Colosseum Codex: SEZ Argentina, Hidden Treasures, State of Solana Q2

💸 Forma Solana Economic Zone in Argentina

Forma is pioneering Solana Economic Zones (SEZs) to connect real-world governments with the capital and innovation of the Solana blockchain community.

The first SEZ will launch in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a month-long assembly of crypto leaders. With open workspaces, cultural events, policy discussions, and an SEZ Summit, it aims to drive blockchain adoption in Argentina and beyond.

Argentina was once an economic powerhouse, with the fastest growing economy in the world for 5 straight decades in the early 1900s. However, protectionist economic policies and inflation over the past century have led to economic stagnation.

Today, Argentina has the highest cryptocurrency adoption rate in Latin America. The country also boasts the fastest growing developer base in the region. This grassroots crypto movement is helping drive positive change.

A group of over 1,000 people, mostly locals, have launched the Crecimiento movement to develop a blockchain hub called Blockchain Valley in Buenos Aires. They have buy-in from the city government and are kicking off a month-long pop-up village to showcase blockchain innovation.

SEZ Argentina

🗺️ Solana's Hidden Treasures

Solana's Hidden Treasures is a content sprint aimed at showcasing lesser-known but established projects within the Solana ecosystem.

Despite Solana's wide range of projects, many remain overshadowed by those with large social followings.

This initiative seeks to promote these hidden gems to a wider audience, encouraging participation from projects that meet specific criteria:

• At least six months old
• Fewer than 10,000 followers on X/Twitter
• NFT Projects must already be minted

Projects can be businesses, utilities, platforms, games, newsletters, or any other type of initiative, as long as they operate on and contribute to the Solana ecosystem.

The sprint invites content in two categories:

1. Videos longer than 90 seconds
2. Written pieces over 750 words

Rewards include 1000 USDC for first place, 750 USDC for second, and 500 USDC for third in each category, along with five honorable mentions receiving 100 USDC each.

Submissions open on July 22, 2024, and close on August 8, 2024, at 12:00 am PST.

To participate, join the Solana Collective Discord and become a member to access submission rules and additional details in the Hidden Treasures channel.

Solana's Hidden Treasures Content Sprint

📈 State of Solana Q2 2024

Messari has released its Q2 2024 State of Solana report. Solana has continued to show growth and development across the ecosystem.

The network's TEV, which includes transaction fees and MEV, grew by 41% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) to $151 million, highlighting increased economic activity.

The network experienced congestion issues due to spam transactions from memecoin trading and Ore mining, which were alleviated by updates to QUIC, Stake-Weighted Quality of Service, and improvements to the transaction scheduler.

Institutional adoption of Solana for payments use cases also advanced, with PayPal expanding its PYUSD stablecoin to Solana and Stripe announcing support for Solana payments.

New scaling solutions like ZK compression by Light Protocol and Helius, and the MagicBlock Engine, were introduced to enhance performance.

The launch of Solana Actions and Blockchain Links (Blinks) by Dialect and the Solana Foundation enables transactions across the web, starting with Twitter.

State of Solana Q2 2024

💃 Firedancer's First Block on Testnet

Jump Crypto's Firedancer, a high-performance validator client for the Solana blockchain, has successfully built its first block on Testnet.

Under development since 2022, Firedancer aims to enhance Solana's transaction processing with its C++ codebase and sharding support, potentially boosting the network's throughput to a theoretical 1 million TPS.

This milestone marks a huge step towards decentralization and increased security for Solana.

Solana’s Firedancer Client Builds First Block on Testnet

💎 Developer News

Solana Rust Bootcamp
The August cohort of Encode Club’s Solana Bootcamp is a free 6-week course for blockchain developers, web2 programmers transitioning to web3, and beginners with a programming background.

Keystone Hardware Wallet Clear Signing
Keystone is addressing the challenge of blind signing. The upcoming version will include detailed information such as Account, ProgramAddress, and Data, allowing users to see which accounts are involved before signing. They are also researching a new clear-signing scheme based on Interface Definition Language (IDL) to decode complex Solana transactions.

Permissionless III Hackathon
Blockworks, buidlbox, and Bankless are hosting the Permissionless Hackathon on October 7-8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This 36-hour "Multichain Future" themed event aims to bring together the brightest minds in crypto to solve complex user experience challenges and features a content track for developers.

Old Faithful Public Report
Triton One has completed the initial phases of the Old Faithful project, aimed at making Solana's ledger history widely available through decentralized means. The project involved validating the archive's integrity from Solana’s genesis and uploading copies to Filecoin and S3-compatible storage, ensuring that Solana has accessible copies of its ledger history.

The Dev Health OS
The Developer Health OS aims to create a balanced approach that fosters long-term professional growth without compromising personal well-being. This framework combines an interactive curriculum, a supportive community, and health-focused services to provide an integrated approach to career growth.

⚙️ Tools & Resources

blinks is the Blinks SDK from Dialect that enables developers to integrate blinks into their Chrome extensions, websites, and apps, tailored to their brand.

blinks-xyz is a collection of resources for building Solana Actions and blinks with the Blink Inspector to debug your blinks.

squads-actions is an example of data fetching & actions with the Squads Protocol SDK and incorporating them into a blink

solana-actions-server is an example open source Blink for working with Drift.

💸 Funding

In 2024, Web3 funding is evolving with a focus on DAOs, AI integration, regulatory compliance, and asset tokenization. Discover how these trends are transforming the blockchain investment landscape.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

Step Finance is hiring a Content Creator & Educator for Solana Allstars and SolanaFloor.

Cube is hiring a Senior Software Engineer (Rust or C++) and a Senior Frontend Developer.

Orca is hiring a Frontend Software Engineer.

Wormhole is hiring a Software Engineer.

⚡ Quick Hits

How to become a successful web3 auditor: The Roadmap - @14si20

Hackathon submission advice and lessons - @redacted_noah

The Role of Validators on Solana - solayer

Inside Solana: Gulf Stream - adlonymous

Introducing Solscan Pro API v2.0 Updates - @solscanofficial

What Solana is Building - Bankless

Deep dive into Arcium and Confidential Computing - 0xSwift

On Tokenization and Economic Prosperity - Ben Sparango

Actions & Blinks are now available on Solflare - @solflare_wallet

Solana-Based DePlan Wants to Fix Subscriptions: Will It Work? - DailyCoin

Tokenomics for a Web3 Startup: The Most Common Mistakes in Crypto Projects - YouTube

🎧 Listen to This

Talking Tokens

Jacquelyn Melinek is joined by Matty Taylor, co-founder and GP at Colosseum.

Jacquelyn and Matty talk about the Solana developer ecosystem, its growth of hackathons, what he looks for in a founder as well as how organizations like his can help non-crypto native developers get into web3.

Building The Best Solana Hackathon

Bonus Episodes

Unlocking DeFi With Infinex | Kain Warwick - Lightspeed

This episode explores Infinex’s mission to unlock DeFi by massively improving the onchain user experience, the impact fees have on UX, and Infinex’s decision to integrate Solana.

Iggy Azalea on Memes, OnlyFans, and Her Plans to Make MOTHER a Success - Unchained

Iggy Azalea joins Unchained to discuss the origins of her $MOTHER token, the challenges faced during its launch, and her strategies to address the token's 60% price drop since its peak. She also addresses her conflict with Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin, insider trading allegations, regulatory concerns, and her efforts to onboard other celebrities into crypto.

Blockchain gaming with walk-to-earn exploration (Genopets co-founder) - Solfate

In this conversation with Albert Chen, co-founder of Genopets, he covers the Genopets game that encourages an active lifestyle by rewarding physical activity. The game includes play-to-earn mechanics, with energy leaderboard competitions and rewards in governance tokens.

Bringing Blockchain to Music Streaming w/ Ray Jacobson (Audius) - Validated

In this episode, Austin talks with Ray Jacobson from Audius about the benefits of decentralization for the music streaming industry. They also discuss Audius' transition from Ethereum to Solana, the blending of traditional music licensing with decentralized systems, and achieving product-market fit.

Follow @mikehale on X or Warpcast!

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