Howdy!

Well, it was fun LARPing as a Knicks fan while the season lasted. Hopefully Timothy Chalamet channels this disappointment into an inspired performance in Dune: Part Three.

Today, we’ve got the Solana Attestation Service, memecoin volumes climbing, and a novel SOL staking ETF filing:

Solana's new attestation service

Stop right there. Hall pass? In a permissionless world, it's an awkward question. Blockchains weren't really built for access control; they were built to say yes to anyone with a private key.

But as crypto collides more and more with life outside our little bubble, the need for permissions has become unavoidable. Who's old enough to enter? Who lives in the correct country? Who has permission to vote, and how many times? Who isn't a bot?

For too long, the only answers have come from walled-off KYC platforms or one-off user flows that trap dev teams in maintenance purgatory. Every dapp that wants to check a credential ends up rebuilding the same brittle backend over and over, and users get stuck re-proving their right to access at every door.

Many builders are working on this today, but here in Solana land, there's one solution in particular that's seen a lot of buzz of late. The Solana Attestation Service (SAS) is a new open protocol for turning off-chain facts into reusable, verifiable claims that stick to your wallet like a passport stamp.

Essentially, it offers a universal layer for issuing and checking identity-based credentials. Issuers, like KYC providers, DAOs, employers and maybe even governments, are now able to write signed attestations to Solana wallet addresses that can prove things like "I'm over 18," "I live in the US" or "I passed this DAO's verification process."

Dapps don't need to store or recheck that data — they just verify the stamp.

A typical attestation includes a wallet address, a claim (like "is accredited"), metadata (optional) and a signature from the issuer. Solana stores that proof onchain, where it can be queried and verified with a single SDK call.

There is no server, no user data and no custom logic. Just trust, composability and a speedy path to compliance.

It's privacy-preserving (no personal info onchain), frictionless (attest once, use everywhere) and permissionless (it's open, so anyone can build with it), resulting in a smoother, safer, more composable user experience.

Stamps earned across DAOs, onchain careers or verified actions can become inputs to everything from undercollateralized lending, to onchain reputation to dynamic governance weight. 

We've already seen a few OGs take steps toward integration. Civic recently announced its intention to use SAS to issue reusable compliance credentials. Solid will let users collect stamps like "verified developer" or "founding community member." RNS.ID has said it'll be launching its own "Proof" infrastructure on SAS sometime next month.

Solana's performance edge has made it a playground for DePIN, DeFi and hyperactive gaming, but scaling to the next billion users means handling real-world constraints. SAS allows developers to respect those constraints without sacrificing UX, privacy or decentralization.

— Jeffrey Albus

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The Permissionless IV agenda is live. And the people who matter are on it.

• Bryan Pellegrino is making cross-chain composability real at LayerZero.

• Alex Blania is scaling World ID and building onchain access rails.

• Zano Sherwani is deep in the MEV stack, making it usable — not extractive.

• Henri Stern is rewriting how crypto handles identity and UX at the protocol layer.

June 24-26 | Brooklyn, NY

Three straight months of gains for memecoin volumes: 

Solana memecoin DEX volume fell for consecutive months on Solana after reaching a TRUMP-fueled top in January.

Memecoins hit roughly $75 billion in volume in May, which tops any month outside of that euphoric stretch from November-February. As Blockworks Research’s Dan Smith said: What is dead may never die.

— Jack Kubinec

Rex Shares and Osprey Funds tried to pull a fast one Friday when the firms registered for ether and solana staking ETFs. 

These weren’t your dad’s ETF filings: The funds proposed getting spot exposure to ETH and SOL via Cayman subsidiaries. The novel SOL and ETH ETF structure would have allowed Rex-Osprey’s funds to sidestep the 19b-4 process, which is where other SOL ETFs are currently sitting. At the time of the filing, Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart said Rex-Osprey was pursuing a “bunch of clever legal and regulatory workarounds to get these products to market.” 

The SEC didn’t seem to appreciate those work-arounds: Late Friday, agency staff indicated the funds may not meet the criteria needed to be listed on the stock market.

The filings were noteworthy for Jito fans, at least: The prospectus said the funds would earn staking rewards via liquid staking tokens, mentioning JitoSOL as one example. It’s encouraging news for Jito, which has been publicly making the case that its decentralized rewards distribution mechanism makes JitoSOL not a security — likely with the hope that ETF issuers like Rex-Osprey would want to use the token for staking ETFs.

For more on the Rex-Osprey and SEC tête-à-tête, read Ben Strack’s coverage here.

— Jack Kubinec

A message from Hadley Stern, chief commercial officer at Marinade: