Latest and important crypto news regarding Solana (SOL). Apparently, Solana plans to improve its blockchain after the recent outage that generated concern among users.
Furthermore, it seems that the first “backed” real estate NFTs are being launched, allowing users to invest in real “tokenized” homes.
Summary
Solana crypto news: enhancement to the blockchain
After a network slowdown left users in a panic, Solana released plans to improve its latest network upgrade.
Following the latest network update 1.14 on 25 February, the Solana network experienced a significant slowdown in blockchain production. Reacting immediately to the transaction disruptions, validators downgraded the software to increase performance.
However, on 28 February, Anatoly Yakovenko, founder and CEO of Solana Labs, issued another statement on how the ecosystem plans to improve the network’s recent upgrades. The main goal of the plan is stability as the network continues its transition.
Indeed, Yakovenko stated:
“The 2022 priorities were building new features and new tools. 2023 is stability. Tldr 1/3 of core eng will focus on stability and adversarial testing. Here are my thoughts.”
The statement outlines a six-step plan for engineers to help streamline the process and reveals the formation of an adversary team, which includes one-third of Solana’s engineering team.
This team was formed to implement additional hooks and instrumentation in the validator code and to detect exploits in the underlying protocols.
It has also defined ways to focus on finding the stability of the entire network. This includes a second validator client developed by Jump Crypto‘s firedancer team and Mango DAO developers creating new tools and implementing local fee markets, among other efforts.
Prior to version 1.14, key engineers were working to fix problems that affected the speed and usability of the network, such as invalid gas calculation, lack of flow control for transactions, and lack of fee markets, among other more technical issues.
These issues were prioritized to improve the user experience. However, after the latest release, core engineers plan to engage other developers and external auditors to test and find exploits.
Disruption of the Solana blockchain: the reasons why
Yakovenko’s recent statement mentions that the investigation into what happened during the initial outage is still ongoing, and the community will be informed when the information becomes available.
In any case, he clarified on 28 February that on-chain voting was not the cause of the slowdown.
The community’s reaction to the outage has been frantic, with some users calling the system a “transaction killer.”
However, the response to Yakovenko’s improvement roadmap was mixed: some users said the news was “fantastic,” while others questioned Solana’s integrity:
“Your testing process has failed with every major release. Do you at least have a real testing process? I’m not sure. A simple question: who is responsible for the overall coordination of tests and releases so far? You? raj? … it’s not serious.”
The Solana ecosystem call is scheduled for 2 March 2023, where the state of the ecosystem, among other issues, will be discussed.
On 27 March, Helium Network‘s communication protocol plans to migrate to Solana’s blockchain to distribute oracles.
More crypto news for Solana: “tokenized” homes
The company Homebase has sold the first NFTs “backed” by real estate on Solana, allowing users to invest in real “tokenized” homes.
Specifically, a share of a three-bedroom apartment in McAllen, Texas, was sold with 2,468 NFTs on offer, with a total value of $246,000.
Users can invest through the program in single-family properties, with each of these to be held by a limited liability company. Moreover, the ownership of each property would be associated with Homebase’s NFTs.
And, when the home is rented out, the users (or rather the NFT holders) would receive the monthly income in the form of USDC, in proportion to the asset being owned. This is a way, according to the company, to enable more people to invest in the sector, which is very often exclusive given the liquidity needed to operate in it.
From a regulatory standpoint, according to the releases, NFTs would be issued and registered under the SEC, and thus considered “securities” under the agency’s regulations.
Alex Kim, co-founder of Homebase, stated the following:
“We have decided to take one of the more prudent legal approaches. And we decided to register our assets as ‘securities’ from day one.”
This is not the first time such an operation has seen the light of day. Already last year, for example, Vesta Equity decided to sell similar products on Algorand, but the business did not seem to attract new investment.
By contrast, Roofstock onChain, a real estate NFT marketplace, has been more successful, recording the sale of a property in South Carolina last October, valued at $175,000.
