Mad News #13: Lads On Rear Wing
The Mad Lads battle it out for a spot in Formula 1, Solana disrupts traditional email, new Backpack dApps added to the xNFT Library and a look at IRL artists being supported by the Solana Foundation.
What is in this week’s Mad News?
Mad Lads heading for Formula 1 race
Roster content reaches new levels
Email is finally disrupted by Solana
New xNFTs available in the Library
Solana Foundation empowers IRL creators
Rasberry Pi x Solana integrations
View the full Table of Contents here.
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The Mad Lads are a social media engagement machine
Community engagement is strong suit of the Mad Lads fanbase and the world saw it in action this week.
The Mad Lads dominated the chase for a spot on the rear wing of a Formula 1 racecar in a competition sponsored by Kraken NFT and Williams Racing.
The competition started with holders from projects across the blockchain ecosystem (not just Solana) submitting their NFTs for a random drawing. Thousands entered and just twenty made it to the voting round.
Enter: Attis, holder of this Lightning Umbrella Lassie.
Voting began on Monday, after twenty four hours of voting the Mad Lads were neck and neck with projects like DeGods and Claynosaurz.
Armani, Tristan and the rest of the team turned engagement into overdrive with a Mad Lad giveaway. The gap between first and second place nearly doubled overnight.
Attis is LAD OF THE WEEK
(and it had nothing to do with the Rear Wing Takeover!)
He is a video editor that creates unique content for web3 gaming projects and he was well known in the Mad Lads community long before his NFT was selected in the Rear Wing Takeover.
He also creates content for the Mad Lads and Backpack teams like these Sunday Stream clips. Fun fact: Attis was the inspiration for the Mad News Highlights design.
Make sure to follow him on Twitter!
Armani exercises, floor price rises
Retired Chad Dev swept fourteen Mad Lads from the floor after challenging Armani Ferrante to a pull contest and it all started with Taco Bell.
After commenting on the Taco Bell wrappers, a Twitter user claimed they would sweep a Mad Lad for every pushup Armani completed.
He made twenty pushups look easy so Retired Chad Dev decided to double down on the challenge.
“Now do pull ups bruh.. I will sweep 2 for each pull up.”
Armani did not disappoint and fourteen Mad Lads were swept from the floor.
Rumor has it that Armani is in negotiations to become Taco Bell’s newest spokesman.
Korean Blockchain Week is a busy time for the Lads
Marginfi, a decentralized lending platform, is hosting a happy hour with A41 and the Mad Lads on September 5th (Tuesday) in Seoul, Korea.
Backpack co-founder Tristan Yver is leading a talk on “blockchain’s transformative role in the realm of IP” on September 6th. You can get tickets to KBW here.
The Solana Foundation is cohosting an invitation-only mixer with the Mad Lads. Doors open at 7PM local time on September 7th (Thursday).
Tristan Yver featured in the Know Your Founders series
NFT marketplace Magic Eden dropped another edition of their Know Your Founders series featuring Tristan from his days as a fisherman.
Roster Lads living life on the edge
Volume up for this one!
Jakey has had the maddest summer of any Lad and this highlight reel captures the fock it mentality.
Nick Kapule foil surfed 32 miles from Molokai to Oahu
Nick represented the Mad Lads while he competed in the 2023 Molokai 2 Oahu World Championship foil race.
In a field of more than 165 competitors he came in at 33rd place overall.
Tyler Larronde was on a completely different kind of oceanic adventure
Tyler is an avid fisherman along with his professional surfing career. Deep sea fishing is a passion that can put you in harms way as seen here.
The shark looks friendly, doesn’t it?
Jakey flexes his web2 network with this tramp stamp tribute
Can you believe that this image was airdropped to over 90k+ people? DRiP can’t either. Jakey met with Jackass’s Steve-O in 2019 an commemorated the occasion with this *tribal tramp stamp*.
Ethereum attention is on the Mad Lads
The Mad Lads mint pulled in participants from Solana, Ethereum, Polygon and more. It appears that Ethereum NFT maxis are still keeping an eye on Backpack and the Mad Lads collection.
Slowly adding my exposure to [the] Solana ecosystem as I'm super impressed with Armani Ferrante and Backpack's vision.
Lucky #13 and finally got my first galaxy Mad Lad. By order of...
-edk.eth
Austin Federa talks Solana Pay x Shopify with CoinDesk
Austin Federa sat down with CoinDesk.tv’s to chat about the Solana Pay x Shopify integration, benefits of USDC for merchants and his vision of real-world use cases for Solana products.
You can view the full interview here.
You can email Austin (and Toly) directly now
If you have any questions after watching the CoinDesk interview you can now email Austin Federa using the new SolLinked tool and guarantee a response back for $5 USDC.
SolLinked was born from a single Toly Tweet.
eldenringfanlol got to work immediately and designed a platform that requires a small fee before an email will be delivered. The level of the fee is determined by the email account owner and can be modulated in numerous way.
#OnlyPossibleOnSolana content challenge
Solana put out a call for creators to design merch, NFTs, art and content of all kinds focusing on the #OnlyPossibleOnSolana theme.
There are numerous avenues to explore creatively including:
Mint by the millions
Innovation that scales
Climate conscious tech
Power global payments
Web3 in your pocket
You can download icons and other OPOS images here.
OPOS challenges yielded impressive results for the xNFT track
Solana marketers have taken the Only Possible On Solana (OPOS) slogan and ran with it. The mtndao OPOS Hackathon came to a close last week and there were numerous new xNFTs.
Jonas has been crawling through the game submissions and sampled the new Solar Hunt xNFT.
Four more Backpack dApps were added to the xNFT Library
Kingz Council
Kingz Council comes from the Mad King himself, Grove Street. The xNFT is the user endpoint of the Mad Send It project.
What is Mad Send It?
A hybrid platform, integrating Mail Chimp, Compressed NFT's & Patreon features through tokenization. This allows creators to personally connect with their audience, retain control of their contacts, and offer custom rewards.
Kingz Council enables creators to snapshot xNFT downloaders, effortlessly airdrop compressed &/or xNFTs to fans, and introduces token gating for exclusive content—from podcasts and movies to live events, fostering a rich, engaging, and exclusive fan experience
Orca
Orca needs little introduction to Solana maxis. The crypto marketplace released an xNFT enabling ORCA and SOL swaps.
Soundpickr
Soundpickr is a growing platform with the goal of disrupting music royalties with web3 solutions. Their xNFT is a music maker that constructs a beat in real time.
MAD Jumper
MAD Jumper is a fun minigame built by Saoko and Nathan Lazo that is infuriatingly difficult to get a high score.
Solana has a track record of empowering creators outside of the dev space
Solana IRL activations are known for being developer focused however they also empower creators to host real world events.
The Solana Foundation sponsored an art exhibition in Abuja, Nigeria called The Inception last week. ChaosDAO managed the event, they launched last year on a mission of “building a Bridge between Creators & Collectors”.
We started out just having unadulterated laughs in spaces and what not. A bit lost but finding our way still. Our drive behind the initiative quickly transitioned into trying to foster an environment that would spotlight and create a platform for extremely talented yet underrepresented artists in the NFT space and hopefully within the traditional space.
The Foundation co-sponsored another event last week in NYC. Hoop World was a sculpture laden exhibit by Brooklyn based artist Douglas McCurdy.
IN HIS PURSUIT TO CHALLENGE CONVENTIONAL PERCEPTIONS, DOUGLAS EXPLORES THE QUESTION, "WHAT IF A BASKETBALL HOOP WAS THERE?"
HIS WORK PLAYFULLY INCORPORATES THE MOTIF OF "AN ORANGE CIRCLE WHERE IT DOESN'T BELONG," ENCOURAGING AUDIENCES TO RECONSIDER THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN ART AND SPORTS, REALITY AND FANTASY.
gm! guten morgen! it’s time for Hacker House Berlin!
Hacker House Berlin kicked off on Thursday and ends on September 3rd.
The real events started during the week. Mobs of Solana fans took to the streets of Berlin to find Only Possible On Solana posters that papered the city.
Superteam Germany has made Hacker House Berlin a truly immersive experience.
HYPERDRIVE is Solana’s next online hackathon
Just when Hacker House Berlin ends, HYPERDRIVE begins. Sign up here so you don’t miss the early alpha.
Superteam Germany is flipping the script again by opening the doors of a physical workspace, Build Station Berlin.
IRL activations have a whole new meaning with Raspberry Pi
Mad News Issue #11 featured Jonas’s first Solana x Raspberry Pi integration and he came back this week with guns blazing.
You don’t always see a blockchain touching grass, but when you do it’s Solana
Solana Beach meets Only Possible On Solana with this IRL discovery.
Solana Case Studies perform deep dives into biggest projects
The News section on the Solana website is a wealth of knowledge about everything in the Solana ecosystem.
Helium Case Study
Helium is a prime example of DePIN project taking advantage of blockchain technology for real world usage. DePIN, or Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks, projects use decentralized technology to power real-world uses, such as street maps, rendering power, cab-hailing services, and more.
Dialect Case Study
Dialect, a blockchain-based mobile messaging tool, is leaning hard into state compression with its interactive messaging functionality. A social messaging app built on Solana, it lets people share their personality with their friend by letting them int and share stickers directly within the messaging platform.
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Mad Lads & Backpack
Solana