Solana, a layer 1 proof-of-stake blockchain, recently released its version 1.16, which focuses on enhancing user privacy through Confidential Transfers. This confidential methodology, which was implemented after an audit by Halborn, a blockchain security firm, utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to encrypt user balances and transaction amounts. It is noteworthy that volunteer and canary nodes had a crucial role in identifying and resolving any issues during the testing phase. Additionally, Solana Labs has adopted a feature gate system to prevent consensus-breaking changes and greater transparency through documentation. As of this year, Solana has seen a significant surge in its Total Value Locked (TVL), totaling to around 30.95 million SOL. Transaction activity on the platform has been roughly stable, however there has been a noted increase in voting transactions. On the other hand, solutions such as state compression have substantially reduced minting costs of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) more than 2000 times, with 1 million NFTs now costing around $113, compared to $253,000 before the introduction of this technology.

Furthermore, liquid staking protocols have seen a rapid increase on the platform, with Popular solutions such as Marinade Finance, Lido Finance, and Jito taking the forefront. While this is encouraging, the current amount of staked SOL represented in liquid staking protocols only accounts for less than 3% of the total staked SOL, suggesting huge growth potential. It is worth noting, however, that there is some uncertainty surrounding the vast amounts of SOL held by FTX/Alameda, which totals to around 17% of the circulating supply.

On the other hand, the native SOL token is performing well, currently trading at $23.68 with a 4% increase in the past 24 hours. The introduction of version 1.16 further signals Solana’s commitment to providing greater privacy for its users, which may be instrumental in driving further development and usage in the long-term.



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