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In an historic moment, Donald Trump made headlines as the first U.S. president to conduct a Bitcoin transaction.

The former president visited PubKey, a Bitcoin-centric bar, where he bought burgers using crypto, calling them “crypto burgers” in the process.

At the event, Trump didn’t shy away from criticizing the SEC, vowing to "treat you very fairly" in contrast to current policies.

When a gift was offered, Trump’s immediate response was, "I want Bitcoin."

This follows closely on the heels of Trump’s recent announcement of his new crypto initiative, World Liberty Financial, which has drawn mixed reactions. Investor and Bitcoin Bull Fred Krueger was quick to comment:

While Trump avoided detailed discussions on the project, he emphasized the urgency of embracing cryptocurrency:

Trump also mentioned his son Barron’s involvement in crypto, adding:

With Trump’s foray into Bitcoin and the launch of his crypto project, he is setting a new precedent in the political arena, merging finance and politics in unexpected ways.

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If you're a Solana holder, the past year has been quite the ride.

At the start of 2023, you could buy $SOL for around $10.

Fast forward to 2024, and the token is ranging between $78-$209—a stunning reflection of Solana’s explosive growth.

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This asset has consistently outperformed, and even with some price corrections after March, its fundamentals remain solid.

Last September, $SOL traded at just $18, but today, it's sitting around $148, marking a remarkable 747% growth.

Take a look at those numbers in the chart below:

But what’s driving Solana’s sustained success?

The answer lies in its ability to provide fast, cheap transactions—a feature that has always set it apart.

During 2021’s Layer 1 boom, Solana, along with other networks like Avalanche and Fantom, was dubbed an "$ETH-killer," aiming to challenge Ethereum's dominance in the smart contract space.

Ethereum had the largest ecosystem, the most developers, and the highest TVL—making it hard for competitors to keep up.

However, while most other challengers have fallen short, $SOL has thrived, outperforming even $ETH by over +2,000%.

Check out the $SOL to $ETH ratio below:

Unlike other Layer 1s, Solana’s low-cost transactions and speed have given it a durable competitive edge.

The next big question is whether new contenders like Aptos and SUI can challenge Solana’s dominance.

Both networks offer more efficient and secure programming languages, making them serious threats to Solana’s lead.

Will we see a repeat of Solana’s meteoric rise, or will $SOL hold its ground against the next wave of competition?

Time will tell, but one thing is clear: the competition in the Layer 1 blockchain space is heating up.

In June 2019, Meta (formerly Facebook) announced plans to launch a global payment network powered by a permissioned blockchain and digital wallet.

These efforts led to the creation of the Diem Association (formerly Libra) and its subsidiary, Novi Finance.

However, due to significant regulatory challenges, both projects were eventually shut down, with Diem selling its assets in early 2022 and Novi ending shortly after.

Despite the demise of these projects, the research and work done under Diem and Novi gave birth to two prominent new blockchains: Aptos and SUI.

Aptos continues the technological advances from Diem, while SUI, developed by Mysten Labs, introduces a fresh approach

Let’s take a look into both projects, comparing their technology and teams:

$SUI
Mysten Labs, the creators of SUI, was founded in 2021 by key leaders from the Novi project, including Evan Cheng, Adeniyi Abiodun, Sam Blackshear, and others.

These founders bring expertise in software compilers, distributed systems, and cryptography from leading companies like Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft. Notably, Evan Cheng was honored with the ACM Software System Award for his work on LLVM, widely used in devices from Apple and Google.

$APTOS
Founded in late 2021, Aptos Labs was co-created by Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching, both key figures in the Novi team.

Their extensive background in blockchain and tech industries, along with expertise in supercomputing, allowed them to assemble a team of PhDs, engineers, and researchers to launch Aptos in 2022.

Both Aptos and SUI benefit from strong founder-market fit, as their leadership teams were uniquely positioned to leverage their experience from Meta into these next-generation blockchains.

$SUI
In December 2021, Mysten Labs raised $36M in a Series A round led by a16z, followed by a $300M Series B round in September 2022 at a valuation of over $2 billion.

This funding came from major players such as FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, and Binance Labs

Aptos secured $200M in its March 2022 funding round led by a16z, with further contributions from Multicoin Capital and Coinbase Ventures.

By July 2022, an additional $150M raised its valuation to $2 billion, with investments from FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, and others.

Both projects have amassed significant funding, positioning them to compete on a large scale with $2 billion+ valuations.

So, will SUI and APTOS start to chip into Solana’s market share this cycle?

When it comes to Layer 1 blockchains, Solana was the first to truly push the limits on transaction speed.

With a focus on high transactions per second (TPS), Solana aimed to tackle the blockchain trilemma—the challenge of balancing decentralization, scalability, and security—in a way that set it apart from Ethereum. While Ethereum prioritizes security and decentralization, Solana chose a path focused on speed and scalability.

Solana’s ability to process transactions at lightning speed is thanks to its dual-consensus mechanism: Proof of Stake (PoS) and Proof of History (PoH).

This approach has allowed the network to scale to 65,000 TPS, far outpacing many of its competitors.

However, the network’s speed hasn’t come without drawbacks. Solana has experienced multiple outages, which have raised concerns about its long-term viability.

That’s where Firedancer comes into play.

This new, high-performance validator is helping to diversify the network’s validator clients, thereby improving decentralization and overall network performance.

Firedancer is a crucial development, as it not only enhances stability but also allows the network to process up to 1 million TPS—surpassing even Ethereum's theoretical goals.

Solana’s ongoing improvements signal a bright future, as it continues to push the boundaries of blockchain technology.

Right now, Solana holds its position as the leading blockchain.

The market for DeFi protocols has become so crowded that differences between platforms — whether in lending, swapping, or perpetuals — have largely disappeared, with all offering similar services.

The new area of focus is DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks), and Solana is once again ahead, with projects like Hivemapper and Render pushing boundaries.

Render utilizes unused GPU computing power, while Hivemapper taps into vehicle dashcams to gather and sell visual data to platforms like Google Maps.

The main issue with high TPS chains is the lack of immediate demand for such high throughput. Until there is a clear use case requiring it, users and protocols are choosing the most popular chain — Solana. This dynamic might shift when we need to surpass 100,000 TPS.

When comparing the new players in the field, Sui has overtaken Aptos in terms of TVL and overall market excitement.

Notably, Sui launched SuiPlayox1, the first handheld gaming device built for on-chain gaming.

While this is a bold bet on the future of gaming on-chain, for the time being, Solana continues to dominate the high TPS landscape, leaving Sui and Aptos trailing.

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You are what you read! Here is what we are reading right now…

Cryptosovereignty - Erik Cason
Liberty and Property - Ludwig Von Mises
The Conservative Case For Bitcoin - Mitchell Askew
Theory of a Multipolar World - Alexander Dugin
Debt: The First 5000 Years - David Graeber

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.