Layer by Layer: Solana Sees Signs of Resurgence with Rise of xNFTs

The average user experience for interacting with blockchains and smart contracts has improved rapidly over the past several years. In particular, the advent of primitive decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and applications has unlocked broad access to core financial services such as trading, lending, borrowing, and more for anyone with internet access and on-ramps into crypto. However, the typical user still faces significant challenges when it comes to the speed, cost, and complexity associated with using many of the leading smart contract platforms. 

Addressing speed and cost issues essentially boils down to overcoming limitations in blockchain scalability. Over the past year, rollup-based solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum have dominated much of the discussion around scalability as they have steadily captured a growing share of on-chain liquidity. Nonetheless, developers for Layer 1 (L1) networks, such as Solana, and, more recently, Aptos and Sui, have continued to tackle the scalability problem from another angle by pushing the limits of transaction processing and execution on a monolithic blockchain.