vibhu@vibhu
If you fade @drip_haus, you fade Solana. This is for a select few of you. You know who you are.
DRiP is the purest OPOS product we have on the NFT side right now. It is actually impossible to replicate on any other chain with reasonable economics. And it's been a worthy flagship product to feature for new builders looking at Solana.
It's the entry point to Solana and digital assets for currently more than 10k people a week, sometimes a lot more, and has been all year. I would guess we served this role for more than 500,000 people in 2023.
DRiP is a gateway to learning about Solana and everything else you can do on chain. You cannot be rugged on DRiP. You can't make a mistake.
We've also partnered with many other Solana projects this year, helping them win awareness and new users through DRiP channels and other promotion. We have been a substantive partner or customer for many, many Solana teams as well.
DRiP has been a large onchain fee payer in 2023. We sponsor and pay for every piece of infrastructure for every creator on DRiP. It's remained a tokenless and feeless experience all year round. Completely unextractive.
DRiP contributed to the Solana narrative in a big way in 2023. We added hundreds of thousands of active wallets, and with more than 80 million NFTs minted, we held together the story with Metaplex and Solana NFTs in general when the old spec declined. With millions of sales on our collections, our contribution reflects into marketplace data as well, which is widely shared.
Let me remind those who don't know, Drip Labs received $0 in funding or grants from Solana Foundation this year nor did we ever ask. And less than 5% of our $3.2 million in seed funding came from angel checks from people that work at Solana Foundation or Labs. As for me personally, I have a tiny part of my net worth in SOL, all of which was purchased with my own funds. (Just putting these facts out here because of persistent nefarious rumors about my personal ties to Solana).
Here is the truth: We build here on Solana simply because the tech stack just makes sense, and the Solana creators helped make DRiP something of value.
When we shut down Solana Spaces in February, it wasn't obvious to continue but we felt there was something in the product worth pulling on and I think we were right. We don't do any of this "for Solana," and I say that in spite of all of the above.