Solana Crowned Coinage's Crypto Project of the Year

Solana — once left for dead by the mainstream press following FTX's collapse and the depths of crypto winter — has since exploded with new projects and a leading ecosystem to win Coinage's Crypto Project of the Year honors after weeks of community voting.

Out of 16 nominated projects this year from across the entirety of crypto, our nearly 7,000 community members from across Web3 helped Coinage whittle the list down to crown Solana the industry's top project.

When we first hosted Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko in our studio back in the fall of 2022, Solana was in survival mode. The blockchain was mocked by Ethereum maxis with every outage — something Toly told us back then was always "stomach churning" as developers scrambled to step in for fixes. But since those days, Solana has managed to climb nearly 600% — and arguably more impressively — added multiple use cases and users across everything from decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) projects, to AI projects, to (of course) memecoin launch pads.

For those building in the Solana ecosystem, it's not surprising to see the memecoins and Pump.Fun get the attention in Solana coverage, but it would be a mistake to solely credit that explosion for Solana's success, according to Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz.

"[Memecoins] have a social element which obviously infects the social layer, and the more attention they get via social networks, the bigger they go," Mert told us in our interview for our Crypto Project of the Year series. "I don't think it's weird that they have the most attention. What I would say, though, is it is incorrect to say something like, 'Well, all Solana has are memecoins,' right? ... It just turns out that Solana provides the best experience for launching tokens, moving them around, trading them, holding them on your wallet, and that can't happen unless we have infrastructure that actually works and scales with the amount of users."

Indeed, Solana was the only blockchain to also see multiple ecosystem projects nominated as well this year, with Helium also earning inclusion from our community alongside oracle data provider Pyth.

But perhaps even more notable than what our own community vote had to say about the respect Solana garnered from the world of Web3, was everything we heard from other projects looking to emulate what Solana has been able to achieve. Many founders we spoke with also expressed a desire to build on, or somehow leverage Solana's ecosystem as they get off the ground.

Stacks founder Muneeb Ali explained to us why he sought to integrate the Bitcoin Layer-2 network with Solana right out of the gate and why it shows more promise than what might be possible with Ethereum.

“When I go to a Solana event, I see people who are building fast, excited about the future, and rowing in the same direction,” he said. “Solana is likely going to outperform Ethereum in pretty much any metric, including market cap."

To get there, Solana may have a ways to go. While a new community proposal looks to reduce Solana's inflation rate, it does seem like some approval delays may hinder its ongoing race with Ethereum on the ETF front. That could be substantial, considering an ETF approval would continue bringing investment capital into the ecosystem (and is part of why many top analysts consider buying SOL a "no-brainer.") However, there does seem to be ample excitement and understanding among institutional investors that could make its ETF debut (whenever it happens) even more successful than Ethereum's.

“When we talk to… large bank wirehouses… 90, 95% of their conversations are about Bitcoin. But the next most talked about token is Solana,” Pantera Capital's Cosmo Jiang told us recently. “People are aware of what stuff is working, where the growth is. And people just want to buy assets that represent tokens that represent protocols that are growing and doing very well."

And while an ETF approval could open the floodgates for institutional capital, if Solana's history is any indication it might not even matter. As Anatoly told us in our last iteration of Crypto Project of the Year, Solana's community doesn't fear momentum turning in the wrong direction. Reflecting on 2022 he said, "[that] particular bear market was really acutely felt by the Solana ecosystem, but for whatever reason, it seems like the fight or flight instinct kicked into a lot of projects." Since then, the momentum hasn't stopped.

“I felt re-energized. I think a lot of the Solana founders felt re-energized and like it's only been just product launches and … better product market fit and it's just been awesome to see.”

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