Solana Co-founder Raj Gokal Talks NFTs, Recovery, and Future Growth in Fortune Interview

Following a rocky period caused by the collapse of FTX in November, Solana, the high-performance blockchain platform, has seen a resurgence in activity, largely due to a renewed interest in NFTs. Raj Gokal, Solana's co-founder, recently spoke with Fortune magazine about the platform's recovery and future growth.

In the interview, Gokal described the FTX collapse as "pretty far in the rearview mirror," emphasizing the fast-paced nature of the crypto industry. A significant contributor to Solana's resurgence has been the xNFT project Mad Lads, which recently surpassed all other NFT projects in sales volume. According to Gokal, Coral, the Web3 company behind Mad Lads, has succeeded in engaging its community by developing a unique product - an NFT wallet called Backpack - before launching its NFT collection.

Backpack has broken barriers by enabling xNFTs to serve as fully on-chain applications. Gokal attributes the recent popularity of Solana for NFTs to this innovative approach and the platform's speed and affordability. Despite two prominent projects, yoots and DeGods, migrating to other blockchains, Solana has bounced back, demonstrating improved performance since its last outage in February.

Blockchain analytics company Flipside Crypto reported that Solana's successful transactions dropped by about 25% from October to November but began to recover in March, with April marking a second consecutive month of growth.

Gokal also highlighted the introduction of a state compression feature in April, which significantly reduces the cost of minting NFTs. This feature has attracted various projects, such as DRiP, which uses state compression for free weekly NFT airdrops, and companies like Dialect and Crossmint, which employ the technology for blockchain-based stickers in messaging and customer loyalty applications.

According to Gokal, Solana's ecosystem is thriving, and the industry must take notice. With continued innovation and expanding use cases for NFTs and other blockchain applications, Solana is well-positioned to maintain its growth trajectory in the coming months.