Today in Davos, where the 2024 World Economic Forum is taking place, it was announced that the Solana Foundation and Circle have joined the global alliance Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI).
Circle is the company that issues USDC and EURC, while the Solana Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the decentralization, adoption, and security of the Solana network.
Davos: the Crypto Council for Innovation welcomes Solana and Circle
The Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) is a global alliance that aims to promote innovation in the crypto field.
CCI has a global vision, and supports inclusive regulation of the crypto industry. It has teams in San Francisco, Washington, DC, New York, Denver, London, Brussels, and Hong Kong.
Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Jack Dorsey’s Block, OpenSea, Gemini, and other foundations or organizations operating in the sector are already part of the CCI.
In the last year, the organization has expanded its activities in the European Union and the United Kingdom, and published reports and benchmark analyses, including the study that discovered that Bitcoin mining operations focused on sustainability can play a role in the transition towards clean green energy.
In addition to Solana and Circle joining the association, the CCI has also announced two new hires in its government affairs and policy teams.
This is Ryan Eagan, Associate Director of Government Affairs, and Patrick Kirby, political consultant. These additions bring extensive experience in politics, regulatory affairs, and government relations, allowing the Council to increase its engagement with policymakers and regulatory bodies.
The goal is to build solid foundations for the future of cryptocurrencies, supporting sensible policies and promoting global collaboration.
Solana
The Solana Foundation is a non-profit association based in Zug, Switzerland, and is particularly concerned with the censorship resistance of the Solana network.
Among its initiatives, there is the promotion of an open-source community to stimulate the development of a solid network of financial products and services, to grow the Solana network by adding more and more validator nodes, and to facilitate staking by providing grants, open-source reference implementations, and community support.
The executive directors of the Foundation are Lily Liu, Daniel Albert, and Matthew Wyndowe, while the board of directors includes Patrick von Felten, Leopold Schabel, Mable Jiang, Raj Gokal, and Wolfgang Albrecht.
The same official websites of Solana, namely solana.com and solana.org, are owned by this foundation.
The Solana network has grown a lot recently, especially in 2021 and 2023, while 2022 has been a challenging year.
Last year in particular, thanks to numerous airdrops and the growth of DEX on its network, it went from a DeFi TVL of 200 million dollars to 1.4 billion dollars, which is a multiplication of about seven times, also thanks to the strong increase in the market value of the SOL cryptocurrency.
Circle
Circle is the company that issues and manages the second most widely used stablecoin in the world, namely USD Coin (USDC).
2023 has been a challenging year for Circle, especially due to the temporary loss of the USDC peg in March.
The failure of Silicon Valley Bank, where the company had approximately three billion dollars in reserves for USDC, suddenly caused the market value of the stablecoin to collapse. However, the problem was completely resolved thanks to the intervention of the Fed, which covered all the deposits of all the customers of all the failed US banks.
USDC has lost a significant amount of market capitalization during 2023, dropping from 44 to 24 billion dollars.
The previous year had reached its historical peak from this point of view at over 55 billion, so the current capitalization of 25 billion is less than half of the historical peak.
Despite this, USDC still plays a decidedly important role, although its rival USDT has instead risen to over 90 billion dollars in market capitalization.
Davos: the comments of Circle, Solana Foundation and Crypto Council for Innovation
The CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, Sheila Warren, commented on the addition of Solana and Circle, saying:
“We are excited to welcome Circle and the Solana Foundation to the CCI. CCI is committed to promoting a more accessible, robust, and well-informed crypto ecosystem. Adding the collective experience and vision of these industry leaders to our alliance is a significant step forward in our mission to promote responsible innovation and support the global transformative potential of digital assets and blockchain technologies.”
The Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle, Dante Disparte, has added:
“We are eager to bring our perspective and experience to the table. Our involvement as members of the CCI testifies to our commitment to responsible growth and innovation in the industry. We anticipate a year of meaningful collaboration, with the goal of setting new standards for the sector and working towards a regulatory framework that supports safe and sustainable growth of open finance.”