Mad News #15: X Stands For...
Some things must stay secret until October but there are certainly hints. Stay informed about everything Mad Lads and Backpack with the Mad News.
Jakey is a man of considerable taste and starts his day with the Mad News in English & Japanese.
Read the Japanese language edition here!
In this week’s issue we cover:
a Mad Lads stats dump
Jakey has a good day
our LAD OF THE WEEK
the TOKEN2049 meetup recap
Hacker House Bengaluru
OPOS hackathon winner announcements
…and much more!
View the full Table of Contents here.
Subscribe today and stay up to date on everything in the Mad Lads and Backpack ecosystem.
Mad Lads five month anniversary
It has been nearly five months since the Mad Lads mint, let’s get up to speed on how the collection has performed.
Holders: 3,455 unique wallets
Total Volume (Mad Lads): 1.74M SOL ($31M)
Total Volume (Mad Merch): 1.9K SOL ($34K)
Highest Sale: 3675 SOL (Skull trait) ($66K)
# of xNFTs: 123 in xNFT Library
Mad Validator stake: 598,083 SOL ($10.7M)
That boy Jakey has Ice in his veins
Jakey channeled his inner Ice Cube and had a good day with gangster rap, skateboarding and sticker bombs. Fock it!
Listen to the full version of “It Was A Good Day” on YouTube.
Follow Jakey on Twitter and Instagram.
LAD OF THE WEEK: Mad Vincent
All of our LADS OF THE WEEK have something in common.
They are consistent. And a little mad.
Mad Vincent is a prolific creator whose content is focused on branding and growth.
With the Vincent trait in hand he utilizes the Mad Lads IP to make artwork that enhances his educational posts.
Two recent threads from Vincent (well worth the read):
Nigh a day goes by without a new piece of artwork or written content from Mad Vincent, make sure to give him a follow.
TOKEN2049 is one of the biggest crypto conferences in the world
More than 20,000 people attend the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore.
The Mad Lads hosted a meetup for holders and dozens attended the event that was held at the Metacamp’s headquarters.
Attendees who RSVP’d in time had their Mad Lads and Lassies printed into full length posters that adorned the walls.
This meetup was just one of nearly a dozen Mad Lads events that have taken place over the last several months.
Swag giveaways were in full swing creating a new generation of “Fock it.” stans.
It wouldn’t be a true Mad Lads meetup without an appearance from co-founder Tristan Yver.
The Korean Blockchain Week recap video
There was another Mad Lads meetup in Seoul during the Korean Blockchain Week.
In similar fashion to TOKEN2049, dozens of holders attended an interactive meet and greet.
Tyler Larronde is a Lad on top of big waves
In what may be the most well timed teaser yet, Tyler helps the Backpack team cause agony to thousands of fans who want to know what will happen in October.
Follow Tyler on Twitter and Instagram.
Nick Kapule is on a mission from Poseidon
Nick Kapule looks like he’s on his way to board the Black Pearl as he races into this Hawaiian lagoon on his foil board.
Follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram.
It takes a village to raise an arena
Roster members aren’t the only ones who represent the Mad Lads.
Holders like Solana Legend and spacemandev are helping grow the ecosystem by building cool things all while repping Mad Lads PFPs.
View our entire interview series.
Another Mad Lads meetup is planned for Hacker House Bengaluru
Superteam India is teaming with the Mad Lads for a Hacker House Bengaluru meetup.
This is a night time event where attendees will join for “a night of great music, lively conversations, and complimentary food & drinks.”
Hacker House Bengaluru is at max capacity
Solana teams have descended on India for a back to back Hacker House series starting in Bengaluru and ending in Mumbai.
Hacker House Bengaluru kicked off on Thursday and was at max capacity almost instantly.
Within hours of opening doors the venue was at “one for one” entry status meaning that someone must leave the location before a new person was granted entry.
India is leading the adoption race for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology so it comes as no surprise that Hacker House demand is so high.
Superteens is a film produced by the Superteam DAO that focuses on four up and coming developers from India.
We followed four young developers, across four states in India, for the last fourteen months through the heady highs of the bull and lonely lows of the bear market.
The full length version will be screened during the Bengaluru event.
There will be multiple Mad Lads meetups at Breakpoint
Breakpoint is the next big Solana event of the year. Last year the conference was located in Lisbon, Portugal and this year the team is taking over Amsterdam in The Netherlands.
Mad Lads will be hosting a coffeeshop style event as well as something more raucous at a nighttime venue.
Armani Ferrante, Backpack and Mad Lads cofounder, is joining as a Featured Speaker along with other top builders in the space.
The Solana H Y P E R D R I V E Hackathon is off and running
Thousands of builders have signed up for that chance at winning grants from a prize pool of more than $1 million dollars.
You can learn more about the Hackathon building tracks and prizes here.
OPOS Hackathon winners unveiled
The OPOS Hackathon was a resounding success with hundreds of new projects springing to life with 10+ in the xNFT track.
We hope that OPOS Hackathon has helped push the ecosystem forward, driving development of new use-cases that are Only Possible On Solana.
An xNFT called Pockets earned the 3rd place prize in the Helius Compression track with a prize of $4K USDC.
Pockets is a group oriented game where players work in factions to try and win prizes from a $BONK prize pool. Season 1 has a 5B $BONK pool.
Speaking of OPOS, look at what popped up in Austin, Texas during the Permissionless conference.
Solana Ecosystem calls provide a monthly wrap up for the space
The Solana Ecosystem calls provide a detailed look at the greater Solana ecosystem. Kash Dhanda hosts the calls which feature top builders from your favorite Solana brands.
Anyone can join and they are streamed live.
Recently the Superteam started to release these recap supercuts that highlight the most important topics in the call.
Anatoly Yakovenko returns to the Logan Jastremski podcast
Logan’s podcast has become a source of alpha for the Solana community as he consistently plays host to the most impactful people in the space.
Toly and Logan talk for over an hour about:
All to All Consensus
Finance is a regressive tax on moving digits around
Raw data costs
Consensus Design
Channel Capacity
Sharding & L2s will never be cheaper than Solana
The problem with Single Threaded VMs
Modular vs. Integrated Blockchains
Visa doubles down on Solana
Last week we covered the bombshell announcement that Visa was integrating USDC payment rails using the Solana blockchain.
A few days ago they added weight to the commitment by releasing an official report detailing why Solana is the best blockchain to process financial transactions.
Visa is scaling their USDC settlement pilot to include the Solana blockchain, enabling enterprise-grade throughput at virtually no cost for Visa issuers and merchant acquirers on Solana.
Hivemapper hits the 5 million kilometer mark on the back of Solana
Hivemapper is a decentralized, privacy-centric network that collects map data faster than any other solutions.
Using the Solana blockchain, Hivemapper has created an incentivized, community-sourced digital map that rewards contributors promptly and securely in HONEY tokens. On average, Hivemapper contributors are now mapping more than 900 km per week.
Solana covered Hivemapper in their Case Study series.
Excerpt from Solana News:
Using the Solana blockchain, Hivemapper has created an incentivized, community-sourced digital map that rewards contributors promptly and securely in HONEY tokens. On average, Hivemapper contributors are now mapping more than 900 km per week.