Be a power user and use the best tools.
Wallets (Where you hold your tokens and NFT’s.)
Phantom – The OG wallet on Solana. It was a magical experience for me when I first started using it so I have start with Phantom. Both a browser extension wallet and a mobile app on Apple and Android.
Backpack – newer, but extremely well done. From Armani, Tristan, and the MadLads team. Both browser extension and now mobile on Andriod and Apple as well. Has some pretty cool features like xNFT’s that are basically apps executed within your wallet, and the ability to freeze NFT’s in your wallet so that they can’t be stolen. This will also be tightly integrated into their exchange that they will be launching in the near future.
Fuse/Squads – Amazing multi sig wallet. Safer/better for anyone just getting started or advanced users. Fuse is the mobile app and it’s free, it saves your keys and is probably how all wallets will eventually look. Squads is probably more for businesses looking to secure funds but you can create a multisig “squad” really cheaply and it’s really secure. Multi sig wallets are amazing – you can set it so that multiple private keys have to sign a transaction before funds move. Common is 2/3 or 3/5. So that in order for a transaction to go through, you have to sign or approve a transaction from multiple wallets that you control. This is the gold standard for advanced users. The most secure way would be to have hardware wallets secure this, think a Ledger,
Gotta add Jupiter to the list too, their new mobile wallet is clean AF and you can fund with ApplePay.
Also a shout out to Solflare which is also an OG wallet, Glow which is a great wallet, Ottr which is a great wallet and on and off ramp tool.
On-Ramp/Off-ramp. (Bank to wallet, or wallet to bank.)
I’m in the US so I mainly use Coinbase. I always recommend onboarding with USDC and transferring that to your wallet to swap to Sol or whatever token you want. Swapping on Coinbase is really bad.
Sphere – https://spherepay.co/ramp Amazing new protocol where you can on and off ramp free of charge.
Robinhood – think they are going to change the game with banking/crypto alignment.
Look in Phantom – there’s tons now and they are competitive.
Use PayPal – pyusd is on Solana now and you can transfer to paypal and offramp in a day or two.
Fuse now has onramp and offramps through Bridge that are very easy to do.
Exchanges – Dex’s. (Decentralized Exchanges used on-chain.)
Jupiter – don’t mess around with others unless you have to. It’s an aggregator and the best in class. It takes liquidity from all liquidity providers and finds the best price for your swap and will execute trades for you incredibly reliably and quickly.
Titan – new meta aggregator that has the best pricing for swaps, did an episode with Chris HERE.
Stable Coins
USDC is the safest as of the end of 2023. Each dollar is backed by Circle and it’s investor Coinbase one to one. So it won’t depeg, this is the stablecoin with the most liquidity on Solana as well, so this would be the easy choice. Coinbase also converts USD to USDC instantly. Free withdrawals take a day or two and after your first deposit it’s instant.
Also PYUSD, Tether USDT, sUSD, USDS, lots now, all seem fairly solid, stay away from any algorhythmic coins if they ever come up.
Staking
Marinade is one of the leaders in this space. They offer a native staking product that is currently yielding over 9% apy. You can also access a bunch of other great ones directly from your phantom wallet to stake to.
So many more options now. SoLayer, Jito, anything on Sanctum.
Liquid Staking (Liquid staking tokens or derivatives.)
These are amazing. You stake your Solana with a validator that helps validate the Solana network, and in return you get a Liquid Staking Token that represents your staked token. This token increases in small increments in each epoch, or staking period, which is 2-3 days long. For staking your Solana you get rewarded with Solana, liquid staking token protocols distribute that amount to the stakers. So you will see these tokens trading at a small premium to Solana and while they are in your wallet they will increase. Sanctum also has changed the game making LST’s much easier to launch and the list is massive.
mSOL – Marinade’s LST, great APY and they incentivize it with dropping their MNDE token to stakers.
JitoSOL – Jito is a very well respected protocol in the industry and introduced MEV to Solana where they go after any users paying additional transaction fees to guarantee a transaction goes through the network during congestion. Because of this they can offer one of the highest APY’s and many other lst’s have integrated their technology. They will drop a token and you get points for holding the token that accrue daily.
Portfolio Trackers
Awaken – Amazing tax calculator that handles Solana transactions really well. Also has a portfolio tracker that is very complete.
Step – Great tracker. Think Mint but for your crypto wallet.
Jupiter Portfolio – they bought the sonar.watch tracker and it’s really good but slightly better defi integrations. Track all your coins down easily with either of these.
AssetDash – multi wallet, multi chain, kind of has it all. Great tracker and even has an iphone app and nft tracker, really good. Also has whale watching for big wallets, and can swap in it too.
NFT Marketplaces
NFT’s are huge on Solana and their marketplaces are a dream come true.
Tensor – revolutionary. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted in an NFT marketplace and more. Super fast, you get rewards, likely dropping a token, it’s the best marketplace across any chain.
Magic Eden – this is also a great marketplace, but kind of fell behind Tensor when it decided to focus on going multichain in stead of doubling down on what’s only possible on Solana.
Exchange Art – BONK just bought it, I imagine this will be much bigger in the near future.
Hot wallet Vs. Cold wallet
Important concept. A hot wallet is any wallet that has been connected to any website, ever. This is important in security because on the cutting edge of technology there are cutting edge scams out there. Links that can drain your wallet if you click them. That’s why we have to be vigilant on our security. Crypto is unique in that you hold your own assets, that also puts the security burden on yourself. Your keys, your coins. I think of a cold wallet as a savings account. It’s use is to sit there and accumulate wealth or send some out from wallet to wallet.
Hardware Wallets – these hold your password or private keys on a device and cannot be accessed unless you provide a password to the hardware device. Very important if you don’t want to have to worry about security.
Ledger is the best. It’s clunky, and you can actually use your Phantom or Backpack wallet and secure it with your hardware wallet fairly easy.
Solana Phone or Saga is also great.
Multi Sig Wallets – these are a great form of added security where you need to have multiple people or wallets sign a transaction. You can have 3 of your own wallets for super secure storage. Or you could have 5 business partners in a multi sig managing a treasury where 3/5 need to sign a transaction in order to move funds. Kind of revolutionary tech and Squads has been crushing the game. It’s so cheap and easy to set up that it’s clear that this is going to be huge in the future.
Squads is the best on Solana for this, their new Fuse wallet for mobile is a dream.
Leverage Trading – ready to go crazy trading? Not recommended, but speculation is at the core of crypto and there are great ways to do it. Perps or Perpetual Swap Contracts are the most common form of leverage in crypto. Arthur from Bitmex was the first to really bring these over to crypto and revolutionized the degens trading capabilities.
Drift – amazing protocol. You will need a VPN to access from the us, but it offers lending, borrowing, trading perps on a bunch of desirable tokens, with a great team behind it. I find their execution to be a little worse than pool to peer options because they use an order book for filling orders, so you might not get the best execution. They have enabled a new Swift protocol that brings liquidity in from other sources to address this.
Flash.trade is a newer entrant to the arena and is amazing. Cheap fees, fast, you can lp, they have an NFT, fully bootstrapped the entire protocol with the NFT collection, and is dropping a token soon. Here’s the episode with Anas.
Zeta – interview with Tristan out soon on their next platform with an L2 on Solana.
Jupiter also has a great product, but costly.
Adrena – newer entrant, but pool to peer as well and fantastic product.
Ore – Bitcoin on Solana? Yes. ore.supply for staking, mining.
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