Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Solana’s development platform Helius Labs, recently shared “big news” that presents a bullish outlook for the Solana ecosystem. This development could also positively impact Solana’s price, which has recently been on a downtrend.
A New Dawn For Solana
Mumtaz mentioned in an X (formerly Twitter) post that “ZK compression” is being introduced directly on the Solana network without requiring layer-2 networks. He claimed that this changes everything and every impression one has about Solana and scaling layer-1 networks. Mumtaz further explained what the ZK compression is really about.
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He stated that they have managed to compress the on-chain state to get “10,000x scale improvements,” which he claimed brings them one step closer to building the financial computer. He added that this means that developers can “now build and scale anything they want directly on Solana without needing to leave it.”
Mumtaz also gave an example to highlight how significant this development was in terms of a reduction in transaction costs. He claimed that it would usually cost over $260,000 for a project to carry out an airdrop to 1 million users. However, ZK compression makes it way cheaper now as only $50 will be needed now to airdrop these tokens to those 1 million users.
Furthermore, on the technical side, Mumtaz highlighted how this is a much-welcome development for Solana developers. He noted that allocating accounts, paying rent, and scaling with users has been a “massive roadblock” for them, but that has now been fixed with this ZK compression.
Mumtaz also highlighted how this opens the door for Solana to enjoy significant growth, noting that state growth has been a major issue for scaling blockchains. However, that is set to change now as ZK compression makes it possible to compress all Solana state. The Helius CEO added, “This has further implications for hardware requirements and the overall performance of the entire network.”
Mumtaz believes Solana has a “real shot at this crypto thing” when this ZK compression is combined with “firedancer, multiple concurrent leaders, async execution, and ecosystem of thousands of insanely cracked devs.”
Institutional Investors Also Believe In Solana’s Potential
The introduction of ZK compression on Solana follows the recent prediction made by Pantera Capital’s analysts that Solana will steal a massive chunk of the crypto market from Ethereum in terms of blockchain developer activity. These analysts highlighted Solana’s “monolithic architecture,” which enables several use cases and user experiences.
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They added that Solana’s technology enables “compelling applications” and gave examples of crypto projects that have benefitted from Solana’s capabilities, including the non-fungible (NFT) platform DRiP.
Asset manager Franklin Templeton also previously predicted that Solana would become the largest crypto token by market cap thanks to the network’s “superior tech.” They claimed that Solana would host the sectors that will drive the next wave of crypto adoption and also alluded to the firedancer update as one of the reasons they are bullish on Solana.
Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com