Colosseum Codex: Solana Patches Vulnerability, Squads Policy Network, The Port Ship Week

🤐 Solana Quietly Patches Vulnerability

Last week Solana validators quietly implemented a critical security patch, preventing what could have been a major network outage.

The patch was rolled out following a private alert sent to major validators through various channels like Discord. This confidential approach was required to ensure the vulnerability was addressed before it could be exploited.

The decision to implement the patch quietly sparked debate about the network's decentralization.

Some community members questioned how such a significant portion of validators, more than 70% of the network's stake, could coordinate so swiftly without public disclosure.

Critics argued this suggests centralization, but defenders of the process countered that handling critical vulnerabilities in public would have exposed the network to exploits.

The confidentiality was necessary to protect the network's integrity.

Despite concerns, the fast response from the Solana Foundation and its validator community avoided downtime, and reflects a community that is capable of quickly responding to threats.

Solana prevents potential outage, patches critical vulnerability

🔒 Squads Policy Network

The Squads Policy Network (SPN) is a decentralized network designed to enhance the functionality of the Squads Protocol. It enables the implementation of granular and general-purpose transaction policies for onchain smart accounts.

The SPN functions as a conditional signer for smart accounts, approving or rejecting transactions based on user-defined policies. These policies allow for fine-grained control over transactions, but in a trustless and decentralized manner.

The key features of SPN are:

1. Granular Transaction Policies: The SPN allows for precise controls over transactions, including parameterization by subaccount, transaction type, program interaction, and asset type.
2. Security: The network simulates and authenticates transactions to protect against malicious programs, counterparties, and potential exploits.
3. Compliance: The SPN enforces compliance with local jurisdictional and regulatory standards, KYC verification, and sanctions checks.
4. Automation Guardrails: The SPN provides guardrails for automated workflows, which is critical as AI-driven automation becomes more prevalent.

The SPN gives Solana developers the tools to create secure, compliant, and flexible onchain applications, and accelerating the adoption of dApps.

Introducing the Squads Policy Network (SPN)

🚢 The Port Miami Ship Week

The Port announced Miami Ship Week, which runs from September 2nd through September 7th in Wynwood. Applications for speakers and attendees are now open.

If you're not familiar with The Port already here's an overview of The Port and what it has to offer:

The Port Ship Week

💎 Developer News

Announcing CryptoHouse
ClickHouse and Goldsky have announced CryptoHouse, enabling instant, real-time SQL queries for Solana Blockchain data. Users can query Solana blocks, transactions, transfers, rewards, accounts, and tokens for free.

Smart Contract Programming Intensive NYC
The Solana Foundation is hosting a free, one-day intensive smart contract training session in New York City, featuring hands-on labs where developers will build a decentralized swap program using Anchor and Rust.

Naabathon Star Atlas Hackathon
(I'm a bit late on this one, but there's still time to build something!) The Naabathon is the first Star Atlas ecosystem Hackathon where teams can compete for $50k in Star Atlas Ships VWAP Value and USDC awards by building apps for Star Atlas.

[256]code
Applications are open for [256]code, a token-gated community hosted by Blocksmith Labs for Solana developers, founders, and creators. Limited to just 256 members, [256]code is where builders can work alongside top developers and founders, sharing insights and resources in a tight-knit community.

Superteam FastTrack
FastTrack is a new initiative for Superteam members to accelerate the growth of their projects by connecting them with trusted accelerators including Colosseum, OrangeDAO, Solana Labs, OVioHQ, AllianceDAO, and BuidlerDAO.

⚙️ Tools & Resources

sbpf is a simple scaffold to bootstrap, build, and deploy sBPF Assembly programs.

💸 Funding

Solayer, a Solana restaking network, announced that it has secured an investment from Binance Labs to bolster the company’s efforts to enhance dApps with improved bandwidth and security.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

• Raad Labs is hiring a Founding Data Engineer
• Orca is hiring a Software Engineer (Backend)
• Rome Protocol is looking for a Senior Rust Blockchain Engineer
• Phantom Senior is hiring a Senior Application Security Engineer
• WeRate needs a Chief Technology Officer

⚡ Quick Hits

Learner, Contributor, and Founder: The 3 types of builders served by Colosseum - Colosseum

A Short Introduction to DePIN - Helius

Fuse Wallet Now Available On Apple App Store - Fuse

Andrew Hong: Technical Intro to Solana [Video] - Archetype

Exploring Solana’s Ecosystem Boom - @FourPillarsFP

How ZK Compression on Solana works - @eli5_defi

Fuse enables gas abstraction on Solana - @fusewallet

🎧 Listen to This

Unlayered

Farhaj Mayan from Forma talks about creating the world's first Solana Economic Zone (SEZ) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

There is a long history of highly successful economic zones occurring outside the realm of crypto, and so it feels a natural next step to start talking with governments about how the crypto industry could also help to benefit trade within the relevant country.

Argentina's recent history of high inflation and a crypto-savvy population makes it the ideal first step to showcase the benefits that such an economic arrangement could have for Argentinian citizens, and hopefully other citizens around the world as the economic model is rolled out elsewhere.

Building Solana Economic Zones - Farhaj Mayan, Forma

Bonus Episodes

Solana Virtual Machines and How it Works with Eclipse, Lumio, Mantis and ABK Labs - The Index

This episode of The Index explores why developers choosing to build on the SVM with Alex Kehaya, Co-founder & CEO of ABK Labs, and Omar Zaki, Co-founder & CEO of Mantis. They're joined by Terry Chung, Head of Strategy at Eclipse, and Alejo Pinto, Co-founder at Pontem, to discuss the benefits and challenges of building on the SVM ecosystem.

Unlocking Modular Solana: The End of L2 Tradeoffs? | Anil Kumar - Empire

In this episode, Anil from Rome Protocol unpacks using Solana's infrastructure for Ethereum L2 sequencing. The discussion covers the challenges of centralized sequencers, the importance of MEV in the L2 ecosystem, and the potential for crosschain atomic transactions.

Raydium’s Rise to the Top | 0xInfra - Lightspeed

0xInfra joined Lightspeed to discuss all things Raydium, how they deter pool deployment spam, and what led to their rise to the top of the Solana DEX space, the early days of Raydium, where they are today, and where they are heading next.

How Zeta Markets’ L2 Makes a DEX Feel Like a CEX w/ Tristan Frizza - Validated

In this episode, Austin chats with Tristan Frezza about Zeta Markets, a decentralized perps trading platform on Solana. Tristan shares insights on Zeta's inception in early 2021 and their mission to bring Nasdaq-like derivatives markets on-chain.

Follow @mikehale on X or Warpcast!

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