Why Solana?
NeoSwap is expanding to Solana!
(Click on either link if you want to learn more about what NeoSwap is or how to use it).
From this week we are beginning active beta testing with a select group of early users before we look to stealth-launch a live product.
We continue to have amazing traction and support on Stacks, and our support for that ecosystem will not be going anywhere. In fact, we plan to roll all of our new features out to Stacks first. But NeoSwap’s technology is chain-agnostic and can function anywhere there are NFTs. So that begs the question that many have asked us- ‘why Solana?’. Why not Ethereum, or Tezos, or… (insert other blockchain here!).
We took this decision for a few reasons, not limited to, but including, the following:
- Solana is fast
Part of the fun of NeoSwap are the parties and the social aspect. A current sticky point with Stacks (which will be changing with subnets) is speed. The 10-minute block times mean we have to wait to be able to sign the contracts at the end of parties. With Solana that problem vanishes and we are able to get immediate feedback and sign contracts quickly. - Solana transaction fees are cheap
While we continue to refine our contracts and the experience overall, avoiding the expensive mainnet fees on Ethereum is a benefit for us. Whilst we will be offering NeoSwap parties focused solely on high-value items in the future, that is not the right place to begin. Polygon is a natural partner for the future, but for now, we felt Solana gives us what we need. - Solana has a huge number of NFT users and NFTs (including lots of low-‘value’, high-utility NFTs).
NeoSwaps parties provide extremely helpful data for us. The more NFTs and users the better, this gives us more opportunity to improve UX but also to unlock liquidity- our swap options do not increase linearly, they increase exponentially! Now value is subjective, we know that better than anyone, so maybe low-cost is a better term, but it is not meant in a disparaging way! - Solana has a growing gaming ecosystem
We believe a huge area for NeoSwap in the NFT realm is the swapping of in-game assets. We believe Solana provides fertile ground for this with the growing gaming ecosystem. We are already engaged in conversation with different gaming projects on Solana who are excited by NeoSwap. Projects like Star Atlas, Stepn and Defi Land only serve to further this belief. - Learning opportunities.
All these lessons will apply to Ethereum and any other chain we launch on next. Stacks continues to inform our constant iteration for the better and we believe Solana will too. This is a virtuous circle, all the feedback helps us to get better across all ecosystems. With Magic Eden’s expansion into supporting Eth NFTs and Opensea reciprocating, we only see these two communities becoming more intertwined in the future.
This is a win for everyone using NeoSwap!
There is no ‘right’ choice when it comes to these kinds of decisions and we’d like to stress our choice to go to Solana now is for positive reasons and not to exclude or diminish other places in the future.
We see a healthy and active ecosystem on Solana where we believe NeoSwap can actively add a huge amount of liquidity and value unlock.
On a final note…Call to Action
If you are active on Solana and want to be a tester or a partner, let us know!
You can reach out to me personally on Twitter here or in our Discord.
You can also contact the wider team below :)
