Colosseum Codex: Accelerator Demo Day, Tensor API Migration, Game Jam Winners

I spent last weekend offline, did anything interesting happen while I was gone? 😧

When I sent out the first issue of this newsletter (before it became the Colosseum Codex) back in March 2023, SOL was hovering right around $20.

But every week when I hit publish, the builders were still building! So I know this dip isn't scaring anyone off.

There are a number of big things coming up for Solana... mtndao (in progress), Radar Hackathon, SEZ Argentina, The POST Miami, and more that make a bright future for Solana.

So let's take a deep collective breath then keep building!

Here's the roundup of the latest news for Solana devs...

▶️ Accelerator Demo Day

Colosseum has shared the video of the virtual demo day. Each of the teams presenting were winners in the Solana Renaissance Hackathon.

Check out a short overview and demo of each of the projects that were accepted into Colosseum's first accelerator cohort:

• Torque
• MeshMap
• Ore
• DBunker
• Rakurai
• Urani
• DeCharge
• Banger
• Spaceman Gaming
• BlockMesh
• MetaDAO

Colosseum will support and invest in another cohort of hackathon winners following the conclusion of the upcoming Solana Radar Hackathon.

👩‍🏫 Solana: How It Works

Helius has released a comprehensive report designed to serve as a valuable primer of the core Solana protocol for those in crypto-adjacent fields where Solana is starting to appear on their radar.

The report offers a detailed exploration of key components such as Gulf Stream, the TPU, Turbine, block verification, consensus, gossip, and more.

The report was written by @__lostin__ with help from experts including @0xIchigo, @dubbel06, @jacobvcreech, @mael_bomane, Nagaprasad Vr, and @rexstjohn who provided invaluable feedback.

Solana: How it works, an executive overview of the Solana protocol

🚛 Tensor API Migration

Tensor has announced significant updates to the Tensor API as it migrates from GraphQL to a new RESTful API in an effort to improve performance, stability, and documentation.

The GraphQL API will be fully deprecated and removed in 2 months. Developers are encouraged to start their transition to the new REST API as soon as possible.

The new REST API is now live and comes with extensive documentation.

Benefits of the REST API include:

• Faster average response times due to fixed return fields, eliminating unexpected server timeouts.
• Increased stability by decoupling from front-end API
• More detailed documentation of input and return fields for easier integration.

New Rust and JavaScript SDKs, which use the updated version of @solana/web3.js, are published and ready for use and a migration guide is available to help with the transition.

Tensor Migration

🏆 Speedrun Game Jam Winners

MagicBlock has announced the winners of the 3rd edition of the Solana Speedrun Game Jam.

First place for the main track was Echoes Of Eldoria, a turn-based multiplayer game.

Second place went to Startup, a business simulation game where players engage in both legal and illicit activities to earn and launder money.

Third place was Solana Science, an idle strategy game that leveraged Token extensions and the Godot engine where players read and sell books .

Check out more Speedrun game submissions!

Solana Speedrun Game Jam Winners

💎 Developer News

Solana JavaScript SDK 2.0 RC
The Javascript SDK 2.0 (solana/web3.js) is now available as a Release Candidate, featuring significantly faster cryptographic operations, improved efficiency with zero dependencies, and increased flexibility for custom implementations. Feedback is requested before the final release ahead of Breakpoint 2024.

PYUSD Portal Hackathon
PayPal and Portal announced the Global PYUSD Portal Hackathon, a 5-week virtual competition focused on innovations using PYUSD in the Solana ecosystem. Registration is open from July 31st to August 19th. The top 2 projects will be showcased at the Solana Hacker house with a sponsored trip to the conference.

Solana Serialization Benchmark
The Solana Serialization Benchmark offers head-to-head comparisons of various serialization frameworks within the SVM environment with example code for each framework, helping developers get started with alternatives to Borsh.

⚙️ Tools & Resources

professional-education is a collection of resources for remote and classroom-based Solana training with hands-on labs, including slides, instructor notes, lab solutions, and an event planning playbook.

Pinocchio is a zero-dependency library to create Solana programs in Rust that eliminates the dependency on the solana-program crate to mitigate dependency issues. Also see Ping, an example app that uses Pinocchio.

radar is a static analysis engine for Rust-based programs to scan for vulnerabilities using a powerful Python based engine that enables automating detection of vulnerable code patterns through logical expressions.

💸 Funding

Elmnts, a tokenized mineral rights and royalties ecosystem, has raised over $2 million in pre-seed funding. The funding round was led by Graph Ventures with additional support from Solana Co-Founders Raj Gokal & Anatoly Yakavenko, Mert Mumtaz from Helius, Nom from Bonk, and Stepan Simkin from Squads.

High-speed internet provider Andrena has raised $18 million in a Series A extension round led by Dragonfly Capital to support the expansion of affordable high-speed internet access through Andrena's decentralized wireless network project, DAWN.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

• MetaDAO is looking for a Founding Engineer
• Wormhole is hiring for several Engineer roles
• Neon EVM is hiring a Senior Rust Engineer
• Genius is seeking a Founding Solana Engineer
• MagicBlock Labs has open roles for Developers & Engineers

⚡ Quick Hits

Paladin: A new way to address MEV - Uri Klarman

Discovering Solana Collective: The Heartbeat of Solana’s Content Community - Preeetham

Using Metaplex Core in Anchor projects - Metaplex

An early history of Solana TPS and Performance - @Windscar1001

Blinks on Discord by using D-Blinks App - @NFTWidi

Solving Water Shortages through Solana and DePIN - @JasonGlynnLive

Godot Solana SDK update includes minor fixes and is also Godot 4.3 ready - @AxelBenjam

🎧 Listen to This

Lightspeed

Jack Kubinec, who writes the daily Lightspeed newsletter, has joined the Lightspeed podcast as a co-host a long with Mert!

This week Chris Osborn & Jon Wong join Lightspeed to discuss one of the most exciting announcements in recent weeks within crypto: Blinks.

They deep dive into what are Blinks, why they're needed for the internet, attracting developers, and the roadmap for the rest of 2024 & beyond.

Blinks Built On Solana | Chris Osborn & Jon Wong

Bonus Episodes

How Gameshift's API Is Simplifying web3 Game Development w/ Davis Hart (Solana Labs) - Validated

In this episode, Austin chats with Davis Hard (Solana Labs) to talk about GameShift, a new API designed to streamline blockchain integration for game developers on Solana. The conversation also touches on the hurdles remaining in the adoption of blockchain technology by traditional gaming studios.

How Ephemeral Rollups Will Change Blockchain Gaming with MagicBlock (feat. Andrea, co-founder) - Solfate

Magic Block is a high-performance engine for fully on-chain games and applications that aims to make it easy for developers to build entirely on-chain games and leverage the unique features that blockchain offers. Magic Block is also developing the Bolt framework, an entity component system built on top of Anchor.

Disrupting The Status Quo: How io.net Challenges Big Tech's AI Dominance - The Defiant

Tory Green is the Co-Founder and CEO of io.net, a decentralized computing network to power to ML applications and a prominent project in the DePIN category. In this episode, Tory shares the behind-the-scenes details of their former CEO's departure and provides an in-depth look into everything io.net.

Follow @mikehale on X or Warpcast!

Thanks for reading ✌️

I hope you found something useful here! If you have any suggestions or feedback just let me know what you think.