Solana, one of the most valuable and widely-used layer one blockchains in crypto, has been quietly making a number of important moves.

‍The big picture:‍

• Solana has recently announced some major partnerships focused on payment integrations that are sending waves through the crypto ecosystem
  
• While Solana's token price is down significantly from all time highs, they have been making notable progress towards validating their promise of a blockchain with instant transactions and nearly zero fees
  

The details:‍

• Visa (NYSE:V) recently announced they would integrate the Solana blockchain as part of their pilot project focused on testing payment settlements with USDC
  
• Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP) announced a partnership with Solana Pay to enable merchants to be able to accept USDC as payment
  

Why it matters:‍

• These partnerships represent a strong rebuttal to one of the long standing criticisms of crypto, which is that it’s yet to prove a use case outside of speculation and trading
  
• Partnering with publicly listed companies who are subject to regulatory scrutiny is yet another step forward for both Solana and crypto as a whole
  
• If Solana can validate their blockchain through these new partnerships it will likely open the door for further interest from legacy payment companies and technology platforms to consider crypto based settlements

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