the Solana blockchain. BONK was originally created as a reward for everyone who supports blockchain, and 50% of the total coins are given away for free as airdrops (100 trillion coins in total, 1 billion were “burned” on January 4, 2023).

The project has been unexpectedly successful, attracting the attention and support of various projects. Bonk Inu token (BONK) went public on several exchanges, after which the price rose from 0.00000009 (December 30, 2022) to $0.000002 (January 4, 2023). That is, the token has risen in price 22 times. And the approximate market capitalization reached $132,523,655. 

But it’s not just about the BONK. Also, in 2022, the real estate project Homebase was launched on Solana. 

In short, Homebase is a platform that will allow people to invest in and eventually trade tokenized residential real estate for as little as $100. Any home that is rented as an NFT will be managed by Homebase’s decentralized community (DAO) to ensure timely monthly rent payments.

The developers said they chose blockchain Solana because it makes no sense to build a network whose transaction costs $200. Real estate NFTs on Solana will only cost $100 (cheaper than on Ethereum), and transferring funds is less expensive and easier than on the Polygon blockchain.

Real estate transactions are generally slow and require a lot of due diligence and lengthy documentation gathering. With blockchain technology, every user can easily get comprehensive information related to real estate with just one click, and determine what is best for them to invest in.

📁Investments
└📁Real Estate
└📁 Homebase
└📁 Reasons to invest in Homebase
└⚠️ Folder is full

First home to be announced later this month🤫

— Homebase🏠 (@HomebaseDAO) January 2, 2023

• Going forward, the founders of Homebase plan to create a community-managed syndicated real estate fund whose capital will be distributed based on a community vote.
• Property owners will be able to share their properties through NFT and provide exclusive bidding opportunities to community members.
• An online marketplace will then be created that will allow everyone to buy and sell real estate tokens.
• A community real estate investment fund will emerge.

With the rise of new projects and support from the community, the SOL price pulled upward, reaching $13.57 as of January 4, 2023.

Solana’s market capitalization has reached $5 billion (Ethereum’s is $146.21 billion). The network has 2,004 validator nodesThese are computers designed to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. By participating in consensus, validation nodes are responsible for checking, voting, and maintaining transaction records. and processes 3,152 transactions per second (TPS). In addition, the blockchain boasts a 0% net carbon impact, and the average cost per transaction is $0.00025. To compare, Ethereum 2.0 executes 1,000 TPS at an average transaction price of $0.4858.

According to Austin Federa, head of strategy and communications at Solana Foundation, even the decline of the FTX exchange has not stopped the network from attracting new users and developers. On CoinDesk TV’s First Mover program, he said there had been an increase in activity on the circuit.

Federa also noted the not-insignificant role of BONK, whose “airdrop” included sending half of the tokens to Solana users, resulting in a 20% increase in SOL on January 3, 2023.

“You’re not really seeing any projects migrate off of Solana that need the performance and power of the network. There’s a lot of stuff that you can only build on Solana, and those developers are continuing to build here,” he said.