Merhaba!

I’m writing this Lightspeed edition from Istanbul. I can verify there are in fact a lot of cats here. 

Today, we’ve got takeaways from Solana Crossroads, Solana’s stablecoin supply, and an ICYMI from this week:

Solana community gathers in Istanbul

One of the best parts of traveling is getting to meet new people, unless you’re traveling to a crypto conference. 

Solana Crossroads kicked off today in Istanbul, so a number of Solana builders decamped from New York and San Francisco to sip stale coffee halfway around the world while talking with the same people they see at Solana events in New York and San Francisco. Many attendees stopped by the Step Finance-sponsored community conference on their way to Dubai for TOKEN2049 next week before shipping off to New York City for Solana Accelerate in May.

Crypto itself may still be struggling to find product-market fit, but crypto conferences seem to have inelastic demand. 

After a year of explosive growth for Solana, Crossroads attendees didn’t seem too concerned with other ecosystems. Some complained that the yearly Ethereum conference ETHDenver talked too much about Solana and other ecosystems. At Crossroads, it almost felt like those other smart contract ecosystems didn’t exist.

Solana teams hawked their wares on the conference’s expo floor. I held a prototype of the Solana Seeker phone. It wasn’t production-ready, so all I could really do was look at a promotional display on the screen, but I can now vouch for the fact that its casing exists, at least. 

The internet filtering startup DoubleZero had some conference buzz. One Solana founder said market makers offered up their connection with the network as a way to pitch their services. 

I caught DoubleZero co-founder AustinFedera near the media room and asked him some vague question about the state of high-throughput blockchains.

“Imagine if the sun disappeared,” he began before explaining the importance of being able to broadcast data.

While Crossroads is filled with many of the usual suspects, a number of locals showed up as well. 

“I’ve been impressed with frankly just the number of local Turkish people who’ve shown up,” Framework Ventures partner Brandon Potts said. “A lot of the conversations with locals I’ve had are just practical ones around stablecoins and like, ‘Hey … which one should I hold?’”

I chatted with a Turkish Solana developer who filled me in on the history of the land. He told me that coins were invented in Lydia, an ancient kingdom located in modern day Turkey. His father collects coins, he added.

“You collect coins, too. Shitcoins,” his friend shot back.

— Jack Kubinec

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New all-time high in Solana stablecoins:

Solana’s stable supply grew rapidly following the launch of TRUMP, which was paired with USDC. 

That number predictably dwindled a bit after TRUMP dumped, but after a couple months of steady growth, it just set a new all-time high at roughly $12.5 billion.

— Jack Kubinec

ICYMI — Stories you may have missed from Solanaland this week

• MagicBlock secured a $7.5M Seed round, which it'll use to expand its real-time infrastructure for Solana further. The core innovation here is Ephemeral Rollups, which let developers deploy programs natively on Solana while offloading high-frequency workloads to ultra-fast, app-specific runtimes — no L2s needed. Lightspeed Faction, Delphi, Mechanism, and angels like Anatoly Yakovenko and Mert Mumtaz were among the listed backers.

• Solv Protocol, in partnership with Fragmetric and Zeus Network, has launched fragBTC, the first native yield-bearing Bitcoin asset on Solana. It’s set to allow BTC holders to earn BTC-denominated yields through SolvBTC.JUP while maintaining liquidity in Solana DeFi. It's got a delta-neutral strategy on Jupiter’s JLP Pool to minimize risk and supports Solana’s economic security by integrating idle Bitcoin capital.

• Marinade Finance achieved SOC 2 Type I compliance. The certification, which BDO auditors verified, affirms Marinade's infrastructure meets rigorous standards for security, access controls, and operational integrity. The milestone will help position them to serve risk-sensitive clients like custodians and funds, with a roadmap that includes SOC 2 Type II and deeper integrations. 

• Solflare dropped details of its new self-custodial debit card that lets users spend USDC directly from their wallet at checkout. Accepted globally via Mastercard and compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay, the Solflare card will combine crypto-native autonomy with real-world usability. Unlike pre-existing custodial cards, Solflare said its offering never holds user funds. Users have complete control and are protected by security features like MFA and real-time alerts. The card will launch first in the UK and EEA, with more regions coming soon.

— Jeffrey Albus

I got together with Mert Mumtaz and Dan Smith to talk about Base’s unfortunate messaging around content coins, the glut of new Solana treasury businesses, and new data showing how pump.fun may be extractive. It gets spicy at points, don’t miss this one!