2025 The Year of the Step
Q1 2025- New Year for Step, Remora Launch and more
Well, another year ticked off for Step, and seems we’re set up for 2025 to be the biggest yet. Or maybe I should call It Step Group now, as we have many brands and products that are self-sufficient in their own right these days. It’s a far cry from the old days of @aaron0v learning rust in 2 weeks and smashing out an onchain DCA contract for the hackathon in 2021 :D
Remora Acquisition
As you may know, we acquired Remora Markets in Q4 with the intent on bringing tokenised stonks to Solana. It’s finally time someone made this happen. The many trillions in the equity markets need to come onchain, and now more than ever it seems like an inevitable path. With the change of administration in the US, SEC changes and general growth of financial system scale chains like Solana, 2025 is the year for it.
We’ve known the Remora team for a while now. They were trying to raise several months ago, and we were going to lead that round but they weren’t able to find enough commitments for most of 2024. Without wanting to waste any more time and seeing huge value in this as a part of the Step Empire, we decided to make the full acquisition and get to work on a real launch.
Remora’s team has a background in banking (starting from a spin off of a fintech bank), compliance and cybersecurity. However, while they were strong operationally, they lacked the biz dev and marketing necessary to really take off in the crypto world. This is where we come in and apply our resources at Step in various ways. Whether that’s using our connections to every team in the ecosystem from dashboard integrations, expanding reach with Solana’s top media outlet (SolanaFloor), or acquiring real users through our events at Solana Allstars or Solana Crossroads- onboarding tens of thousands of people each year. Step is positioned to drastically help accelerate the product through various channels–much better than any team that would be starting from scratch. So the deal made sense on both sides.
The plan is a Q1 launch, pending regulatory work completion, with a basic list of likely less than 10 tech stocks available for immediate trading. From there we expand that number based on user demand with almost any stonk on most global exchanges available for tokenisation. The platform will be KYC’d for minting and redemption, but those users will be able to withdraw to their wallet and tokens will find their way onchain where anyone is able to purchase (eg: Raydium LPs, buying through DEXs etc). The team is working diligently to revise the security infra since the acquisition, and also completing the regulatory licenses needed. A lot of the latter is dependent on regulatory and government bodies, so timeframes are mostly out of our hands, but most things seem to be moving along quickly. It’s going to be a big deal once live and we’re already discussing with other projects for collabs to be lined up at launch.
Step Group
On the Step side of the house, things are now about optimisation and scaling. Starting with Step itself, the Dashboard will be transitioning to V3 only, V2 will be sunset and so will our separate Analytics app. The reality is 99% of users on Step are coming for the portfolio dash and we need to double down on that. Without needing to maintain older infrastructure, that allows us to move faster when it comes to adding new things to the dash like the good old days. So you’ll see mobile improvements, the launch of the self service Portfolio API, better coverage and some larger new items which people have been asking for in the next upcoming months.
SolanaFloor continues to grow and we are onboarding more journalists and ramping up our videos. You’ll note the velocity of our videos has ramped up a lot lately, with one long form or short almost every day. X is performing best for video content and we look to grow our YouTube significantly with more face to face interviews and discussions. Jack and Finn are doing an excellent job here.
Crossroads will soon be upon us, be sure to get your tickets to the largest solana community conference ever April 25–26 in Istanbul. I was inspecting the venues this week, and wow this is a step up from last time. I think like a 3–5x step up. Seriously baller venue. Based around the Rixos Tersane brand new $1.5bn development right on the Bosphorus overlooking the old town, it will be a sight to behold and the whole Solana ecosystem is coming to join in on the fun. We hope to see you there, don’t miss out!
Allstars last year had 65000 attendees to our meetups across 5 countries. We are going for 100k this year. Another huge year at Allstars growing the team, infrastructure in each country, improving event quality, onboarding new partners and talking with them on how best to add value to their app or project. If your project needs 100k real users and engagements every week then get in touch with us, Solana Allstars can help accelerate your growth.
Overall, 2024 was a tremendous year for us on all fronts and we are looking to continue that momentum, cutting the fat on what doesn’t work and doubling down on what does. We want to be maximally efficient as an organisation and have clear ownership internally of specific outcomes. I think this next Q1 will be a big one and hope to have you along for the ride!
PS. See you at Crossroads soon
- Step Team
