Colosseum Codex: State of Solana Q4, Skyline NYC, mtnDAO Week 1

For anyone at mtnDAO, I'll be there next week from the 18th to the 21st, so if you like this newsletter, please come say hello and show off what you're building!

📃 Messari State of Solana Q4 2024 Report

Messari's State of Solana Q4 Report shows an ecosystem that’s ripe with opportunity for builders, developers, and founders.

One of the most striking numbers is the growth in Chain GDP. Total app revenue soared 213% QoQ from $268 million to $840 million, with November alone pulling in $367 million.

Applications on Solana are now generating more revenue than the network’s Real Economic Value (the total amount of transaction fees and MEV generated on the network).

Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi climbed by 64% to $8.6 billion, and average daily spot volumes jumped by 150%.

Infrastructure upgrades also take center stage as the rollout of Agave V2.0 nears completion, with over 90% of validators running the updated client.

The upcoming Firedancer and its variant Frankendancer, which is already live on testnet (and in a non-voting mode on mainnet), will also boost scalability and performance.

With the activation of Time Vote Credits and proposals to increase block limits (up to 50M CUs) and add slashable event verification, the network is improving transaction processing and overall throughput.

Meanwhile, gaming and social initiatives are gathering momentum with new hardware announcements like the Solana Mobile Seeker phone and gaming controllers, and a host of gaming projects moving to Solana.

The Q4 2024 report shows that Solana is not only scaling in terms of transaction throughput and network upgrades but is also becoming a more attractive platform for projects to build on.

State of Solana Q4 2024

🗽 Solana Skyline NYC

Skyline is a new hub for the Solana ecosystem located in the heart of New York City, designed to foster innovation and support Solana founders and teams.

Offering co-working opportunities, educational workshops, networking events, and exclusive founder dinners, Skyline aims to help empower the next generation of crypto builders.

The space is dedicated to driving growth within the Solana community through regular events and collaborative opportunities, with plans for a potential permanent co-working space in the Lower East Side, offering a dedicated venue for collaboration and innovation among NYC Solana teams.

Welcome to the center of the American crypto renaissance

⛰️ mtnDAO Week 1

mtnDAO's Week 1 highlights the success and growth of the event, including surpassing previous attendance records and moving into its own private office, the installation of 90 top-of-the-line monitors, Secret Lab chairs, and sit-stand desks, and soundproof meeting pods, ensuring privacy during sensitive discussions, creating an optimal environment for attendees.

Regular panels, workshops, and sponsor-led sessions, paired with fun community activities like ski days, offer learning, networking, and team-building opportunities.

This blend of cutting-edge infrastructure and an engaged community fosters work-life balance, while supporting Solana-driven innovation.

ATH Attendance for Week 1 of mtnDAO v7

⭐ Highlights of the Week

High-performance Blockchains and Shared State
Solana stands out through its unique shared state architecture, which enables composability and seamless interaction between programs. This article warns against the fragmentation seen in Ethereum’s rollup-centric approach, and emphasizes that maintaining composability alongside performance is essential for Web3 to succeed.

Jupiter Research Center
The Jupiter Research Center is a new initiative with a focus on open-source blockchain cryptography, security, and AI research that aims to bring together the brightest minds in open-source blockchain cryptography to tackle complex challenges and drive innovation.

Liquify Adds Solana Support
Liquify has launched its Solana RPC nodes service, offering develoeprs 99.99% uptime, archive node access, real-time analytics, and robust monitoring from 6 global locations, supported by flexible pricing options including a free tier for up to 50K daily requests.

⚡ Quick Hits

Updated Guide to Getting Started on Solana - @francis_codex

How to Turn Your Idea into a Solana Program - Helius

How Fireblocks Weathered Solana’s Ultimate Stress Test - Fireblocks

sRFC-35: Standardized method for linking Solana addresses to domain names - nickfrosty

Germany's Hottest Solana Startups - @SuperteamDE

Your Branding Sucks (And Nobody Cares) - @bram_m11

⚙️ Tools & Resources

github-workflows provides GitHub workflows that automatically build, verify, and deploy solana programs including their IDL uploads using the Solana developers github actions and combining them into an easy to use workflow.

YeetThatTx is a web-based tool that allows users to deserialize and send both versioned and legacy Solana transactions easily, as well as message deserialization.

TokenGate is an example of how to token gate a website using Solana tokens that uses Jupiverse Kit for wallet integration.

💸 Funding

Fragmetric has secured a $7M seed round co-led by Finality Capital Partners and Hashed, with strong support from key investors in the Solana community to drive the development of the first liquid restaking station on Solana, which streamlines native NCN rewards distribution.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

• MetaDAO is hiring a Founding Engineer to manage all aspects of MetaDAO’s product offerings.
• The Solana Foundation is hiring a Developer Advocate - Education to help scale education across the Solana ecosystem.
• Anza is hiring a Developer Relations Lead - Agave to be the go-to person for the primary Solana validator client's community of users, validators, and core developers.
• Metaplex is hiring a Product Lead - MPL to drive the strategy and execution of the Metaplex Program Library.

📅 Event Calendar

Forma Sri Lanka, March 21 - April 4, Ahangama
Forma Sri Lanka is a two-week event for the Solana community where participants can enjoy coworking, community events, surf classes, activities, music and cultural experiences, with workshops in a surf town known for its beaches, waves, and vibrant digital nomad scene.

Developers India Tour, February 13th to March 28th, India
The Solana Devs Tour is a nationwide initiative across 21 cities, offering in-person technical workshops and co-working opportunities. This tour is designed to connect developers within the Solana ecosystem, providing hands-on learning and networking opportunities to boost your blockchain development skills.

🎧 Listen to This

Modern Money

In this episode, Clay Robbins, Co-Founder & General Partner at Colosseum, shares his journey from Square to the crypto world and the inception of Colosseum.

Clay shares fascinating insights into how Colosseum is revolutionizing decentralized finance through innovative hackathons and an accelerator program specifically tailored for the Solana ecosystem.

He offers a unique perspective on the evolution of cryptocurrency infrastructure, the importance of stablecoins, and the future of developer engagement in the crypto space.

Throughout the conversation, he offers insights on the evolution of crypto infrastructure, the critical role of stablecoins, the future of developer engagement, and sheds light on the emerging trends and strategic market timing that are shaping the broader crypto landscape.

Decentralized Finance and Beyond with Clay Robbins (Colosseum)

Bonus Episodes

Building Solana's Next Breakout App | Ilja Moisejevs & Richard Wu - Lightspeed

This week Ilja Moisejevs and Richard Wu join Lightspeed to discuss the release of Vector, Tensor's pivot from NFTs, the rise of social trading, building a consumer platform, and what's next for Tensor.

How Lulo is Making DeFi Stupidly Simple, w/ Daniel, co-founder and CEO - Solfate

Daniel, co-founder and CEO of Lulo, shares the evolution of their DeFi platform, how Lulo simplifies lending and enhances UX, the challenges in DeFi, the introduction of risk management measures, and upcoming features like a native app.

ORE Network: What if Bitcoin was built like Solana? - Token Warrant

In this episode of The Token Warrant, Hardhat Chad, the founder of ORE, and Alejandra from Foundation Capital, discuss their backgrounds in the crypto space, the unique aspects of ORE, the challenges and opportunities within the crypto ecosystem, the project's unexpected success, and the future vision for the Ore ecosystem.

Ambient is Powering the Future of Environmental Data Through DePIN - Solana Weekly

In this episode, Luca from Ambient discusses the innovative DeFi-driven air quality monitoring platform, Ambient's tokenomics,, and the project's potential to impact industries such as health, hospitality, and municipal planning.

Follow @mikehale on X or Warpcast!

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