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Happy July 4th to our American readers. 249 years!

Today, we have Jack’s adventures in blockchain liquor flipping and an ICYMI from this week in Solana land:

I made a profit flipping tequila on the blockchain

Standing outside the Clase Azul loft in downtown Brooklyn, I called my mother to inform her I had just spent $2,000 on a bottle of tequila.

“Are you drunk?” came her stunned reply.

Reader: I was not drunk. I was investing. Two and a half weeks later, I had sold the bottle for $3,000 — courtesy of the blockchain.

In early June, BAXUS co-founder Tzvi Wiesel invited me to join him at a Clase Azul private tasting and bottle launch. At the event, the tequila brand’s head distiller led a tasting, pointing out notes of apple and a blue and orange bottle meant to evoke the New York skyline. Then, the gathered faithful were given the option to buy one or two bottles of “The Loft Brooklyn Collection” — available exclusively in New York. 

For much of the event, the salespeople didn’t pay much mind to me, a schlubby crypto journalist, compared to the older, richer-looking clientele. But a few minutes later, I found myself in a cool back room, my hand shaken by an eager-looking employee clad in black. After taking a picture with my $2,000 booze, I sent the bottle home with Wiesel, who then scanned and uploaded it to BAXUS’ Solana-powered spirits marketplace.

BAXUS stores liquor in physical vaults on behalf of spirits collectors. Each bottle is 3-D scanned and paired with an NFT that can be bought or sold on BAXUS. Transactions are settled in USDC, and users can on- or off-ramp from fiat with Coinflow. BAXUS takes a 10% sellers’ fee. Collectors can make multiple swaps without physically possessing a bottle, and if they want to actually drink their liquor, BAXUS will ship it for a $25 fee. 

I unsuccessfully listed my bottle for $3,500, but then I got a bite at $3,000, which set me up with a $700 profit after fees. (That’s a 35% return in a couple weeks. Why am I sending this newsletter out for free?)

The whole process was made possible by blockchain tech. 

“Blockchain enabled the seamless payment via crypto, the instant settlement in your account, the owner to keep the bottle in the vault while still being able to show verifiable proof of ownership,” Wiesel said in a text. “Think about how the original process required you to go to Brooklyn, pay with a credit card, etc. [If] you wanted to resell it you would have had to go and find a buyer online (illegally) and then [try] to establish trust that you actually have the bottle and will send it to them. This eliminated all of the friction.”

It’s frequently said that crypto needs to solve real problems. In this case, crypto solved my problem of having acquired a limited edition tequila bottle for less than its market value. I hope to face this problem again sometime soon.

— Jack Kubinec

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ICYMI — Stories you may have missed from Solana land this week:

• Arcium announced the Confidential SPL Token standard, bringing native privacy to Solana by merging SPL Token, Token-2022 and Arcium’s encrypted compute into a unified protocol. Unlike past approaches, this new standard allows onchain programs — not just wallets — to handle confidential transfers directly. The goal is to enable private DeFi, confidential payroll and institutional-grade privacy without compromising user experience or composability.

• Marinade proposed a $25m MNDE “Migrate Campaign” to grow native staking TVL by 2.5m SOL through a two-track incentive model: 10m MNDE for retail users and 10m MNDE for institutions, plus 5m MNDE for custom deals. With performance-based disbursement, the campaign capitalizes on Marinade’s new BitGo partnership and ETF nods to widen its lead in the non-custodial staking space.

• Moonwalk Fitness is now on the Solana dapp Store, bringing native step-tracking and movement-based rewards to Saga users. Seeker pre-orders were also teased with a “something special” hint, suggesting deeper integration or exclusive perks ahead.

• Jito upgraded its TipRouter to let Solana validators share priority fees with stakers. That introduces a transparent, standardized system that could boost staker APYs by up to 7%, so they say. With validators now competing on fee-sharing policies, the change reshapes Solana’s staking economics and sets the stage for more aligned, reward-rich participation across the network.

• Código launched as the first AI-native dev suite built exclusively for Solana, offering agentic smart contract generation, native autocomplete, security checks, dozens of code templates and one-click deployment. Modules encompass NFTs, DeFi, GameFi and token mechanics. Código says it wants to streamline Solana development for solo builders, full-stack teams and beyond.

— Jeffrey Albus