BONKWIFHAT

🎂 happy birthday to solana 🥳 on march 16, 2020, lockdowns were spreading financial panic globally. that day the dow dropped 12.9%, bigger than any day in the great depression. every founder we talked to, across all of tech, not just crypto, cancelled their launch. investors called every company to batten down the hatches. “just weather the storm. it will be years.” there were only a few dozen people who thought solana’s design could work at scale, and they had the courage to push past the fear. they had one overriding motivation: “the only way to prove that it actually works is to launch it, and there’s no reason to wait any longer. it doesn’t matter if godzilla emerges from the bay and tears down san francisco…this thing is getting launched.” skipping ahead, it’s taken 4 years (and counting!) for the world to accept that solana is here to stay. only now its not just a blockchain. its a thriving global economy. it’s a distributed social network. it’s a digital nation. it’s an open financial operating system. it’s the marketplace of marketplaces. it’s many more things we don’t have a name for yet. it’s now routinely topping the charts with daily trading volume (ATH $3.6B yesterday!) , active users, new tokens, nfts minted, daily transactions, tps, nakamoto coefficient, and a bag of other metrics. but we’re still, at best, at the equivalent to early 2000’s internet, when you could “finish watching youtube”. we’re just getting started. it’s been an honor to support bringing @toly’s wild vision to life. the citizens that brought it to this point include, but are not limited to: core engineers, validators, app developers, content creators, depin hardware operators, traders, exchanges, stablecoin issuers, fortune 500 enterprises, enthusiasts, journalists, and our families. thank you to all who have made the ecosystem your own. it’s an honor to serve you however possible. may we ever be as fearless in fearful times, as we were at launch. onward and upward.