Jon Cinque, a Solana Engineer with over three years of experience at the company, revealed at the Breakpoint 2023 that the next phase of Token 2022 will be released in January 2024.
The Token-2022 Program is a specific implementation for fungible and non-fungible tokens on the Solana blockchain. It is designed to be compatible with the existing Token Program, making it easy for developers to transition and adopt the new features seamlessly.
It is currently under audit and should be used for testing and development purposes only. It is a superset of the functionality provided by the Token Program, and it introduces new functionality at index 25.
The Token-2022 Program is crafted to provide developers with increased flexibility and additional functionalities while maintaining the security of existing tokens.
This experimental standard builds upon the SPL token program, introducing added functionality to enable developers to implement more intricate tokenomics and exercise greater control over their projects.
According to Jon, version 1.7 of Token 2022 will come with new features that will improve the experience of users on Solana. He added that Token 2022, which started its journey after the first Breakpoint event in 2021, is described as a superset of tokens.
It allows developers to opt into various extensions for mints and token accounts, providing enhanced functionality. He added that the upgradeable nature of Token 2022 ensures that future changes can be seamlessly integrated.
He also revealed that Confidential Transfers have been introduced by Token 2022 into the Solana ecosystem. This allows people to make blockchain transactions without revealing key details of the transaction, such as the transaction amount.
“Confidential transfers finally work. I cannot wait to show this to you; this has been years in the making,” he said.
Metadata development in Web3
The engineer also spoke about metadata and its significance for on-chain programs. He emphasized the need for openness, allowing developers to integrate their protocols with Token 2022 seamlessly. The addition of metadata transfer hooks enables greater flexibility, encouraging developers to implement their own metadata programs.
Furthermore, the talk introduced the concept of transfer hooks, a feature that allows Token 2022 to call into any other program during a transfer. This flexibility empowers developers to customize and enhance the functionality of their mints.
Jon provided live demonstrations to the audience, showcasing the ease of adding metadata, implementing transfer hooks, and conducting confidential transfers, highlighting its potential for Solana developers.
In closing, Jon acknowledged the leaky abstraction in the current implementation but assured developers that future versions, particularly Runtime V2, would address this concern.
