Mad News #70 🪂 Fock It Mentality
Exploring Mad evangelists, take over Nifty Island with your Lad, betting on the U.S. presidential election, Backpack merch hits the timeline, new Wallet integrations, claim $DBR on Exchange. Fock it.
Welcome to the Mad News! 📰
Exploring the Mad evangelists, take over Nifty Island with your Lad, betting on the U.S. presidential election, Backpack merch hits the timeline, new Wallet integrations, claim deBridge $DBR on Exchange, Solana's big hiring push and more. Fock it.
Lads are taking over the world and it's all your fault 🗺️
We often use the word 'evangelist' when talking about the Lads, but we rarely stop to define what it truly means.
Evangelist (noun): A passionate advocate or promoter of a cause, brand, or ideology.
Someone who actively spreads the word about what they believe in, inspiring others through their dedication, enthusiasm, and personal connection to the message.
Lads holders are a driving force who spread the Mad mentality far and wide across the globe.
We see it on X everyday with a zealous network of bullposters who opine the merits of the Mad Lads community.
This community commitment has broken through into the real world repeatedly including a prime time feature in Times Square (made possible by LOTW guillaumetch).
unrealuncrit made a lifelong commitment and turned his body into a walking billboard for the Lads.
These examples are never ending and serve as a daily reminder of the importance of grassroots community in web3.
LAD OF THE WEEK: Appreciation Post ❤️
LOTWs are a special group of Lads who stand out for their constant dedication the Lads community.
There have been 60+ LOTWs since Mad News launched with a long list of candidates for the future.
As a token of appreciation, LOTWS will begin to receive swag which will be shipped right to their doorstep (including all of our former nominees).
If you would like to nominate a holder for LOTW, send Benzel Blogs a DM.
Well isn't that Nifty 🏝️
Nifty Island has officially opened it's doors to Solana wallet users and their favorite NFT collections.
Nifty Island is a free-to-play virtual world where players design their own islands, explore other players builds and play games to compete for 'Blooms' which are redeemable for their upcoming native token: $ISLAND
The $ISLAND token serves a dual purpose: unlocking greater access to play, create, and monetize within this creator economy, and serving as a reward for players and creators who actively participate on the platform.
ISLAND tokens are awarded to those who engage with the platform, either by playing or creating content.
The campaign which they call 'play to airdrop' (P2A) is slated to end on November 1st, 2024 so you have plenty of time to dive in with your Mad Lads.
Mad Lassies on the come up ⚡
The community ran Mad Lassie account is officially back in action, consistently posting for several weeks and celebrating holders of the most sought after NFTs in the market.
Shout out to Vi!
Who are you betting on? 🇺🇸
Backpack Exchange listed the tokens $TRUMPWIN and $HARRISWIN on the back of Wintermute's newly released OutcomeMarket protocol, a new version of prediction markets.
Prediction markets enable traders to bet on the outcome of future events by buying and selling tokens that represent specific results.
In this case, TRUMPWINS represents a victory for Donald Trump and HARRISWINS represents a victory for Kamala Harris.
The value of these tokens will fluctuate based on market sentiment and the perceived likelihood of each candidate winning.
Once the election is completed, either TRUMPWINS or HARRISWINS will be redeemable for $1 USDC per token.
Learn more about prediction markets, the OutcomeMarket protocol and Wintermute here.
You want merch, you get merch 🎒
Backpack backpacks have been a long time coming and they were formally introduced to the world this week (although plenty of teasers have popped up over the last several months).
Armani goes on Fidelion's BLACK BLOCK Spaces to talk shop 🎤
Armani Ferrante joined Fidelion (hosted by gmryot) for a longform dive into Backpack, Mad Lads and building in Tokyo.
A duo of new Backpack use cases 🧙♂️
Layer3 launched a new Backpack x Arbitru quest that is aimed at introducing new users to the Wallet (over 2.5k users have already completed the challenge).
AllDomains recently onboarded .solana domains to their web3-centric web domain registration service and now Backpack Wallet is available to use.
The Wallet Explore page is regularly updated with apps who reward Backpack users.
deBridge Foundation 🤝 Backpack Exchange
deBridge's novel "claim-to-CEX" protocol is now supported on Backpack Exchange.
deBridge is working to solve the ever present problem of fragmented liquidity across blockchains and is a service which facilitates high-speed bridge transfers of crypto tokens between chains like Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum and Optimism.
The deBridge Foundation plays a similar role for deBridge like the Solana Foundation provides for the Solana ecosystem; organized teams that are dedicated to growing the platforms.
The bridge that moves at lightspeed. Because DeFi doesn't wait.
Their claim-to-CEX protocol is a method in which users of deBridge are able to redeem $DBR ahead of the tokens TGE (token generation event).
$DBR is pivotal in the mission to transform deBridge into a community owned protocol (with typical token utility like DAO governance voting and treasury management).
See Backpack Exchange specific instructions for claiming $DBR here.
Solana needs more gigabrains STAT 🧠
Speaking of thebSolana Foundation, strategy guru Austin Federa reminded us that the Solana ecosystem is constantly looking for talent.
Accounting, customer service, design, marketing, engineering and sales are just a few categories available and open positions are available at crypto powerhouses such as:
...and dozens more
View the Solana Job Boards here.
Shameless plug for the Mad News interview featuring Austin Federa, one year later and you see that he can predict the future.
Tensor pulls the plug on Price Lock 🔐
Tensor reacts to market conditions and decided to discontinue Price Lock functionality on their NFT marketplace.
For those of you living under a rock, Price Lock was a mechanism where users could speculate on if an NFT collection price was going to rise or fall.
Public response to the decision is overwhelmingly positive as their community supports the shift of dev resources to growing Tensor in other ways.
State of Solana: Breakpoint Edition 📧
The latest State of Solana report is available (not to be confused with the identically named technical analysis reports from Messari Crypto) and focuses on the key themes that dominated Breakpoint chats and product highlights.
The full report is hidden behind an email address-gate and flexes a whopping 14-page long compendium of trends gleaned during Breakpoint 2024.
Access the State Of Solana: Breakpoint Edition here.
Seek(er), and ye shall find 📱
Not all who wander are lost, but every Seeker knows their destination.
What is the destination? In the pocket of every crypto user in the world.
Shipping in mid-2025, more than 170,000 Solana Mobile preorders have already been logged and will undoubtably continue to rise as more brands align with the distribution machine.
Wormhole's Era of Experience 🌪️
Wormhole takes another step towards streamlining cross-chain token transfers with their new Wormhole Connect 'widget' updates.
The changes improve the developer experience (such as their no code design interface) but more importantly contain several 'quality of life' updates that enhance the bridging process.
The Connect improvements are already deployed on some of the largest DeFi platforms:
Next generation of devs heading to NYC for Solana Incubator 🥚
(Unfortunately) applications for the Solana Labs Incubator program are closed however that doesn't mean you should stop paying attention.
There is a fair chance that the next billion dollar crypto company is going to set up shop in NYC next year.
What to do if you missed the Solana Incubator deadlines 💻
Ackee Blockchain is back again with another School of Solana, one of the best ways for a new-to-blockchain developers to build their Rust skills and introduce themselves to the ecosystem.
PODCAST CORNER 🎙️
Solana Changelog
Solana Changelog Oct 2 - Radar, Partitioned Rent, and Simulating Compute in CLI
Validated
The Placeholder Playbook w/ Chris Burniske and Joel Monegro
In this episode, Austin chats with Chris Burniske and Joel Monegro from Placeholder, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm. They delve into the firm's unique approach to investments, combining venture capital structures with public market practices.
The conversation covers the formation of Placeholder, their investment strategies focusing on long-term holds, and how they developed conviction in Solana.
Chris and Joel discuss the importance of managing valuations, the role of market cycles, and the importance of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in crypto market structures. They also offer advice for entrepreneurs on fundraising and selecting the right investors.
Bankless
BlackRock's Trillion Dollar Crypto Plan
That’s right, Bankless Nation, BlackRock on the podcast today. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager, a company that manages over $10 trillion dollars in assets around the world, to put it in perspective, that’s 5 times the crypto market cap. Let’s just say what they do has ripple effects in global markets.
But here at Bankless we wanted to figure out what they’re doing in crypto. That’s why we brought Robbie Mitchnick, BlackRock’s Head of Digital Assets.
We explore Crypto narratives in TradFi, how they measure the risk profile of Crypto, their plans for the future of ETFs, Tokenization and even DeFi.
Lightspeed
Crypto's Killer Use Case Built On Solana | Arnold Lee
Gm! This week Arnold Lee joins the show to discuss how Sphere is accelerating global payments for fintech companies by leveraging Spherenet built on the SVM.
We deep dive into what is Spherenet, the problem with global payments, permissioned vs permissionless systems & more. Enjoy!
Logan Jastremski Podcast
Building a better Nasdaq with Solana Founder Anatoly Yakovenko | EP #145
The Bitcoin Standard Podcast
239. Michael Saylor's 4 years of Bitcoin
Michael Saylor has now been in bitcoin for a full four year cycle! He joins us to celebrate, reminisce, and project how Bitcoin will evolve in the next 20 years.
Words of Rizdom
Luke Belmar: Bitcoin & Trump 2024, Memecoins & Escaping the Matrix | WOR Podcast EP.125
On this episode of the Words of Rizdom podcast we are joined by Luke Belmar. Luke is an Argentinian born investor and entrepreneur.
In this podcast we discuss the US elections, Bitcoin and it's future, altcoins, the matrix and where Luke would look to invest/store his wealth. I hope you guys enjoy this one!
Written by Benzel Blogs