codex

Colosseum Codex: Solana's Birthday, Scheduler Updates, and Cubik Grants

Mike Hale

21 Mar 2024 — 6 min read

🎂 Happy 4th Birthday Solana!

Solana reached a major milestone as it marked the fourth anniversary of its Genesis Block, referred to as Genesis Day by the Solana community.

This event celebrates the first Mainnet-beta transaction on March 16, 2020.

In that time, Solana has achieved several significant milestones that underscore its growing influence and success in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors.

Solana's developer community is among the most active in the industry hosting 248 dApps on its platform, according to DappRadar.

The blockchain's commitment to decentralization with its network of more than 1,600 independent validators.

$SOL holds a position as a Top 5 token by total market capitalization.

Solana has grown dramatically in the DeFi space, with more than $4 billion locked in its DeFi protocols and the fourth largest total value locked (TVL) in DeFi.

🦛 Block Scheduler Upgrades

You may have run into issues deploying programs or with transactions failing recently on Solana due to extremely high usage.

In the current Solana ecosystem, the block scheduler plays a crucial role in managing how transactions are processed, especially within the banking stage where transactions are serialized and executed.

The existing v1.17 scheduler, which operates with six threads to process the most recent transactions, faces challenges with efficiency due to contention among threads attempting to lock and execute the same transactions simultaneously.

It’s kind of like hungry hungry hippos where the six threads are all trying to eat (lock & execute) the same tx. It creates a bit of confusion that takes time to unwind.
~ Rex St. John (Developer Relations, Anza)

The upcoming v1.18 release (targeted for April) includes a new scheduler architecture designed to address and overcome these limitations by eliminating the inefficiencies caused by concurrent threads competing for the same transactions.

For developers, this means a boost in the success rate of transactions, reduced latency, and an overall smoother user experience.

While the network has maintained stability during this high usage, there are a number of tools developers can implement today for optimal performance.

Block Optimization on the Solana Network

For an in-depth look at how transactions go through the current "banking stage", and how the future 1.18 scheduler will work, check out this explainer video with @jacobvcreech and @apfitzge.

💝 Cubik Grants Round 1

Cubik is funding public goods through its innovative Cubik Grants Round 1 initiative, leveraging the power of Quadratic Funding to democratize and optimize the allocation of resources within the Solana ecosystem.

Quadratic funding is a crowdfunding mechanism that aims to promote public goods. It works by ensuring that smaller contributors have a greater impact. Using a quadratic formula encourages grassroots support and prevents the domination of funding by a few whales, leading to a more democratic and inclusive funding model.

Cubik Grants Round 1 features a matching pool of funds, initially set at $50,000, thanks to contributions from sponsors like the Solana Foundation, Squads, SolBlaze, and others. This pool is used to match the funds raised by individual projects based on the quadratic funding formula, amplifying the impact of individual donations.

Cubik provides a platform that encourages innovation and collaborative efforts among developers, creators, and builders.

The initiative is open to a diverse array of projects within the Solana ecosystem, including those focused on Solana infrastructure, developer tools, DAOs, climate solutions, and more.

Announcing: Cubik Grants Round 1

💎 Developer News

A Hitchhiker's Guide to Solana Program Security
Solana's design, where all accounts must be provided to a program, significantly impacts how developers need to approach program security.

This guide from Helius is an in-depth exploration of security considerations for Solana developers. It emphasizes the importance of understanding Solana's programming model and the attacker mindset.

ETHDenver Solana Hackathon Winners
Solana had a booth and presence at ETH Denver this year, and developers could take part in the BuidlWeek hackathon to win prizes for the best Solana app.

The winners were:

Servo: A decentralized game server designed for low-latency, competitive two-player games.

Mr. Goose: A community platform that incentivizes event participation with rewards and provides unique opportunities for exclusive merchandise.

Swoosh: Offers straightforward and rapid payment solutions by combining traditional fiat and blockchain mechanisms on the Solana platform.

Decentra-Jockey: modernizes the DJ experience for the web3 and XR ages, enhancing audience engagement through on-chain voting mechanisms.

Crypto for Good Fund
Mercy Corps Ventures has initiated the third round of its Crypto for Good Fund, continuing its mission to fund impactful real-world Web3 use cases that address critical global challenges and improve the lives of underserved populations.

The focus areas for this edition of the Fund include:

DePIN - how can we improve financing for critical physical infrastructure?
Onramps - how can we onboard more people to financial freedom?
RWA - how can tokenized assets improve livelihoods?
Humanitarian aid delivery - how can we serve 299M people in need of aid?
ReFi - how can we promote and restore the environment alongside financial gains?

These themes underscore an approach to leveraging technology to improve access to critical services, foster environmental sustainability, and expand financial inclusion.

Eligible projects from Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Pacific Islands, and Western Balkans can apply for equity-free grants of up to $100,000 along with mentorship, impact measurement advisory, and access to partnership opportunities.,

The application deadline is set for March 31, 2024.

Parallel Creator Details ‘Colony’ AI Game on Solana
The team behind the popular Ethereum NFT game Parallel is transitioning to the Solana platform for their upcoming project, a survival simulation game infused with AI technology named "Colony".

The game is distinguished by its use of generative AI, where players interact with NPCs that evolve and make decisions independently.

Choosing Solana over Ethereum highlights Solana's advantages, such as lower transaction fees and fast processing times and could encourage other developers to consider Solana as a viable platform for their projects.

⚙️ Tools & Resources

Solana helpers v2.1 is out and updates include initializeKeypair() to create and fund a keypair, airdropIfRequired() to check balance then airdrop if necessary, and getLogs() to pull up transaction logs in a single function.

declare_program! is a PR to add a macro to Anchor to generate a program declaration from the program's IDL. This allows apps to interact with programs, both onchain and offchain, without having to add the program's crate as a dependency.

💀 RIP Stockpile

Stockpile is shutting down primarily due to a combination of factors identified by its founder, @joeymeere.

Despite some early success, the platform couldn't secure its position as a viable project due to stiff competition, lack of sufficient support, and self-acknowledged shortcomings in both product development and distribution.

Joey expressed concerns over not being able to meet expectations, leading to a series of initiatives that fell short of their goals.

All in all, I’m moving on from this better than I was a year ago skill wise
~ @joeymeere

For projects currently using the platform, the project will maintain the UI for as long as financially feasible, ensuring that projects and grant rounds already on the platform will remain accessible in the short term.

The funds associated with these projects are stored in an open protocol, indicating they will be safe and accessible beyond the lifespan of Stockpile Labs itself.

While the platform will transition to a maintenance-only mode after completing a few final updates, the promise of acquisition offers and the skills gained by Joey suggest a potential for future developments, albeit under different circumstances or management.

Stockpile will be going into maintenance-only mode

⚡ Quick Hits

Hooked! The power of leveraging Transfer Hooks on Solana - LEO

Getting Started on Underdog Onboarding Tutorials - @BackAnUnderdog

How to Create WebSocket Subscriptions to Solana Blockchain using Typescript - Arpan Mondal

Colosseum Product Updates - @ColosseumOrg

Priority fees supported for program deployments on Solana Playground - @acheroncrypto

Introducing the Solana Incubator Cohort - @solanalabs

Upcoming technology improvements for Solana - @Austin_Federa

Shyft adds indexing of Kamino Fiance data - @Shyft_to

Intuitive Launchpool Model (ILM) Whitepaper Released - @Village_Idiot

🎧 Listen to This

Solfate

In this conversation, Toly discusses various topics about Solana and his personal experiences. The main themes covered include the next technical hurdle for Solana with asynchronous execution, balancing family and work, growing up in the post-Soviet Union, Toly's stress-seeking, the emotional impact of Solana's journey, working relationship with Raj, the importance of marketing and community, career vs. personal pursuits, and so much more.

Building Solana: Chewing Glass with Toly