Solana Developer Ferrante: The Cryptocurrency Pie Should Be Bigger

Source: Blockworks; Compilation: BitpushNews Tracy

Solana’s core network has seen “many incredible improvements” that will allow it to be “reborn,” Armani Ferrante said.

“You don’t choose product-market fit, product-market fit chooses you.” Armani Ferrante said. The developer, known for his work on Mad Lads NFT collectibles and Backpack wallets, says that’s exactly what’s happening with the NFT phenomenon on Solana. Now, the creator sees growth potential for Solana in terms of new product-market fits.

Ferrante recently spoke on Blockworks’ Lightspeed podcast (Spotify/Apple) about his optimism for Solana’s future and how many of its innovations may surprise skeptics.

Solana’s core network has seen “many incredible improvements” that will allow it to be “reborn,” Ferrante said. “I’m optimistic about it. I want to see it come back to life and recover,” he said. Ferrante said he continues to be interested in Solana because of its “superpowers.” “All I need is a smart contract and a Helio subscription. That’s it. I can build applications that move billions of dollars permissionlessly and verifiably around the world. It’s incredible,” he said.

It’s easy to underestimate innovation

Ferrante recalled his initial reactions to new innovations in the industry, admitting that he was initially skeptical of the idea that turned out to be very successful.

“I see this in the NFT space,” he said. His initial thought was “I’m not going to be a part of this. It’s just stupid.”

It’s easy to have a “knee jerk reaction” when first introduced to new “toys” like automated marketplace makers (AMMs) and NFTs, Ferrante said. “It’s easy to scoff at this, but it turns out that a lot of things that weren’t perfect at the time ended up being really good ideas,” he said. “I’ve seen this time and time again in crypto.”

Backpack Wallet by Solana

The Backpack wallet, capable of running xNFTs with built-in code, has a wider range of functionality and is an example of Ferrante’s approach to development. “You don’t actually know what you’re building until you start building it,” he said.

“We built Backpack just to have an excuse to start building something,” he said. “It’s not where you start, it’s the countless decisions and shifts you make along the way to get to a good place.”

Ferrante compared the attempt to understand the Backpack’s capabilities to the difficulties consumers faced when the iPhone was first introduced. Steve Jobs described it as an “internet computing device,” a concept that was difficult for people to understand at the time, he said. “The iPhone can do a lot more than just call and text. You have a rich ecosystem of developers. You have an app store, you have a browser, you have access to a rich set of device capabilities,” he said.

“Any one of these things could describe an iPhone.”

“They’re all different things, right?”

Likewise, a crypto wallet can go far beyond just being a token manager or an access control device, he said. Recalling Steve Jobs’ description of the iPhone, Ferrante said that a crypto wallet is a “blockchain computing device” that acts as a central node for accessing data and the blockchain. **With Backpack, the goal is to bring every protocol and every blockchain into a single user interface in an “iPhone-style way,” he said. “You can build an amazing flagship consumer product and position it in a way that’s more of a platform and an open ecosystem that anyone can build on,” Ferrante said.

Comparing Solana’s path to success with other blockchains like Ethereum and Cosmos, Ferrante quoted Peter Thiel: “Competition is for the losers.”

“We should focus all our energy on not trying to beat the competition, but on expanding the pie.”