Colosseum Codex: Encode Rust Bootcamp, Securitize RWAs, MagicBlock x FlashTrade

If you want to check out a little nugget of Solana history, check out this tweet with the history and pics of some of the very first machines that brought Solana to life.

Ok, I'm done being nostalgic, so here's the latest news for Solana developers and founders...

👷‍♀️ Encode Solana Rust Bootcamp

Applications are open for the Q1 2025 cohort of the Solana Rust Bootcamp, a free 6-week intensive online course starting on March 10th.

The bootcamp covers Rust fundamentals, program development, deployment, and testing of on-chain programs.

It’s designed for those with an understanding of programming and an interest in building on Solana.

The curriculum includes weekly workshops, homework, and a final project, requiring commitment and active participation. The program emphasizes hands-on learning and collaboration in a group setting.

The bootcamp includes:

1. Introduction to Solana/Rust
2. Rust/Development tools/Solana Token Program
3. Anchor Framework/DeFi/Security
4. Solana Program Library/NFTs
5. Workshop Week
6. Project Week

Participants will gain advanced Solana skills and the opportunity to work on real-world projects.

I was a part of a previous cohort, and it's a good program for new and intermediate Solana developers.

Encode x Solana Rust Bootcamp

🔑 Securitize Tokenized RWAs

Securitize is expanding into tokenized RWAs by integrating with Solana, and it brings some interesting opportunities for developers. 

Through partnerships with Apollo Global Management and BlackRock, Securitize has launched products like the Apollo Diversified Credit Securitize Fund (ACRED), which offers on-chain access to various credit strategies. 

This fund is available on multiple blockchains, including Solana, and uses Wormhole for smooth cross-chain transfers.

For developers in the Solana ecosystem, this move means you can build or integrate applications that leverage tokenized assets more easily. 

Solana’s fast and scalable infrastructure makes it a solid option for managing financial products on-chain, which opens the door for new kinds of decentralized finance applications. 

Whether you’re interested in creating secondary markets, building on-chain asset management tools, or exploring innovative financial products, there’s a growing space for real-world assets that can be tapped into.

This is a chance for Solana developers and founders to experiment with tokenized assets in a way that could attract institutional interest and bring new capabilities to your projects.

Securitize Brings Tokenized Real-World Assets to Ink and Solana Networks

🤝 MagicBlock x FlashTrade

MagicBlock and Flash Trade have teamed up to bring a new level of speed and performance to DeFi on Solana.

By integrating MagicBlock’s ephemeral rollup technology with Flash Trade’s asset-backed perps exchange, the partnership aims to deliver a trading experience with sub-50ms end-to-end latency, all while keeping liquidity fully on-chain.

For developers, this means building on Solana can now offer real-time, high-throughput trading that meets the demands of both high-frequency strategies and institutional applications.

The collaboration eliminates the need for bridges or fragmented liquidity, ensuring that everything remains within Solana’s scalable ecosystem.

This could open up opportunities to create new, innovative DeFi applications that combine the speed of centralized finance with the flexibility and trustlessness of blockchain technology.

Overall, the MagicBlock and Flash Trade partnership represents a step forward in making decentralized trading as fast and efficient as its centralized counterparts, paving the way for the next wave of high-performance DeFi applications on Solana.

MagicBlock x Flash Trade: Accelerating the Future of High-Performance DeFi

⭐ Highlights of the Week

Solana vs Base: The Battle For Stablecoin Payments
This article from Squads examines the competition between Solana and Base as foundational blockchains for stablecoin payments comparing key factors such as transaction speed, fee structure, market demand, and regulatory clarity, showing how Solana’s high throughput and decentralized architecture give it a lasting advantage for innovative payment applications.

Circle Developer Grants
The Circle Developers Grant is an opportunity for small, agile teams at the MVP, beta, or post-launch stage that are leveraging USDC for real-world apps to receive $100,000 in USDC along with operational and co-marketing support, referrals to Circle Ventures, direct product help, and compliance consultations.

Turbin3: A Talent Accelerator
Rit Rafa shares how he left his full-time job to focus on building on Solana by joining Turbin3, a hands-on learning experience that pushed him to take complete ownership of his progress, an approach that not only sharpened his technical skills but also led him to a product role at Compute Labs.

Comets of Web3 Romanian Solana Developer Program
This free, six-week hands-on training course for developers and students provides 36 hours of expert-led instruction (held in Romanian language) covering fundamentals like token creation, NFT minting, and building on-chain applications with Anchor. Participants will also submit a project in the next Colosseum Hackathon.

⚡ Quick Hits

Colosseum adds support to Texas Tech's Web3 Acceleration Association online Buildathon - @N3XUS_waa

Jito TipRouter NCN And The Future Of Solana Economics - Lucas Bruder

Introducing Sanctum Governance: Bringing a era of governance with MetaDAO - @sanctumso

The Anchor documentation website gets a HUGE refresh - @metasal_

Cutting through the noise: the resurgence of SocialFi - Privy

The Role of Universities and Hackathons in Expanding the Web3 Workforce - @calyptus_web3

⚙️ Tools & Resources

Step Finance Self-Serve Dashboard provides developers easier access to its Solana Data API, giving developers wallet positions, historical transactions, and DeFi/NFT data, with Starter and Team plans to better serve both independent developers and enterprise projects.

simple-program-monitoring shows how to track various aspects such as instruction calls, global state accounts, TVL, fees, new account creations, and events using a monitoring script with Anchor that polls a specific account every 60 seconds.

💀 RIP

Solana-based ridesharing app Teleport has shut down just eight months after its public launch, citing a lack of market readiness for decentralized ridesharing. The app aimed to compete with services like Uber by leveraging blockchain technology, but ultimately found that the market wasn’t ready to embrace a decentralized model in this space.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

• Solana Foundation is hiring a AI Ecosystem Development Lead to bring the best talent to build AI apps and infrastructure on Solana.
• Foundation Capital is hiring a Platform Lead who can help us continue to grow Foundation’s presence in the Solana ecosystem.
• Zeta Markets is hiring a Rust Developer - Core Exchange Backend to build and optimize the core backend systems powering the exchange.
• Equitize is hiring a Backend Developer (Solana) to play a key role in the development and enhancement of the platform.
• Exo Tech is hiring a Solana Rust Engineer to work on a wide range of products.
• Remora Markets is hiring a Full Stack Developer to deliver features, integrate APIs, and optimize for performance, security, and scale.

📅 Event Calendar

Ship Week v2 at The Port, Miami, FL, March 24-28
Ship Week v2 is a week of technical discussions on topics ranging from MEV and DeFi to Infra, DePIN, and AI, with deeper technical knowledge sharing, enhanced and networking opportunities for anyone looking to connect and collaborate within the Solana community.

🎧 Listen to This

Building Web3

Mert, co-founder of Helius, joins host Jax Dwyer to explore Solana’s rapid growth, innovative scaling solutions, and developer-friendly infrastructure. 

This episode covers Solana’s roadmap, the importance of founder-led marketing, and the future of blockchain-based applications, including NFTs, DePIN, and RWAs. 

Mert shares his early crypto journey, from working at Coinbase to choosing Solana over Ethereum for its performance-driven approach and how Solana’s unique approach to bandwidth and latency enables it to stand apart from Ethereum’s fragmented L2 ecosystem. 

Learn how Helius is fixing Solana’s developer experience by addressing key issues like on-chain data readability, inefficient software, and high transaction costs, enabling developers to build scalable, user-friendly applications.

Whether you’re a developer, founder, or crypto enthusiast, this discussion is packed with valuable insights into Solana’s role in Web3 innovation.

Why Solana is the Best Choice for Founders with Mert from Helius

Bonus Episodes

The Solana Thesis: Internet Capital Markets With Kyle Samani - Lightspeed

This week Kyle Samani joins Lightspeed to discuss his most recent piece "The Solana Thesis: Internet Capital Markets", Kyle's current thesis for Solana, bringing TradFi on chain, the opportunity in DePIN & AI, the state of crypto venture, and more.

Web3 Marketing Playbook with Phin from Abstract - DCo Podcast

While this episode isn't Solana focused, there are valuable lessons on Web3 Marketing from Phin from Abstract. He takes a deep dive into the challenges facing Web3 marketing, insights into how marketing strategies need to evolve for the crypto space, and the limits of tactics like engagement farming and highlights the need for crypto products to compete by focusing on UX, privacy, and reducing onboarding friction.

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.