The rise of Solana due to a strong community – exchange art exec Larisa Barbu
With 2024 upon us, Cointelegraph's Hashing It Out podcast is focusing on the narratives that will be at the heart of crypto conversations this year. In Episode 44, Larisa Barbu, CEO of ExchangeArt — the fine art marketplace on Solana that recently merged with Ethereum — discussed Solana's significant growth in late 2023 and the potential for continued growth in 2024.
Barbu explains how resilient Solana's ecosystem is and outlines the rise of activity on the Layer-1 network beyond price action and speculation.
Barbu cites the resilience of Solana's community to survive the market downturn after Terra and FTX collapsed in 2022. She said their belief in the vision encouraged developers to stick with the network and continue building.
Although he says most developers remain, Barbu admits that the number of users has moved away from layer-1 since the creation of blockchain issues, which are generally integrated into the crypto-double run. She explained that it took constant attention from developers and major announcements about technical updates coming to Solana like FireDancer to get people excited again.
This could be one of the reasons for renewed interest and price growth since announcements were made at the Solana Breakpoint conference in September 2023, she added.
The show also examines how Solana's growth has affected other sectors besides decentralized finance. As the chief executive officer of Solana's leading non-vulnerable token (NFT) marketplace, Barbu notes that Solana has seen an influx of innovators such as photographers.
She added that more traditional art galleries are finding ways to integrate NFTs as part of their exhibitions, which could be huge for the future of digital art.
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