Solana Ecological Analysis Report

foreword

In order to meet the needs of blockchain users, public chains , heterogeneous chains, and parallel chains are emerging one after another. Solana not only “breaks out” but also becomes a very bright public chain. Solana’s ecological blowout growth is in the mid-to-late period of 2021. At that time, the price of its governance token $SOL has increased by as much as 100 times, and ecological Dapps have also sprung up, covering Defi, NFT , infrastructure and other competitions. Dao, and strive to build Solana ecological integration.

However, the subsequent track change made Solana and other public chains that were popular in the public chain field quiet for a while, until recently, the core “Play-to-Earn” of the Game-Fi track was named StepN project in Solana ecology. (a sports chain game) inherited and changed into the core model of “Move-to-Earn”, by accumulating a large number of users and popularity, it has captured the favor of well-known institutions, such as Binance Labs, and once again achieved Game -The achievement of the Fi project that is popular out of the circle.

Solana, as a public chain platform for incubating StepN chain games, has re-entered the spotlight of institutions and users. Today, I will take you to take stock and analyze: Are there any potential projects worth paying attention to in the Solana ecosystem?

As of 2022-04-20, there are a total of 301 Defi projects on Solana, with a total lock-up of over $11 billion, and a 24-hour transaction volume of about $430 million. It can be seen from this that Solana has a certain user market, and in the public chain track, it can also occupy a certain position by virtue of the Defi sector. Not only that, it can be concluded from the data that the transaction fees on the chain are low, and the average transaction cost per transaction is low. The handling fee fluctuates around $0.18.

DeFi track

According to the statistics of Defilama, as of 2022-04-20, the Defi lock-up volume on Solana is $5.01 billion, ranking fifth in the overall blockchain, and the top four are Ethereum, Terra , BSC, and Avalache. The distribution of locked positions of Defi projects on Solana is relatively even. Even Marinade, which accounts for the highest proportion, is only 15.23% of the total. It is also worth noting that the overall locked position of Sol has been maintained at the current level since the drop at the end of last year.

1. Orca

Orca is a DEX located on the Solana blockchain. It focuses on basic decentralized exchange functions such as token trading and liquidity provision. It received $18 million in Series A financing led by Polychain Capital in September last year. Its token ORCA was launched in August 2021, and part of it was airdropped to former liquidity providers and trading users to motivate new users to participate and give back to old users.

1.1 Basic data

The above picture shows the change of the total locked volume of Orca DEX from its creation to the present. Currently, the locked volume of Orca ranks 7th in the Sol ecosystem at $407.16m, which has dropped to about a quarter of the highest point.

The current Orca lock-up volume is $415.82m, ranking 7th in the Sol ecosystem. The growth rate of Orca’s daily transaction volume is also unexpected. As of 2022-04-20, Orca’s total transaction volume was 129,328, compared with a year-on-year growth rate of 363% a month ago, and there is still no obvious downward trend.

The number of daily active users of Orca is proportional to the number of successful daily transactions. On the 21st, the number of users was 71,749. However, the more the number of users, the higher the daily transaction volume. The data shows that the development of Orca in all aspects is upward, and there is a high probability that there will be breakthroughs in the future.

1.2 Team Information

The Orca core team consists of 11 people, with two co-founders Yutaro Mori and Grace Kwan leading the development team and the strategy team respectively. Yutaro is a senior cryptocurrency developer who has participated in the development of the ETH  2.0 Golang client and the synthetic asset UMA . The Orca development team has a total of 6 developers, most of whom graduated from Stanford, University of Waterloo and other universities known for their computers, and all of them have worked in Amazon or Google, and the team is highly professional. The strategy team has also worked in top business consulting and design agencies.

1.3 Economic Model

ORCA released its own governance token on 2021-08-09: $ORCA, with an initial circulating supply of 5.25 million and a total supply of 100 million.

ORCA value orientation:

ORCA tokens are linked to trading activities on the platform, and most of them flow to LPs, promoting a healthy AMM ecosystem.

Orca Treasury is a  DAO for feature development, token repurchase or the opening of new markets.

The fund will donate 0.01% of all transaction fees on a quarterly basis to real-world charities.

1.4 Advantages

1. As a rising star of DEX in the Solana ecosystem, Orca’s reward model is to give liquidity providers a share, charge 0.3% of the handling fee to deposit in the pool, and distribute them in proportion to the share. Over time, users will acquire more liquidity tokens (storage + award).
2. Orca provides users with a high level of friendliness. With the excellent performance of Solana, the transactions on Orca can be described in sub-second speed, bringing a smooth transaction experience, and the front-end page is responsive and smooth.
3. When users trade on Orca, Orca will use different curves to maximize the utilization of funds and reduce slippage. At the same time, Orca’s fair price indicator can let users know the best price in the market at a glance, so as to protect the interests of users.

1.5 Summary

As a Defi protocol, Orca has relatively complete functions and a high pledge interest rate. For some users who like stable income and are not willing to take risks, this is a good choice. At present, the annual interest rate of liquid pledge provided by aquafarm on Orca is medium. In the higher range, the picture below shows the interest rate of some pools. The relatively stable annual interest rate of SOL and USDC is also 36%. In addition, the dynamic update of the project party is relatively frequent. Recently, it has carried out functions such as planning and project governance voting, and has also cooperated with projects such as Afaltoun and Soda Protocol.

2. Know

Saber is an automated market maker optimized for trading anchored assets on Solana. As Solana’s core cross-chain liquidity network, Saber helps facilitate asset transfers between Solana and other blockchains. According to previous reports, SaberLabs received $7.7 million in seed round financing, led by Race Capital, and participated by well-known institutions such as Jump and Multicoin.

2.1 Basic data

Sabre has seen significant growth in just a short period of time since its launch, with TVL growing from zero to $1 billion in its first three months. Its highest locked volume was US$4.15 billion on 2021-09-12, but the good times were not long. With the ecological explosion of other public chains, Solana’s internal Defi competition became more intense, and its total locked volume continued to drop.

As of April 2022, Sabre held $367 million in liquidity in its liquidity pool and facilitated a daily swap volume of over $37 million. Its most liquid pools include mSOL-SOL, UST-USDC, and UXD-USDC.

Sabre’s competitive advantage lies in the number of assets it supports, the same as EVM-based Curve . It provides a way for LPs to earn income while minimizing the risk of impermanent loss, attracting a large number of users in a short period of time.

2.2 Team Information

The founding team has been building crypto projects together since 2017. In 2018, the team launched a   crypto fund management platform backed by Y Combinator and Coinbase . Also helped organize the first DeFi community events in San Francisco and Prague. Saber’s team has experience shipping products at some of the largest tech companies, including  Facebook , Google, Coinbase, and  OKEx .

2.3 Economic Model

The maximum supply of SBR is 10 billion pieces, and the distribution ratio is as follows:

1% of the total token supply will be allocated during the first two weeks of the liquidity mining program, ensuring voting rights are granted to actual users and helping to adjust liquidity to provide incentives.

Two main use cases for $SBR: Sabre development and adjustment of fee models; adjustment of incentives among stakeholders.

2.4 Advantages

1. Saber aims to be a high-volume, low-risk trading platform by providing the most accurate prices (encouraging arbitrage bots to trade), while also partnering with other DeFi projects to reduce the opportunity cost for users.
2. Sabre enables low-slippage transactions of pegged assets even in large transactions, and users can pay extremely low fees to exchange large amounts of stablecoins.
3. Sabre facilitates exchanges between anchored assets bridged from other blockchains. Through Saber users can easily migrate assets to the Solana chain. The more assets supported, the more prosperous the Solana public chain will be, which further promotes the development of Saber, thus forming a positive cycle.

2.5 Summary

The current cryptocurrency market is in a downward trend, and most investors have already exchanged cryptocurrencies for stablecoins. Holding stablecoins is a risk management strategy to hedge against economic downturns. The idle stablecoins are composed of LPs for liquidity mining with high cost performance. The APY of LPs in Saber is between 8% and 92%, and the value fluctuations of SBR stablecoins are very small and can be basically ignored. Therefore, the LP of stablecoins can well avoid impermanent losses, and can also enjoy good mining income and fee sharing at the same time. However, it should be noted that the cancellation fee of some LPs in Saber is relatively high, such as USDT /USDC. The cancellation fee of LP is 5%, which means that the cancellation will be a loss before the fee is recovered, so please read the rules before to operate.

NFT trading platform

On 2022-04-07, the largest NFT trading platform – Opensea announced that the integration will be deployed on the Solana chain, NFT minted on the Solana blockchain network can now be traded on  OpenSea  , according to the market, the Solana-centric system is listed Now and priced in $SOL.

According to data statistics and multi-party comparisons, the number of NFT trading markets in the Solana ecosystem has fluctuated greatly in recent months. Although affected by the disturbance of the NFT market, it still showed a cliff-like growth from 03-27 to 04-03. Even more soaring. Solana’s NFT transaction volume in March also exceeded the $190 million mark. As of 2022-04-21, Solana’s NFT market total transaction volume reached $1.93 billion, ranking No. 3 in the public chain NFT competition. There is also a place in the Tao.

3. Metaplex

Metaplex is an NFT marketplace and decentralized on-chain protocol for NFT minting and auctions. With the support of the Solana blockchain, Metaplex’s extremely high requirements for the underlying network’s transaction speed, transaction frequency, and network fees are met.

The Metaplex protocol and application framework provides critical infrastructure for the Metaverse, giving creators, artists, and brands the tools to easily launch custom, community-directed NFT marketplaces. Through decentralized auctions, Metaplex turns creators into traditional middlemen.

3.1 Basic data

Trading volume

As of 2022-04-22, the total transaction volume on the Metaplex platform is $2.2 billion. According to data statistics, it is concluded that the transaction volume of Metaplex is relatively low. The highest daily transaction volume within 30 days is 2000$SOL, and the transaction volume is about 204,000 US dollars, which is not outstanding among the NFT trading platforms. The highest daily trading volume within 30 days was about 1,500 transactions, and the total trading volume was 25,885. After that, it showed a continuous decline and kept the daily data below 1,000. Compared with other NFT markets in the same period, in Solana The proportion in the ecology is relatively low, ranging from 0.1% to 0.7%.

Subscribers

Due to the advantages of fast and low prices provided by the Solana network, Metaplex is very concerned about the user’s experience, and in order to retain user activity, it is constantly introducing new measures. Nonetheless, in a period of market downturn, Metaplex, which has a small market share, is also difficult to compete with the same track market. As of 2022-04-22, the total number of users within 30 days is only 6,579, which is really not ideal.

handling fee

The platform has 0 fees, and minting a new NFT costs about $1.50 at the time of writing. As a creator, it takes 1 minute to upload an NFT to Arweave, and one NFT is auctioned at around $3.7. The cost of selling “limited-edition NFTs” is higher, which ranges from $9-16. Listing NFTs and auctioning them can cost you around $30. Relatively speaking, the fee is cheaper.

3.2 Comparison

Metaplex Studios has now appointed Stephen Hess as its CEO.

1. Metaplex creates a revenue split for artists on the chain, and sets a custom revenue percentage by recording each participant. Not only is each NFT created by paying royalties, when it is resold on the Metaplex marketplace, the royalties are automatically returned to the original creator.
2. Metaplex’s components allow NFT creators, buyers, etc. to customize an exclusive “shop page”, either as a permanent storefront or as an auction center for specific auctions or collections, and all logos on the storefront are based on user wallet addresses. Custom storefronts allow creators to create unique experiences in each auction, and in the future the Metaplex Foundation will use VR/ AR technology to build immersive storefronts.
3. Metaplex has attracted cooperation interest from multiple industries and related brands. Users can auction Audius’ music NFTs on Metaplex, as well as comic artists and sports famous brands, such as: Street Dreams; CryptoKickers; recording artist Andre Allen Anjos and other influential influencers people and brands.

3.3 Summary

2022-01-18, Multicoin Capital  and Jump Crypto co-led a $43 million strategic investment in Metaplex, including 90 backers including  Solana Ventures , Alameda Research , etc., to create more than 5.7 million NFTs for 85,000 projects, The strong potential of Metaplex is confirmed from the side. Metaplex becomes the base layer on which all value is exchanged in the form of NFTs while developing canonical standards and driving their usage through modular products and initiatives. As more and more assets and applications are deployed on Solana using the Metaplex standard, we will start to see parts of the metaverse taking the form of large-scale, interoperable worlds.

4. Solanart

Compared with the role played by Opensea in Ethereum, the first mature and complete NFT trading platform-Solanart is deployed on the Solana chain, using SOL as the transaction currency and extracting a 3% fee. Help users on the Solana chain to easily and quickly display/trade Crypto collectibles and artist NFTs.

4.1 Basic data

Trading volume

According to DappRadar data, the highest daily transaction volume on 2021-08-31 was $29.98 million, a record high. As of 2022-04-22, the total transaction volume in the 30 days reached 25.57 million US dollars. The daily transaction volume has also been on a downward trend since February. The total transaction volume within 30 days was only 181,515 transactions. The low transaction volume also caused the Solanart platform to fall into a bottleneck stage again.

Subscribers

According to the data, on the day of 2021-10-08, the number of users reached a record high, with about 23,180 experience users. As of 2022-04-22, the total number of users in 30 days reached 29,988. Affected by the NFT market, since Since 2022-02-01, the number of users on the Splanart platform has been decreasing, and the number of daily users has continued to decline.

handling fee

A market fee of 3% is charged on the selling price of each transaction.

4.2 Comparison

1. Unlike Opensea, there are relatively few types of NFTs on the Solanart platform. This is because the online NFT projects are carefully screened and guaranteed to a certain extent, and the value of NFT is of high quality.
2. The Solanart platform will use both on-chain and off-chain data storage to transfer cryptocurrencies and NFTs to intermediate wallets at the same time, and then transfer them out to buyers and sellers individually, while using off-chain data to record sales information such as prices.
3. The Solanart platform is the first mainstream NFT platform on Solana. The veteran NFT Degent Ape Academy and SolPunks are all listed on the platform. At the same time, the homepage will also be listed in the future. At the same time, the platform structure is relatively clear, the interface is clean, and the operation is simple.

4.3 Summary

The Solanart platform differs from the traditional Opensea in that the NFT collection on the platform is carefully screened, but because of this, the number of NFTs to choose from on the platform is relatively small. Additionally, if users want to buy NFTs on the Solanart platform, they must download a wallet that supports the Solana blockchain. To a certain extent, certain gates will be set for user participation. Secondly, the total transaction volume of Solanart exceeded 500 million US dollars in October 2021, and continued to rise, reaching a new record high. It shows that the platform has its traffic and fan base. As a relatively mature NFT trading market on the Solana chain, it is expected that it will serve as a basic setting The future development space of functions and architecture on the Solana chain.

WEB3.0 track

With the development of blockchain , the popularity of the concept of Web3.0 continues to increase. Compared with Web2.0, Web3.0 is more like a platform network world. There is no need for a centralized server, and there is no need to worry about private data being stolen. It is also fairer, more transparent and more stable for the network. Although blockchain technology has promoted the development of Web3.0, the current blockchain products more or less have some of the characteristics of Web3.0, such as decentralization, information cannot be tampered with, and unified identity.

The Solana network is based on the PoH consensus mechanism and uses a separate node network for state data storage. The public chain characteristics of Solana determine that it has special advantages in the Web 3.0 track: high throughput, low cost, network security decentralization, data return User-owned, etc., for users to avoid the possibility of data being supervised by a centralized platform. From scratch, Solana blockchain continues to break through itself, attracting hundreds of high-quality Web3 projects to join, and Solana’s Web 3.0 application scenarios are also recognized by more and more developers.

In addition, Solana’s Web3.0 ecological layout is more popular: instant messaging tools, decentralized social platforms, on-chain security protocols, streaming media platforms, advertising platforms, etc. I believe that more will continue to flow in the future. The Web3.0 project has been integrated into the Solana ecosystem, threatening to work together to create “Solana’s Web3.0 era”.

5. Listening

Audius is a blockchain-enabled decentralized music streaming platform equipped with social networking capabilities to help artists and music content creators showcase their talents and build fan bases.

Audius has Web, PC and App sides. Users can browse hot singles and playlists at will when they are not logged in, and listen to music immediately, which is convenient to use. After email registration, you can like/forward singles and follow the creator; as a creator, you can upload music and add tags.

These functions are free, and users can also download music for free without advertisements, giving users a good experience. Audius provides incentives through token distribution, attracts some creators in the early stage of the project, and continuously invites well-known KOLs to settle in, bringing early traffic to the platform.

5.1 Community popularity

Audius has integrated many well-known stars and music producer platforms, such as Deadmau5, Rezz, 3LAU, The Stafford, etc., and then the team is also continuing to promote projects and cooperate with other singers to hold community events, such as the recent Remix contest music creation awards, Collaborative AMA with Collie Buddz, alinabaraz’s “Alone With You” live broadcast on Audius platform, etc. Audius’ construction of the music ecosystem has made the platform gradually prosperous.

At present, Audius’ official community only has Discord, Instagram, and Twitter. Among them, the number of followers on Twitter is as high as 138,000, and the DC community has nearly 35,000+ total members, and the daily active number is about 5,000+. The community atmosphere is good. Most of the group members discuss music expansion and the actual empowerment of the platform token AUDIO.

As of 2022-04-21, Audius has 134,141 active platform users and 2,744,759 monthly active users. Compared with the peak of nearly 5M+ in October last year, the popularity of Audius has declined. However, with the continuous expansion of platform songs and producers, the overall popularity of the project has increased. It is also rising and is expected to return to the top in the next few months. In general, the project advantages of the platform compared to Web2.0 include but are not limited to the following:

1. Addresses the low income of artists and the low transparency of artwork.
2. Protect the artist’s copyright.
3. Decentralized and low-threshold user experience, open API for third-party apps to call songs, etc., make music sharing more convenient. However, correspondingly, the development of sharing has also created obstacles to compliance and commercialization.

This is why more and more singers and paper people who cherish their copyrights choose to participate in Audius and other Web3.0 fields, because in the past, a small number of power concentrators own most of the resources and wealth, and there is a lack of creativity for individuals. In the future, Audius will gather more capable and creative creators, and more users will also participate in the construction of Web 3.0.

5.2 Economic Model (Function)

$AUDIO is the official token of the Audius project, with a total amount of 1 billion. It will be launched in October 2020. The specific distribution is as follows:

It is worth mentioning that AUDIO has an additional 7% token issuance every year to reward those users who pledge tokens to help maintain the stability of the project value.

The above picture is the release graph of Audius tokens. In 2022 and 2023, most of the tokens released will come from investment institutions, teams and advisors, while the release time of community tokens will be delayed, which is unfavorable for the development of the project, and a large number of tokens will be released. The release is likely to cause selling pressure to suppress the interests of users, and there will be risk factors that lead to the collapse of the project.

The main functions of the $AUDIO token include:

1. Incentivize users to participate in node operation. Token rewards are related to node operation. Pledge tokens are used to enhance node security and maintain decentralization of file storage.
2. Based on community governance authority, participation in Audius community governance is initiated by initiating discussions in the community, or by running a node to formally initiate a proposal, which is then voted by token holders.
3. Participating in the platform economic system, as an incentive token, allows users to obtain corresponding benefits in the platform. At present, there is still a lack of unique design, and more levels are still under development.

5.3 Summary

Audius is still a niche dapp of electronic music. With the characteristics of free and no need to be on the chain, it provides a very low threshold for new users. However, the current economic model and token empowerment have yet to be developed. Except for basic node pledge, participation in governance voting, etc., there is still a lack of incentives, and its business model is not clear, and creators lack revenue means. Users can participate in the early participation to obtain the corresponding interaction records, and participate in related activities to experience the Web3.0 project to balance the relationship between various participating groups such as users, creators, and developers, so as to achieve the scene of common participation in governance and common prosperity.

6. Grapes

GRAPE is a protocol for building token-based DAO communities on the Solana blockchain, a decentralized social networking protocol that creates, rewards and secures any online community by harnessing the power of Solana, the project It won the second place in the Solana hackathon competition in the middle of last year, and subsequently raised a $1.2 million seed round led by Multichain  Capital in September. The project token $GRAPE is the currency that powers the Great Ape social ecosystem. At present, Grape has developed a series of sub-products such as the Grape Access verification tool, the Grape Dashboard dashboard, and the Grape.art NFT market.

6.1 Community popularity

Grape recently announced the 2022 technology roadmap, which can be unlocked by using tokens to open source, encourage the participation of other developers, and no longer use the Web 2.0 centralized approach. At the same time, Grape Protocol updated the applicable range in April, and cooperated with many other projects such as Mango Markets, Project  Serum , Bonfida, UXD Protocol, Woof Solana, Le DAO, etc., supporting relevant software development kits. It also carried out DAO exchange activities AMA, and carried out proposals for governance bodies on the Grape chain.

It can be said that the team has done a lot of things at the technical level and publicity level recently. In addition, because the users who participate in the protocol cannot be viewed, they can only be observed through the community, but the results are not completely accurate. The Grape protocol community includes twitter, Discord, Twitch and Publicity media such as Medium, etc. Currently, the total number of followers on Twitter is about 34,000, the total number of DC is nearly 30,000, and the daily online number is also 5K+. It can be seen that its popularity is not low. Secondly, the community rules are relatively complete, and participation requires a strict verification mechanism. It also effectively reduces the number of fake followers.

The main purpose of the Grape protocol is to create a decentralized social network toolset based on the Solana blockchain ecosystem. Its unique advantages include:

1. The membership solution for a single user can be guaranteed through a unique encryption key, and it is also the core, providing a “game skin” that can be used to prove the user’s identity.
2. Multi-token model, GRAPE protocol supports all Solana type tokens, SPL tokens, token pairs and LP liquidity tokens can be used to set up personal agreements, and prices will be intelligently adjusted according to the plan.
3. Community-driven DAO, decentralized anonymous organization is more suitable for the construction of the GRAPE protocol, and when the network is violated, the community can be restored through social accounts and permissions.

The protocol is guided by community-first principles, with transparency, fairness, and excellence at the core of its values. The Grape DAO is the governing body of the protocol’s decentralized community.

6.2 Economic Model

The Grape protocol token is GRAPE, and the total number of issuance is: 1.000.000.000. The specific distribution is as follows:

The lock-up mechanism is actually very clear. Among them, IDO is the direct release of no position, the team and private placement are locked for four to two years respectively, and the release of community ecological tokens is divided into ten-year monthly linear release. As can be seen from the above figure, the token share held by the community is more than that of the team and private placement, and the early release is more balanced, which has a positive effect on maintaining the token value.

At present, the GRAPE token lacks practical functions. It is mainly used for DAO governance, the threshold for participating in the DAO, etc., and there is a lack of a relatively clear business plan, which also causes the current GRAPE token to keep falling. Therefore, not all projects that issue tokens have a better effect than not issuing them. For infrastructure, the lack of practical use of tokens will not lead to ecological development, but will cause investors to lose interest in the project. confidence.

6.3 Summary

Grape, as a DAO infrastructure development protocol, builds complete and institutional rules from the bottom, and clarifies the rights and obligations conferred by each identity, and is committed to integrating with other project communities to achieve DAO integration. Before Betdex used the Grape protocol As the underlying verification, it illustrates its practicability and potential from the side. In the future Web3 field, projects that have a sufficiently complete framework and cater to the concept of decentralized management will inevitably lead the future of the entire ecosystem, but how to balance tokens between projects The development of Grape, empowering the actual role, will also have a corresponding impact on the future direction of Grape. However, as a relatively complete Web3.0 DAO organization, Grape’s future potential is worth looking forward to.

Summarize

Solana has a wide variety of ecological distribution tracks, fierce competition, and many innovative ideas, but lack of actual implementation. At present, there are few projects that are really popular in Solana except Stepn. It is precisely because of the lack of opportunities and cross-chain projects that Solana The overall popularity is gradually lower than that of other public chains. From the perspective of various fields such as Defi, NFT, and Web3, most of the Sol projects have a small contribution to the overall track, and their share is average, but this does not mean that Solana is lacking. Opportunities, on the other hand, from the perspective of the Web3.0 field of Solana track, the projects it nurtured have enough unique functional innovations and certain practicability, and the overall ecology of Defi is not bad, and it still ranks fifth at present. For the big public chain, if Solana wants to return to its peak, it needs to balance the roles and responsibilities between the public chain and the ecology, and generate linkage benefits with other chains in order to create more value. All in all, any immutable project will not succeed. I hope Solana can create its own style and characteristics in the future to bring more valuable assets to the entire blockchain ecosystem.

References

1. Multicoin Capital: Why are we leading an investment in Metaplex?
2. Solanart official website
3. Trends – The Coming of the Web 3.0 Era and the Solana Opportunity (Top, Bottom)
4. Solana Official Website-Ecology
5. Cross-chain DEX-Saber in Solana Ecology
6. Metaplex casting process

Investment Risk and Disclaimer

The above content analysis is only for reference information, and does not serve as the basis for investment decisions. Please do not make any investment decisions based on this report. The author of the report is not responsible for the user’s investment results.

The report has been prepared as of the date indicated and as subsequent market or economic conditions may change, the content of the report may not necessarily reflect these changes. Graphs, charts and other visual aids are provided for informational purposes only. None of these graphs, charts or visual aids can be used to make investment decisions. It is not intended to assist anyone in making an investment decision, and no graph, chart or other visual aid can capture all the factors and variables required to make such a decision.

Certain statements contained herein may be assumptions about future expectations and other forward-looking views, and known and unknown risks and uncertainties may cause actual results, performance or events and the views and assumptions expressed in the statements Substantial differences exist.

Any projections, forecasts and estimates contained in this report are speculative in nature and based on certain assumptions. These forward-looking statements may prove to be wrong and may be subject to incorrect assumptions or known or unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, most of which are beyond our control. It is anticipated that some or all of such forward-looking assumptions will not materialize, or will differ materially from actual results.