Mad News #34 ⛽ Slowly, Then All At Once
Community feedback fuels Wallet updates, BONK & WIF spot trading live on Exchange, Solana Japan airdrops NFTs, Solana launches Colosseum and Token Extensions officially live.
Welcome back to the Mad News! 🗞️
Community feedback fuels Wallet updates
BONK & WIF spot trading live on Exchange
Solana Japan shows appreciation for donations
Lad earns first Emmy award
Colosseum emerges as Solana hackathon hub
Token Extensions change Solana development trajectory
…and much more!
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Cast your vote to place the Lads On Top of the Solana Wallet leaderboard 🗳️
Visit the Solana website and vote for Backpack as your favorite wallet in the ecosystem!
Community feedback fueled extension update hits the Chrome store ⛽
Tensor implemented a points multiplier bonus for Backpack Wallet users in their Season 3 trading contest.
This helped onboard over a thousand new Backpack users in just a few days which provided an impromptu stress test on the Wallet.
Feedback from the new users helped devs focus their efforts on improving two specific pain points:
We made some small but important updates to our injected provider after receiving a bunch of feedback:
- wallets now automatically switch inside dapps when switching inside the extension
-dapps automatically reconnect when previously connected to the wallet
Two more tokens are available for trade on the Backpack Exchange 🪙
BONK/USDC spot trading is now live on the Backpack Exchange.
$BONK is a utility & social token designed to empower the Solana ecosystem’s community and developers.
Traders gave the opportunity to compete for a prize pool of over 4B BONK tokens (over $45k USD at the time of writing).
WIF/USDC spot trading went live on the same day.
WIF ISN'T LITERALLY JUST A DOG WIF A HAT ; IT'S A SYMBOL OF PROGRESS, FOR FUTURISTIC TRANSACTIONS, A BEACON FOR THOSE WHO THINK AHEAD.
IT'S CLEAR THAT THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO EMBRACE INNOVATIONS LIKE WIF, TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES & PAVING A NEW ERA IN FINANCE AND TECHNOLOGY.
Noto Peninsula Earthquake Relief Fund philanthropists receive surprise from Solana Japan ⛰️
Solana Japan showed their appreciation for the generous group of people who donated to the Noto Peninsula Earthquake Fund.
The cNFT was created by Tokyo-based graphic artist nachara.
The Japanese people are still reeling from the impact of the earthquake and it is estimated that damages will reach $17B+ USD.
Huge turnout for the Solana Japan New Year Party 🗾
Mad Lads, Kamino, Jito and UXD joined Solana Japan to mark the new year and celebrate the growing crypto community in Japan.
70+ attendees were treated to hand rolled onigiri, local drinks and the smoothest sake in Japan.
The night was highlighted by talks from event organizers, community members and founders.
Omelette du Fromage! 🍳
Backpack founder Tristan Yver is slated to speak at NFT Paris.
NFT Paris is one of the largest crypto events in the world with more than 18,000 attendees in 2023.
Where Finance, Gaming, Art, Fashion, Sport , Media converge to celebrate the era of digital assets.
Expect 100+ exhibitors, immersive installations, a large hackathon with top-tier developers
We bring together builders, investors, brands & artists to shape the future of the industry.
LAD OF THE WEEK: Slice 🍕
Slice is our LOTW!
The quality of an NFT project is in no small part derived from the community of holders who support it.
Slice has been repping a Lads PFP since the early post-mint days and has been a consistent proponent of the Mad brand.
Most recently he took a leaf out of Jakey’s book and got MAD in public.
Slice is the founder of a crypto-centric magazine called FOMO which focuses heavily on NFT projects, meme-tokens and the humanity behind the blockchain.
Just this week Slice and the FOMO team dropped a teaser indicating an alignment with Backpack, is there an xNFT in our future?
If you haven’t already, make sure to give Slice a follow!
Mad Lads have a heartbeat 💓
Talking about the importance of community in crypto is cliche at this point yet the fact remains that creative holders are a driving force behind the Mad Lads movement.
FUELCELL is a longtime Lad who just won his first Emmy
AmeT dropped a “NEO LADS” collection to 70k+ DRiP subscribers
graffito.sol auctions off Mad Lads x Backpack inspired 1/1 NFTs
Burger Bob puts on a Fock It. IRL installation
ALLEN filmed a Spanish-language breakdown of the Backpack Wallet and xNFTs.
joetakayama.eth shows us that you can Stake your SOL in the Backpack wallet in less than 20 seconds
Tensor’s founder shows Backpack some love during Superteam interview 🎥
Kash: What is the best project on Solana?
Richard: If I had to choose something besides Tensor, we really like the Backpack guys.
CoinGecko acknowledges both Backpack and Mad Lads in their 2023 Annual Crypto Industry Report 🦎
Backpack and Mad Lads receive their fair share of coverage in the crypto press but the platforms are generally Solana-centric.
SOL is already broadly listed and supported across centralized exchanges and has wallets with great UX such as Phantom and Backpack.
Brands like CoinGecko are respected sources of truth for all major blockchain communities and being featured in their reports exposes Backpack and Mad Lads to new audiences.
Solana recorded a meteoric rise of +917.3% in 2023, with a resurgence in bullish narratives
SpiderSwap latest to adopt Backpack as their preferred Wallet 🕷️
Matrica Labs, Tensor and now SpiderSwap have placed the Backpack Wallet as their preferred wallet.
This is a healthy trend for Backpack because it provides a new touchpoint to introduce users to the brand.
SpiderSwap has finally integrated Backpack as our preferred wallet looking forward to share with our holder base the goodies within!
Colosseum emerges as Solana’s new hackathon hub ⚔️
Colosseum is Solana’s brand new division which manages hackathons and works directly with founders to invest in their startups.
Matty Tay (former Head of Growth at the Solana Foundation) is spearheading the operation along with clay and Nate Levine.
Colosseum will host 2-3 online hackathons per year each followed by an Accelerator batch.
Hackathon winners will be considered for Colosseum’s accelerator.
The first hackathon begins in early March.
Until then you can create your profile, connect with cofounders and discuss product ideas in a live forum.
Colosseum’s accelerator is a five-week, online program designed specifically for hackathon winners to become embedded in the Solana ecosystem, rapidly iterate to find product-market fit, and raise seed funding faster.
View the full Mentor and Founder Network members here.
Solana hackathons have long been a staple of the ecosystem.
They've grown significantly over the years, with winners like marinadefinance, tensor_hq, squadsprotocol & more that have gone on to build impactful products with dedicated communities.
Spanish speaking Lads helping to grow the ecosystem 🐂
Backpack and Mad Lads are slowly but surely expanding alternate language support to encompass as many community members as possible.
Backpack committed to the growth of the Hispanic community, they've even created a dedicated [Spanish Telegram group]
At the event, secure your Mad Lads swag (FCFS) & gain insights into their innovative projects. Don't miss out!
Flex your composition skills with Solana Scribes hackathon ✍️
Solana Scribes is the first Solana hackathon dedicated to written content.
This new hackathon emerged rapidly and in typical fashion has quickly picked up speed.
The Solana ecosystem has an alarming lack of docs, content, and research. We must fix this to onboard more people and improve the ecosystem.
-mert
Some of the topics include:
Research / State of the Solana ecosystem / NFTs
DeFi / Tokenomics / Best Fictional story
Ecosystem tutorials / Source code docs / Case studies
mtndao (v5) kicks off in February so it’s safe to assume that this will run during that time frame.
“The future of tokenization is now”🚀
Token Extensions are all the rage on Solana this week as the new tooling was *officially* launched.
Token extensions provide flexible, secure tooling for digital & real-world assets on the high-throughput, low cost Solana blockchain.
We have covered the Token Extension story (formerly known as Token-2022) multiple times over the last year including an interview Austin Federa and Jon Wong.
Jon Wong, Lead Ecosystem Engineering at Solana Foundation, had this to say about Token Extensions.
my two favorite ones are transfer hooks and confidential transfers
transfer hooks are powerful enough to create permissioned tokens on the permissionless Solana network, including things like in-game gems (limit transfer to certain PDAs) or even contractually-enforced royalty splits
confidential transfers mean everyday usage of blockchain (payroll, merchant settlement) without exposing sensitive data
token extensions provide the ability to customize the nature of how tokens operate, with the safety and composability of the SPL Token standard.
PODCAST CORNER 🎙️
Solana Changelog
Jacob Creech and Nick Frostbutter deliver their weekly update for Solana Developers.
Token Extensions Developer Guides
The Permanent Delegate token extension allows for a designated Permanent Delegate (aka delegated authority) for a Mint Account.
This permanent delegate has unrestricted delegate privileges over all Token Accounts for that mint, enabling them to burn or transfer tokens without limitation.
Lightspeed Podcast
Ian Cummings joins us to discuss how to build a sustainable crypto game. Ian has been in gaming for over 23 years, created NFL Madden's hit stick while working at EA Sports, and is now the creator of Solana's race horsing game Photo Finish.
Santiago Santos joins us to discuss his crypto investment thesis and conviction in Solana's adoption flywheel. Santiago is a prolific investor, co-host of Empire and one of the most respected minds in crypto