Each month, we explore one founder’s journey of building on Solana, as well as noteworthy network updates to help you get up to speed.

This month on Solana Sessions, we sat down with Ben Coverston, co-founder of Harmonic, an open-block building system optimized for validator revenue and throughput that aims to make Solana faster and fairer.

Coverston talked about how he went from discovering Solana’s potential from a single transaction, to creating sustainable systems that help validators earn big rewards while making Solana stronger. We also discussed Harmonic’s focus on building systems that give validators more control and paths to more revenue.

This interview is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign by Token Relations and the Talking Tokens, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana. Listen to this episode on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

High-performance and decentralized markets are crucial for crypto trading given that companies in the sector find themselves increasingly competing with traditional finance. The demand for speed, transparency and fairness have grown as DeFi matures and we see traders implementing high-frequency trading strategies and bringing their order books onchain. Infrastructure on Solana isn’t immune to this, as latency and sequencing can make or break trades.

Harmonic’s Solana-focused system optimizer was founded to address challenges found in decentralized exchanges such as opacity, preferential treatment, and unverifiable rules. But Coverston recognized Solana’s potential early on.

“I remember the first time I sent a Solana transaction and it was faster and cheaper than a lot of centralized applications,” Coverston said. “And that was the kind of the moment where I’m like, ‘okay, markets might actually work on a blockchain’.”

That insight led Coverston to another realization: that blockchains like Solana needed customizable sequencing to make life easier for validators. That’s exactly what Harmonic, an open marketplace for customizable sequencing is solving for. The infrastructure aggregates blocks from multiple builders, then validators can choose the most valuable block that aligns with their preferences for more control and customization.

“Every transaction on Solana gets sequenced by validators, and these validators have a certain set of properties that they want these transactions to have in terms, which makes things messy,” Coverston said. “We’re creating a marketplace where builders can bring features like application control execution to Solana and give choosing power back to validators.”

Harmonic’s goal is to help Solana behave more like an onchain Nasdaq by assisting applications to get over speed bumps in their sequencing behaviors. This has the potential to unleash Solana’s processing, as multiple builders can co-create blocks to achieve faster speeds, while maintaining uptime.

“[We] want to give applications the rules they want, so they can have multiple block builders to give these applications the best experience possible,” Coverston said. “Solana is capable of doing orders of magnitude more TPS than what it’s doing today without any issue, we just need to give the applications the last sprinkle of features that they’re asking for.”

Coverston said Harmonic considers applications as its ultimate customers, gathering feedback from top protocols to align incentives across builders, validators and users. This focus extends beyond trading to perpetuals and lending platforms that need guaranteed liquidations during periods of volatility.

“Apps told us they wish their transactions would get included faster or had more control over what happens to their transaction,” Coverston noted. “[Harmonic] is the intermediary between builders, validators and applications so validators can earn the highest rewards, while doing so in a way that is healthy and makes Solana stronger and faster.”

“This is a joint effort by every single team on Solana,” Coverston said. “But we want to play our part in getting Solana 100,000x users.”

Here’s what’s caught our eye this month:

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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.