Mad News #41 💡 Billion Dollar Days
Mad News #41 💡 Billion Dollar Days
Proof of reserves status update, introducing trading coverage to the UK, celebrating Solana's birthday, the Galxe 🤝 Backpack integration and preparing for the mobile Exchange app.
Welcome to the Mad News! 🗞️
Proof of reserves status update
Backpack and new crypto users go hand in hand
Solana enters it’s kindergarten era
Exchange expands operations to the UK
Galxe 🤝 Backpack integration
Mobile Exchange inches closer to launch
$20/month cell phone plans by Helium
…and much more!
Backpack makes crypto so easy that your grandma is gonna make it 👵
Crypto is a global phenomena and Backpack routinely finds itself as the first touchpoint for new users.
This video features an old timer newcomer using the Backpack Wallet to show off their memecoin holdings (it was a $HAPPI bag).
The number of global cryptocurrency owners grew 34% to 580 million by the end of 2023.
After this video went viral the BonkBot team hooked her up with a bag of $BONK for a long term HODL.
Solana enters it’s kindergarten era 🖍️
Solana’s fourth Mainnet launch anniversary is on March 16th, Superteam maxis are throwing a birthday bash in Berlin.
Solana’s Origins:
2017 - Anatoly Yakovenko drafts the first Solana whitepaper which outlines a new concept called Proof of History (PoH).
2018 - The initial Solana Labs core team forms, releases the official whitepaper and launches an internal Testnet. Team begins raising development funds via Multicoin Capital.
2019 - Solana Labs development work continues at high pace, they host the first incentivized Testnet event called Tour de SOL and the Series A round closes with $20M generated in private token sales.
2020 - Solana debuts Mainnet and the first block is created on March 16th, 2020.
Fockin’ mad innit, m8? 🇬🇧
UK residents are queuing up to KYC on the Backpack Exchange after the platform expanded CEX operations where the Royal Family calls home.
UK trading activity is hamstrung by legal requirements with limited token offerings and the inability to participate in Pre Season events, users from the United States face similar restrictions.
Welcome to the world of tomorrow 🌌
Backpack users can now connect to Galxe and get a glimpse of how the next generation will manage their personal history and identity.
Birth records, education, credit ratings and travel history (just to name a few categories) are all documents that will live on the blockchain and be indelibly tied to an individual for life.
Companies such as Google and Meta run algorithms on your credentials so that they can send you targeted advertisements.
The problem is, however, you don’t own these data and you don’t get to decide what they are used for, who they’re sharing it with.
Galxe Protocol is a permissionless self-sovereign identity infrastructure. Powered by Zero-Knowledge Proof, you’ll be able to own, manage, and share verifiable credentials securely and privately.ed with, and how you benefit from them.
Galxe records are mainly focused on crypto promotions and IRL events but provide a good example of what our future looks like.
Wormhole places spotlight on the how’s and why’s of their upcoming token event 🔎
Wormhole came under fire last week after the announcement of their token release.
The scuttlebutt was centered on token allocation and what users or communities are scheduled to receive an airdrop.
Wormhole’s token event has been a widespread topic of conversation in the crypto community for the better part of two years.
The platform has positioned itself on the borders of all major blockchains as a service to move funds from one chain to another, this has made Wormhole a household name.
Wormhole addressed these directly saying “Airdrops can be some of the most exciting yet polarizing events to happen in any community. While some users walk away happy, others might come away with a lack of understanding of how the process worked behind the scenes.”
Airdrop summary:
Snapshot: February 6, 2024 23:59 UTC
Total wallets: 400,000+
Total supply for this airdrop: ~6.78% (678,823,000 W)
% for onchain users: 81% of the 6.78% (549M W)
% for community groups: 19% of the 6.78% (129M W)
Mobile trading inches closer to launch 📱
Armani Ferrante famously said “Mobile will take us from 300M to 1B” just a week before the Backpack Exchange posted it’s first $1B trading volume day.
Maybe 1B actually stood for “1 Billion…users”.
The mobile Exchange will be deployed inside the existing Backpack app upon launch and will open the doors to (literally) billions of new users.
Balance screen choices split community down the middle ✒️
A simple poll turned into a photo finish race which appears to have saved current view with no changes.
The current Original view barely edged out the newcomer, what do you think?
Exchange seen with sidechick sidebar 📊
Backpack Exchange underwent it’s first major UI update in weeks with the addition of a token monitoring sidebar.
Users can customize their trading view using the new ‘Favorites’ function.
Database upgrades a necessary evil 😈
Some users experienced volume and referrals tracking outages during the developers push to upgrade Exchange databases.
The juice was worth the squeeze.
After processing over 600 million orders, we're migrating our database to scale with the ever growing load.
Trading, deposits, withdrawals are all unaffected and continue to be working. Reading your account history will be momentarily affected for the next hour.
Wen proof of reserves? ⏰
The Backpack Exchange was revealed at Breakpoint 2023 with a pillar focusing on zero knowledge proof of reserves.
Opaque crypto exchange finances led to the FTX implosion which rocked the world and triggered a deep bear market.
We have a first version of proofs done. Just need to integrate them into the system to regularly checkpoint on chain.
Still have some significant pre-requisite systems work to do before we are ready to take on that challenge.
Until then you can see our reserves and flows here.
The “here” that Armani referenced is a Backpack Exchange focused dashboard hosted on blockchain analytics provider Dune.
The dashboard was created by 21.co and is a hotbed of data about the Exchange and what is going on behind the scenes.
Major discounts available for Arts DAO Fest 🎟️
Travel to Dubai and catch Tristan Yver’s panel at Arts DAO Fest in Dubai the week of April 20th.
As a frens & family community partner with NFC, we will be benefiting from a 95% discount on the ticket price (€30 instead of €600).
Use discount code MADNFCP4CK at the link below to get your ticket. 20 tickets available, first come first served.
-Tristan Yver, Mad Lads Discord
LAD OF THE WEEK: Zeck.S○l 🐈
Our LOTW is a shadowy figure that communicates with a feline fracas, whose identity is shrouded in furballs… Zeck.S○l!
Rumor has it that Zeck’s real voice is so rapturous that it would cause volcanos to explode, tectonic plates to shift, the changing of UK/US laws to be crypto friendly.
Unfortunately he’s all meows, all the time.
Zeck.S○l consistently shows up for the Mad Lads community and has appeared in the comment sections of posts dating back before the Mad Mint in April, 2023.
He communicates with meows and leaves cat hair like memories that we will never be able to shed, the kind of community member who has been embroidered into Mad Lads history.
If you haven’t followed Zeck.S○l already, make sure to follow now!
For the love of everything Backpack 🎒
Public sentiment for the Wallet and Exchange is picking up across social channels and it’s mostly good.
Chatter about Backpack largely originates from non-Mad Lads holders which indicates that the brand is starting to take hold outside of the fanboy ecosystem.
The Mad Lads continue to play a pivotal role in the growing the brand via The Roster (who just added a new member) as well as recent record-setting Mad Skulls sale.
When one (hacker house) door closes, another one opens 🚪
mtndaov5 wrapped up it’s month-long IRL hacker house event which took place in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Hundreds of attendees converged on a coworking space and hit the slopes for an intense work hard/play hard sessions.
Code. Eat. Ski. Repeat.
What a month
What a mtndao
Who would guess that we could really put a DAO on the mountains
Get ready for V6
Just an IslandDAO, just an IslandDAO 🏝️
IslandDAO may give mtndao a run for it’s money with their month-long IRL activation in Crete, Greece.
Four weeks full of chewing glass, networking and team building.
IslandDAO will be hosted at a massive villa near the beach that we have converted into a coworking paradise!
Spots are limited so make sure to join their Telegram with notifications on.
Build your company alongside Solana Labs 🏢
The Solana Incubator program takes a curated group of builders and provides them with everything required to give startups a chance to succeed.
Leverage the blockchain developers, fundraising support, and go-to-market muscle of Solana Labs to create the future of Web3.
This week they announce the six selected teams who are joining the Incubator in March:
Solana brands hiring at an unprecedented rate 💸
There are 153 jobs listed on the Solana Jobs board and that barely scratches the surface of how many open positions there are in web3.
As this cycle continues to develop I think we will start to see something new emerge.
Traditional companies who were late to the party in 2021 are going to fill their ranks with (temporary) blockchain savvy employees who can begin to introduce crypto to their culture.
Hello, are you there? It’s me the first $20 a month cell phone service on Solana ☎️
Superteams has embraced the role of creating high quality educational content that introduces Solana brands to the rest of the world.
Helium Mobile (MOBILE) is a wireless phone service built on the decentralized, crypto-powered Helium network, which enables individuals to establish and manage mobile networks through token incentivization.
Render vs OpenAI, FIGHT! 🤺
No really, Superteams is absolutely CRUSHING video content this year.
Render is on a mission to disrupt the stranglehold that ChatGPT and Meta have on GPUs.
The Render Network connects artists looking to render next-gen 3D media with near unlimited GPUs in a decentralized global network.
AI GPU's next.
NFT Nick is singlehandedly carrying the bull market on his back 🐂
You have been living under a rock for the last two weeks if NFTNick hasn’t popped up on your Twitter feed.
The “choose rich” mentality has swept through the crypto community like a bat out of hell gaining attention from audiences far outside the web3 circle.
It culminated (currently) with an appearance on Portnoy’s “Davie Daytrader” segment where Dave picks losing stocks.
PODCAST CORNER 🎙️
Validated
In this episode, Austin chats with Albert Chen (Genopets) about the state of web3 games on Solana and beyond. They dive into Genopets, exploring its gameplay, its web3 integration, and the philosophy guiding its backend design.
The discussion also covers Genopets' semi-custodial approach to in-game assets, composability, and the crucial role of Phoenix in Genopets' design. Albert also compares transaction dynamics on Solana versus Ethereum, claiming a game like Genopets is only possible to build on Solana.
Logan Jastremski Podcast
Alex is the Founder of Econia Labs. Econia: the high-performance on-chain order book for the Aptos blockchain. Built for equitable, global market access and engineered for composability, Econia provides trading infrastructure for Aptos DeFi.
The Block
The Block's Frank Chaparro interviews Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko.
ATX DAO Podcast
Nick Ducoff, Head of Institutional Growth at Solana Foundation, discusses his journey into the tech and crypto space, Solana's vision, and the platform's future.
He highlights the importance of bringing Web2 modals to crypto and the potential for tokenizing real-world assets on Solana. Nick also discusses the regulatory environment and Solana's role in the financial ecosystem.
The conversation touches on topics such as the Solana phone, permissioned environments, and hardware and software integration.
The Next Billion Podcast
Join Frank Mathis and George Harrap as they dive into the world of decentralized storage on this episode.
Learn how Frank's journey from financial planner to crypto enthusiast shapes his path, from building a top RPC provider to launching Solana NFTs, and now, focusing on the challenges of decentralized cloud platforms.