Looking to hire for a bunch of roles at
@DriftProtocol
&
@DriftFDN
.
Top of mind for me:
- Chief of Staff
- Head of ecosystem/partnerships
- Operations
- Infras gigas
- Quants researchers & traders
Some of JDs, some don't.
If none fit, dm me with your custom role and what
My vision for
@DriftProtocol
is to build the best exchange with the broadest distribution of users.
My thesis is that a token is one way to assist with distribution and underwriting risk for using a new technology. There's a lot we can be improving on.
I am not a fan of
0/ In every cycle, there are periods of euphoria and then periods of fatigue.
NFT’s on
@Solana
are beginning to experience this fatigue. This is not to say that the quality of new projects are bad but there has been more negative noise over the past week.
A thread 🧵
This has been a culmination of numerous years of work and the craziest rollercoaster for the team.
We started in 2021 with a team of four and shipped the first perpetuals platform on
@solana
.
We came inches to death in 2022.
We ran the comeback of the year in 2023.
Today, we
Introducing $DRIFT — the Drift Governance Token.
DRIFT is the governance token of Drift Protocol, the largest open-sourced perpetual futures exchange built on Solana.
The most counter-intuitive thing to do is to launch with a low FDV.
Imagine you’re a founder. You’ve worked on your project for years and finally the moment is upon you to embark on public price discovery. The natural instinct is to go as high as possible.
But that couldn’t be
So this is the story of one the biggest L’s for
@DriftProtocol
but biggest wins for
@solana
Luigi was a candidate that came through our pipeline. We were big fans of the work he was did for us but we were slow to move. All resources were focused on building Drift v2 in August
Hey I'm Luigi, and I spent the bear market coding Sphere.
I quit my job at a unicorn, and slept in an attic for over a year to build this.
Here's why 👇
We started from nothing when
@DriftProtocol
v2 launched in Nov 2022.
Months of energy were poured into building the best decentralised exchange. No stones were unturned; and everything rearchitected.
Just as we thought we had something, FTX took place. We were back to nothing.
The fact that so many people in crypto look for people to blame just because price is down is insulting to builders who've been grinding for years.
Well done on your launch today
@KaminoFinance
in a set of difficult market conditions.
In 6-12 months, no will care where today's
At any user that traded heavily on
@DriftProtocol
but saw either 0 or 1 point, you are most likely captured in the OG snapshots.
There was a lot we could’ve done better today but I hope today’s execution does not belies what our intentions have been.
The points program only
The stories of success on Solana were built with pure grit.
@jito_labs
had around $10mn in TVL in July -> now $300mn+
@DriftProtocol
was doing $1mn average daily volume (ADV) at the start of the year -> now $50mn+ ADV
Hardware is expensive and margins are traditionally low.
So why am I bullish
@solanamobile
?
The DAPP stack.
Cryptoassets do not have a mobile "home" right now. The current mobile experience is janky. Wallets are a separate app within your iPhone. Trading is a far cry from
Alright folks, joining the Solana Ecosystem Call tomorrow and talking about [redacted] alongside our frens at
@jito_sol
and
@Kamino_Finance
🔥
I wonder what it could be about?
Sure not p***ts 👀
Don't miss it:
The most bullish thing for an OS project is when a community member is not happy with an experience and takes their own initiative to fix it.
If you have an idea or a solution to something that isn’t working well with
@DriftProtocol
, create a proposal publicly on X, tag
90% in agreement with this.
I think there are many users who realistically may not have heard of or used
@DriftProtocol
.
Remember there’s a giant user base outside of CT that we often don’t see.
So whilst I largely agree with Jords take, that’s not to say we’ll kneecap
if you're a solana protocol doing an airdrop you should place a very large multiplier on activity done before the $JTO airdrop imo
safe to say a lot of activity done after are just farmooors and not users
The best trade I made in 2023 was buying $170k of jitoSOL at $17. I held it and and ran a funding trade on it.
In the process, I also picked up:
- $JTO (for holding jitoSOL)
- $JUP (for swapping into jitoSOL)
- $PYTH (for depositing that jitoSOL across various DeFi protocols)
0/ A post-mortem:
@CyberSamuraiNFT
x
@RaydiumProtocol
Dropzone Launch ⚔️
Drops on
@solana
have been struggling to hit their pre-release target. The market sentiment is shifting.
It's time we do a deep dive into new models.
A thread 🧵
Sharing some exciting updates 🔥
- Points program is live. Fixed three months MAXIMUM period (no longer, only less)
- Multiple snapshots already taken place to recognise OG activity. You WILL be looked after.
- Points is the PRELUDE and first step of the progressive
Haha
@mrjasonchoi
I'm not sure if you intended to tweet this at
@DriftProtocol
but I couldn't agree more.
Alongside being able to make your community rich, it cleans out supply overhang early.
Seed investors who wrote a check but did nothing but take one phone call over the
The entire crypto game is "can you make your community rich"
If you try to launch at max FDV you are only enriching insiders
That's how you get thought pieces, not users
Great take from
@cobie
0/ So time for a public service announcement off the back of the
@thugbirdz
's launch.
Unfortunately, with the roaring success of NFTs comes a more malicious secondary market of scammers.
Here's how you can protect yourself.
3/ In my opinion, mints should move down to 0.5-1 SOL range to ensure these remain accessible.
Ultimately, the value of the NFT and its stickiness comes from the community it brings together.
CC:
@SolanaMBS
@MonkeDAO
@DegenApeAcademy
@thugbirdz
@thugDAO
When the entire
@solana
community rallies around a project on the eve of your launch, you know you've done something right.
Well done
@tensor_hq
@0xrwu
@_ilmoi
and very excited to see what's in store tomorrow 🔥
A lot of chatter around
@KaijuCards
's mint and refund process.
A loose compilation of resources & thoughts around the status of NFTs on
#Solana
🧵Messy thread below 👇
Simping like everyone else at the
@phantom
wallet experience 🔥
Revolutionising the start of any user experience to interacting with applications is key to mass adoption.
A game changer for all those building on
@solana
.
All points dropped today are forward looking and do not take into account activity pre-announcement.
Prior activity has already been snapshotted numerous times.
As I've said time and time again ... our OGs will always be looked after.
Farmers, you have no idea.
Foundations as cities, not HQs.
A short memo following the announcement of
@DriftFDN
yesterday.
Historically, most have always approached the role of Foundations as a secondary HQ that looks after workstreams outside the purview of labs.
But fundamentally, the role of a
There is an assumption that whatever a user's points total ends up is what it will convert to for any token drop / be representative of the "community allocation".
After all, there is already precedent to suggest that with past airdrops that did very well. $JTO was done
We chose
@optimismFND
because ultimately, we care about being close to the most decentralized blockchain (ETH), while making sure leveraged trading is affordable for *everyone*, not just whales. A quick TL;DR on how the upcoming Bedrock upgrade reduces gas fees by ~50% 🧵
@MoetFi
is looking for a Web 3 Developer to join our growing team in building our perpetual futures protocol on
@solana
!
Details below on the nitty gritty👇
I'm dropping an ambassador program for
@DriftProtocol
very soon with
@0xMitzy
.
Alpha hidden in the Discord 👀
Engage with this if you want to boost your odds 💪
gm
There was a time where every second investor was asking
@DriftProtocol
whether we'd consider other chains.
We resolutely said "no" every single time.
Founders that stayed during the darkest times are built differently. Teams that didn't have resolve ended up spending too much
It took us almost 9 months to hit our first $1bn in volume.
Now this looks closer to $1bn every four days. Proud of how our team grinded throughout the bear to get to where we are today.
Slowly, then all at once.
An update on “Frens of Drift”.
No doubt there are many community members of
@DriftProtocol
eager to hear the outcome of their Drift frens submission.
In total, the form has received 25,000 submissions and counting. I have personally gone through all of them to date and over the
With
@DriftProtocol
crushing $1bn in under 30 days, I am looking to hire two more developers for our team.
1. Infrastructure engineer - make Drift go better faster
2. Mobile developer - to spearhead
@solanamobile
DM's open 📥
cc
@0xMitzy
@crispheaney
Gm Bloomberg on covering
@DriftProtocol
as the leading derivatives exchange on
@solana
🔥
On-chain collateral is critical since it can be verified at all times. This is particularly important as Drift is the only cross-collateral platform, meaning you can trade with multiple
The Solana ecosystem lacked the presence of mid cap project tokens that could be traded. The leading projects hadn't yet announced or released tokens.
This is changing. First $PYTH; then $JUP, now $JTO...
... I wonder what's next?
Today the
@DriftFDN
unveiled its airdrop eligibility checker to reward users of the
@DriftProtocol
over the past three years.
It's been a long journey and we're excited steward the next step of the protocol's decentralisation. I hope what the team has accomplished today can be
10/ Every grab supported marginally hurts the community.
We can do a lot to support those who are putting their best work forward. And it starts separating substance from the noise 🤝
If you’ve come this far, please like and retweet to raise awareness for our artists!
Okay
@thugbirdz
community your boy needs some help here 🧐
Looking for a pfp update and stuck between my top four:
1. Alien + Heisenhat + Teardrop
2. Zombie + Red Cap
3. Normal + Heisenhat + Blunt
4. Spotted + Doorrag
Please drop comments/votes below 👇
Went around scouring for
@DriftProtocol
lasers and ended up picking up this bad boy 👾
Not only has the Drift laser but also the
@mangomarkets
bazooka and
@orca_so
cap 🥭🐋
Probably nothing ... top 10 maybe?
@TheSolarmy
Contrarian launch thesis: The best price to launch at (if you took in private funding) is at the last private round valuation.
I’ve been thinking about launch mechanics for a while and following
@cobie
’s post around this prompted me to publicly share this thesis.
Private value
The first pre-launch market for $KMNO is on
@solana
.
@DriftProtocol
's role in all of this is to spotlight the best of the ecosystem.
We told you April was going to be 🔥
Let me tell you the story of how we found Frank.
Initial call on Tuesday. Told me he was willing to do whatever it took to be on the
@DriftProtocol
eng team.
Started the task on Wednesday. Grinded his ass off throughout the week and weekend.
Offer extended and accepted on
i am ecstatic to announce that i’ve joined the engineering team at
@DriftProtocol
im beyond excited to work with this ultra-talented team on building the best dex in crypto
👾
My biggest takeaway from 2023 is that success is often experienced after hitting the lowest point.
If you never struggled or hit rock bottom; you'll never know the true feeling of elation when clawing it back.
In the three years of building
@DriftProtocol
, we started with
The most concerning thing for a protocol is if your metrics start to wane post token distribution event.
That's a likely indicator that there was insufficient organic activity to get to where you need to be.
If your organic activity remains consistent, that's a bullish sign.
The best feeling as a web3 founder is when your community wins.
I’m proud that
@DriftFDN
executed on a tricky launch to make sure the community had ample opportunity to get involved.
It’s counter-intuitive but the beginning of an anti-fragile community is letting them share
Shoutout to the
@phantom
team who have been relentless shipping and improving the wallet experience in face of ATH usage.
We often forget that wallet infra powers so much of what we do.
Excited to be sharing something exciting soon 🤝
Community founders is going to be a meta-defining role in this next cycle.
Cooking something with
@kashdhanda
.
DM me if you think you could be a community founder with
@DriftProtocol
- would love to hear from you!
The
@thugbirdz
community has been incredible over the past 24 hours.
Alien squad ended up edging out blunt crew ever so slightly but couldn’t go wrong with either bc both were heisenhats gang 🎩
Caw caw and GM :)
#NewProfilePic
The amount of airdrops from
@thugDAO
is seriously unparalleled.
If there's one thing you do, get yourself a
@thugbirdz
. It's amazing to see what solidarity behind a community can create.
Not financial advice.
“Kill it fast” is the most important thing I’ve learnt as a founder.
If something doesn’t work, don’t let it fester.
This could be a hire, a campaign or even a feature.
Set an evaluation date and if it’s still not working out, kill it fast.
Was going through the annals last night for
@DriftProtocol
on where we were this time last year.
$7.87mn in TVL (yes, we had 50x less TVL)
Today projects alone are raising $10mn in Series A funding.
What a comeback story for this ecosystem 🔥
Growth team over at
@DriftProtocol
is the most stacked it's ever been.
I used to comb through resumes when hiring for growth & marketing roles. But after being burnt by a bad marketing hire, I've found that metrics speak louder than words.
Now, I exclusively hire for
Happy to announce I'm now part of
@DriftProtocol
!
Drift is the biggest Perp DEX on Solana and the dream is as great as the work ethic and dedication of this team.
I'll be contributing to the following:
- Strategic Growth
- Marketing
- Advisory
If you have feedback,
I'm looking for a swiss army knife to be a Chief of Staff to the CEO & COO at Drift. You're analytical, a problem solver and hopefully have a degen side who’s familiar with crypto markets.
You’ll get to work on the forefront of exciting deals and partnerships but not be a
0/ Excited to share that the genesis proposal for
@DriftFDN
- DIP-1 passed successfully!
The proposal was on: Launching DRIFT Staking Vault & Fee Discounts for DRIFT Stakers.
We had over 220 community members participate.
Here's what we learned from the first proposal 🧵
Going to run an experiment for as part of the next chapter of
@DriftProtocol
’s growth.
I had a great chat with
@AntonioMJuliano
on the importance of in person teams and its trade-off.
Yes there are costs, but there’s unique advantages on efficiency and productivity around
We're looking to hire a developer relations engineer at
@DriftProtocol
!
You'll get to work on institutional partnerships, ecosystem integrations as well as curating and disbursing grants to our contributor network.
Dm myself or
@crispheaney
if interested!
cc
@therealchaseeb
4/ Insert royalties or other incentives that reward users.
But don’t get it in a way that prevents people from even being able to play the game.
5-10 SOL mints are blatant cash grabs. Avoid at all costs. 💀
Biggest fomo in a bull market is missing out all the memecoins while you’re heads down building
But then you realise you’re building for your own 1,000,000x so it’s all good
There was time where the cumulative TVL of Solana DeFi would fit into a single one of these protocols.
Pretty sure the TVL on
@marginfi
alone was the entire TVL of the ecosystem back in the depths of July.
It's exciting to see strong foundational lego blocks being built on
One thing I’m really excited to see is the resetting of valuation to fairer opening prices with
@sanctumso
and hopefully other projects to come!
My thesis has always been to try and treat loyal community members as close to investors as possible.
So to the extent they can
Okay for everyone listening to the
@DriftProtocol
x
@solana
x
@jito_labs
spaces, the following alpha was dropped.
Async transactions = one giant enshrined roll up on Solana
My brain is exploding 🤯
7/ A botched mint likely leads to a fragile community. You don’t want to kill your community before you’ve even started.
The gold standard for mints is
@KaijuCards
.
@AbstraticaNFT
not far behind.
Please learn from those who have executed this well.
The importance of good rest cannot be understated.
Pushing regular 16 hour days may feel productive but each subsequent day starts you at a lower low, until your body just feels burnt.
Look after yourself & gm.
A few thoughts on fundraising and what it's felt like.
We just went through one for
@DriftProtocol
and I want to take this opportunity to pay it forward to founders who may be going through this right now.👾
A thread 🧵
Excited to be launching this with our friends at
@sanctumso
!
The vision for dSOL is going to change the meta.
dSOL isn’t going to be like any other LST. It’s going to be utilised in a unique way that powers our keepers, who play a critical role in matching orders within our
.
@DriftProtocol
is the first to offer earn on unfilled orders.
If you have a resting limit order, you will be PAID on your deposits.
In previous models, you had to open borrow or forgo interest to have resting order.
P.S Imagine what a Drift EARN product could look like 👀
Announcing our second grant from the amazing
@ProjectSerum
team!💧 Serum’s CLOB is a game changer for on-chain trading & will be a core part of Moet’s infrastructure 🤝
Join me and the
@TheSolarmy
team an hour before their Dropzone on
@RaydiumProtocol
👾🎖
Will be a casual conversation around the state of NFT on Solana and community to ask any final questions before the drop!
A special guest may also be joining …
Super bullish the future of governance for Drift.
Getting close to 30% of the claimed amount already deposited into the protocol.
Long term Driftoooors knows what’s up 🫡
DRIFT on Drift 🏎️💨
With over 14M DRIFT deposited, you are pioneers in the next phase of Drift's journey — your voice will shape it's future and fuel its growth.
Thank you for all your trust these past 3 years. Let's start building the future together 🧱