What is in this week’s Mad News?

Backpack code repo going private
Honorary Mad Lad NFTs
Crypto trading competition with Mad Lads as prize
Solana Summer hackathons

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Mad Lads & Backpack

Solana Ecosystem

Backpack Rugs Developers

Devs are pulling the plug on the public code repo.

Backpack is an open source platform that freely distributes it’s code base on GitHub. Devs are closing access to the repo on June 30th.

For a little while.

Temporarily.

While they cook.

Cook Breaking Bad GIF - Cook Breaking Bad Hoodie GIFs

Solana NFT Showdown At High Noon

Ten finalists are preparing to battle it out this week in the final round of the Solana NFT Showdown. Finalists have just three minutes to impress the judges panel with their product and business plan.

Watch live on Twitch, June 29th at 4PM UTC (12PM EST).

Backpack and Mad Lads co-founder Armani Ferrante is on the judges panel along with many other distinguished panelists, see the full list here.

In the end, only five winners will walk away with a prize.

Back To School Good GIF - Back To School Good Judges GIFs

Read full contest details and prize breakdowns on the Solana website.

Enlist In The Mad Wars Today

The Mad Wars is a crypto trading competition where Mad lads subcommunities battle each other for *perp*etual domination and eternal focking glory!

Teams will compete on the Zeta Markets xNFT for a valuable prize pool:

Mad Lads NFTs
Breakpoint Tickets & Flights
Mad Merch

Both holders and non-holders have the opportunity to compete.

Over the course of the next few weeks, competitors will enlist, choose their allegiance, recruit, learn, and win.

Solana x Mad Lads = Hong Kong Meetup

Solana and the Mad Lads team have planned an official meetup on June 29th (Thursday) in Hong Kong. The event is being held at The Work Project Midtown from 6PM-9PM local time.

Cover Image for Solana x MadLads HK Meetup — Solana x Mad Lads = Hong Kong Meetup

Follow the instructions here to register and attend.

Mad Lads In India

This group of Mad Lads self organized a meetup last week in Bangalore, India.

Four Months Until Breakpoint

The Solana Breakpoint conference is being held in Amsterdam this year (yes THAT Amsterdam) beginning on October 30th and extending an extra day through November 3rd.

Solana has a history of boldly embracing open sourced builders.

Austin Federa, Head of Strategy at Solana, reminded us that open source developers can apply for subsidized (inexpensive) tickets. The only caveat is that they must have raised less than $10M.

Solana is also looking for more speakers and workshop hosts to share their expertise on stage. Anyone can apply to be a speaker, regardless of direct experience in web3, on the Solana Foundation’s website.

Apply today to speak at or host a workshop!

Gold Coins Appear In Mad Lads Inventory

Mad Lads introduced NFT staking on June 13th and the first gold coins were earned on June 24th. Armani Ferrante went into more detail about accrual rates here.

Coins accrued are soul bound to the NFT that is staked. The coins are stored in the NFT’s “inventory” system and cannot be traded or transferred between holders.

The inventory system is a brand new paradigm in the NFT world, the concept that NFTs themselves can receive and store digital assets.

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Honorary Mad Lads Start To Ship

The Mad Lads shipped honorary NFTs to Meltem Demirors and Anatoly Yakovenko this week.

Meltem Demirors is an OG in the Solana world and joined CoinShares back in 2018. Popular on Twitter and in the media, Meltem is the ultimate Mad Lass.

Toly needs no introduction to most of you. For those living under a very large and heavy rock he is a founding member of the Solana blockchain, builder extraordinaire, Twitter fixture and driving force of Solana culture.

Mad Lads Community Filled With Legends

The Mad Lads community is stacked with giga brains, rockstar devs, project founders, content creators, influential degens and many others working on web3 missions.

Chris Burniske

Chris Burniske joined the Mad Lads Alumni last week by splashing 2,300 SOL for a “Mad Skull”. Chris is a partner in Placeholder, a well known web3 focused venture capital group.

degen poet

degen poet is a popular web3 artist that brings IRL type writer creations to the blockchain. poet’s notoriety began to skyrocket after DRiP began airdropping the artwork to hundreds of thousands of wallets.

becc

becc is a content creator mainly focusing on short form videos. We’ve featured becc’s videos in previous editions of Mad News. becc is also a part of the Bell Studios squad, you can read more about them below.

John Ennis

John Ennis is a blockchain builder that was onboarded to the Mad Lads by the MadCrab David himself.

John heads up the web3 platform NeoSwap AI, an AI powered trading tool focusing on crypto trades and Ordinal auctions.

Solana Legend

Last but certainly not least is the ever present Solana Legend. Legend hosts the Mad Lad’s Townhall spaces as well as consistently supporting the brand.

Listen to the Mad Lads Townhall #7 below or natively on Twitter here.

Sunday Stream #11, Late Night Edition

Subscribe to Armani’s Twitch so you don’t miss another Sunday Stream!

Sunday Stream #11 launched after 11PM in Hong Kong.

Armani went deep on a wide variety of community questions:

Mad Lads Gen2 Mint
NFT Artwork Design
Yuga Labs Partnership
World Of Warcraft

Image of Alright chumps let's do this. Leeroy Jenkins!

Compressed NFTs
On-Air Hacking
Mad Lads Investors
Global Crypto Adoption
Backpack User Analytics
Trusted App Permissions/Wallet Security

Armani streams on Twitch every Sunday. Look for notifications in the Mad Lads Discord and on Twitter.

#CreatorBash Challenge By Bell Studios

Bust out your camera and start recording. The #CreatorBash challenge is simple and accessible to anyone with a camera phone. Create a piece of content that revolves around the Mad Lads universe and enter to win some hefty prizes.

Just tweet & submit a video using the hashtag #CreatorBash and be eligible for over $3,000 in prizes!

1st Place Prize Value
- 1-2k USD Value
2nd Place Prize Value
- 1k USD Value
3rd Place Prize Value
- $500-1k USD Value

Learn more about the guidelines and judging here.

Jakey Takes Web3 To YouTube

MAD MOVIE 2 “dropped from 10,000 feet” last week. Jakey released a behind the scenes Each release comes with a behind the scenes vlog that captures the filming process.

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Solana Hackathon ($10,000 In Prizes)

The Encode Summer Hackathon is a 4-week long online hackathon sponsored by the Solana Foundation. The event kicked off this Monday but registrations are still open.

Solana Foundation Prizes

Most Innovative Application ($3000 Prize)
An innovative or unexpected application that doesn’t fit in the other categories, but is a clear winner nonetheless.
Best Consumer Application ($4000 Prize)
An application that is a consumer-first product that anyone, even people outside of crypto, can use.
Best AI <> Solana Integration ($3000 Prize)
An application that integrates AI with Solana in some way.

Additional Bounties

Pyth Bounty
- $3000
Elusiv Bounty
- $1000
Helius Bounty
- $1000
Phantom Bounty
- $5000
Wormhole Bounty (Cross Chain)
- $5000
Wormhole Bounty (xPay)
- $5000
Shyft Bounty
- $500

View the full prize list here.

Solana Integrated Into DePay Payment

DePay is a payments platform for blockchains, crypto and web3 platforms.

Solana integrations can also be deployed on WooCommerce and any Wordpress website. This means that ecommerce operators can offer customers a one-click crypto payment option that funnels directly to a secure, custodial wallet.

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What is in this week’s Mad News?

Table of Contents

Mad Lads & Backpack

Solana Ecosystem

Backpack Rugs Developers

Solana NFT Showdown At High Noon

Enlist In The Mad Wars Today

Solana x Mad Lads = Hong Kong Meetup

Mad Lads In India

Four Months Until Breakpoint

Gold Coins Appear In Mad Lads Inventory

Honorary Mad Lads Start To Ship

Mad Lads Community Filled With Legends

Chris Burniske

degen poet

becc

John Ennis

Solana Legend

Sunday Stream #11, Late Night Edition

#CreatorBash Challenge By Bell Studios

Jakey Takes Web3 To YouTube

Solana Hackathon ($10,000 In Prizes)

Solana Foundation Prizes

Additional Bounties

Solana Integrated Into DePay Payment

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Mad News: Backpack Rugs Developers