SALT LAKE CITY — The way Barrett from Cypher Protocol sees it, Solana’s comeback depends on one thing: tokens.
Specifically, new tokens from teams on the Solana blockchain that haven’t issued them before. They’re the key to driving liquidity, trading activity and most important, new users into a decentralized finance ecosystem that sorely needs all three.
Barrett, the founder of crypto trading platform Cypher, sat down with CoinDesk on day two of this summer’s mtnDAO, the biannual “hacker house” now in its fourth edition. He’s the event’s emcee and chief organizer, and via Cypher its main sponsor, alongside MarginFi, an on-chain lending platform.
The two have charged up Solana’s growth leaderboard in recent weeks partly because of loyalty programs that give “points” to crypto traders who participate in their respective markets. These points aren’t themselves tokens, but nearly everyone amassing them is convinced they’ll transmogrify into a token payday—possibly soon.
Barrett, who has gone by his mononym first name at least since Cypher launched in 2021, won’t confirm whether the crypto lending startup is on the cusp of launching a token or will ever hold an airdrop. It hardly matters; all those askers of “wen Cypher airdrop” are plowing their points-earning capital through Cypher’s markets for trading crypto assets like SOL, ETH and BTC anyway.
This excitement is giving Cypher its first taste of success after three years and just as many pivots. On Wednesday Cypher v3 (Barrett describes it as a “generalized decentralized exchange”) crossed $2 million in total deposits for the first time ever.
Getting it right could help determine whether Solana DeFi returns to its multibillion-dollar heights or instead trudges down the long road to irrelevance.
“We’re consistently ranking top five in growth across one-, seven- and 30-day periods in the Solana ecosystem on both users and TVL,” said Barrett, referring to DeFi’s total vale locked metric. The protocol has grown 1,384% since launching a liquidity incentives program and more than doubled since debuting points, he added. Trading “volume is picking up on spot and perps” markets, referring to perpetual futures contracts.
Cypher is part of what Barrett calls “Solana DeFi 2.0,” a loose…
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