Mad News #76 π Will Melt Faces
Gang of Lads tackles 100km mountain trek, Mad House event at Devcon, Backpack Wallet sees 100,000 downloads in one month, Exchange embraces moon coins, Fragmetrics 30% points booster. Fock it.
Welcome to the Mad News! π°
Gang of Lads tackles 100km mountain trek, Mad House event at Devcon, Backpack Wallet sees 100,000 downloads in one month, Exchange embraces moon coins, Fragmetrics 30% points booster, Saga Genesis Token holders keep eating, Solana's next cohort of builders and much more! Fock it.
LOTWs on top of mountains β°οΈ
Four Mad Lads are unequivocally on top of world after a 15 hour/100 kilometer trek through the mountains of Hong Kong for the Oxfam Trailwalker fundraiser.
smallpotatoben, nikkideyy, leoding0806x & renguangyao demonstrated the WAO mentality at it's finest and subsequently created a whole new category of madness to stive for.
Oxfam Trailwalker is one of the largest fundraising sporting events in Hong Kong.
Since 1986, more than 100,000 participants have raised over HK$600 million to support Oxfamβs various poverty alleviation and emergency relief projects in Africa and Asia.
Major congratulations to our LOTWs for enduring a hellacious journey in the name of humanitarianism.
MEMES OF THE WEEK ππ
Lads content is overflowing on the timeline, here are some of this week's headliners starting with KPeite.
Somuchmore has been on a roll with animated Lads PFPs this week and cranked out several dozens for various holders.
38KdotSOL continues their long reign of creating unique pieces with another Mad Lads 1/1.
I've got a Story to tell you about Mad House (κ§IPκ§)
The story is that Lad's and Backpack's most ardent supporters attending Devcon in Bangkok converged for a night filled with immaculate vibes.
1,200 applications. 150 entries. 1 Mad House.
Story Protocol (Mad House host π) is tackling the trillion-dollar-a-year IP industry with the goal of eliminating antiquated legal frameworks that do not benefit creators.
Although Devcon, TOKEN2049 and Breakpoint have wrapped up for the year there will be several Mad Lads & Backpack events.
Keep an eye on Discord for the announcements.
Tune into Discord daily or miss out on alpha π€«
Friendly reminder to turn on Mad Lads Discord notifications so you don't miss out on what the community is up to.
Weekly poker nights (cash and merch prizes)
Live town halls
Whitelist collabs
Copy pastas galore
Much, much more
100,000 Backpack downloads in one month π
One month ago Backpack's browser extension had been downloaded by 600,000 unique users according to the Chrome store.
Just thirty days later and an additional 100,000 downloads have been logged as the broader crypto ecosystem experiences rush of new users.
The best place to send new users is backpack.app, downloads and documentation is located there.
GOAT and ACT tokens listed on Backpack Exchange πͺ
Memecoin fever has hit Backpack in the form of $GOAT and $ACT, two of the better performing markets in the recent hysteria.
GOAT a.k.a. Goateus Maximus is proof that we are living in an alternate timeline where early 2000s internet culture reigns supreme.
@truth_terminal is an AI driven memecoin maxi and a major contributor to the success of GOAT 0.00%β .
The token hit a $1B market cap last week and has continued to rise.
ACT (@ACTICOMMUNITY) was born on the back of a 'The AI Prophecy' and had a rough start but since then the community has banded together and completely embraced the early kerfuffle.
They chronicle the entire journey on their website.
'Why Backpack?' hits the airwaves π€
Backpack Africa introduced their first podcast episode on the topic of 'Why Backpack?' with long time Lads hypeman chocoo_web3 as the inaugural guest.
Hosted by Favour Abidoye & AchibabaT, the new Spaces show is a question and answer format with well known personalities from the community.
Set your reminders and join the new Mad Lads community manager Mad Vincent this week at 5:30PM UTC.
Fragmetric makes Backpack Wallet the obvious choice π
Fragmetric's liquid restaking platform offers a substantial points booster for Backpack Wallet users.
Liquid Restaking Tokens (LRTs) are tokens a user receives after depositing crypto to a staking platform.
This enables a user to retain ownership and staking yields while also being able to use the LRTs on other DeFi platforms.
Simply navigate to the Explore menu in Backpack and connect to Fragmetric to enable the booster.
Saga Genesis Token keeps eating π±
Saga owners (more specifically Saga Genesis Token holders) have been on the receiving end of airdrops and other perks since day zero.
$BONK (bonk_inu) was distributed to every single holder last year and has completely offset the price of the cell phone.
Solana Mobile was a smash success and they are planning the release of a second device in 2025.
New builders continue to align with the platform with plans to reward early adopters.
Colosseum narrows down thousands of entries to thirteen winners π
Colosseum was first featured in Mad News Issue #34 with a pledge to accelerate the Solana blockchain through hackathons.
Colosseumβs 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.
βFrom Devnet to Mainnetβ
Matty Tay, Former Head of Growth at the Solana Fndn, spearheads the dedicated division which manages hackathons and works directly with founders to invest in their startups.
We are investing in these founders as they have exhibited the technical skill, speed, vision, and competitive drive required to build enduring products that will significantly grow the Solana ecosystem and broader onchain economy.
Several of the winners will be familiar to long time Mad News readers and one stands out as an early xNFT adopter (and certified Mad Lad).
Build-a-Burger was one of the first xNFT games which delivered a thoughtful user journey paired with a smooth Backpack interface.
Burger Bob a.k.a. Blessed Burgers a.k.a Monk Mode Bob (burger606) is one of the members behind The Arena, a PVP trading game.
The full list of Radar Hackathon winners:
Solana hackathons are not limited to Colosseum productions and the Taipei Week 2024 Hackathon by Gen3 Network is live right now.
Solana sucks (and needs improvements) π
Solana has come a long way since springing to life in 2018, later launching mainnet in March 2020.
Interest in the blockchain is nearing (if not exceeded) all time highs during this current bull market.
However, the jobs not done yet and the Solana team embraces that from top to bottom.
Knowing is half the battle and a constant feedback loop from users to Solana buildoors has been a hallmark of it's rapid growth.
Mass crypto adoption accelerated by regulation π³οΈ
Solana launched a new podcast series 'The Politics of Bits' hosted by longtime crypto policy strategist Amira Valliani.
Podcast Corner ποΈ
Validated
Let's Make Solana Cypherpunk w/ Yannik Schrade (Arcium)
In this episode, Austin chats with Yannik Schrade (Arcium) about the current state of zero knowledge technology. The conversation delves into various aspects of zero knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computation (MPC), and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).
Yannick explains the historical development of these technologies, their applications, and how they differentiate from traditional encryption methods. The discussion also covers challenges in the field, such as computation complexity and the need for hardware acceleration.
Lightspeed
Will We See A Solana ETF In 2025? | Eliezer Ndinga
This week, we're joined by Eliezer Ndinga of 21 Shares to discuss the path forward for a Solana ETF.
We deep dive into the election impact on regulation within crypto, DeFi's renaissance, the SEC vs crypto & why Eliezer is bullish on Solana.
Why Solana & Ethereum Still Need To Compete | Weekly Roundup
This week, we're back with another roundup.
We deep dive into Ethereum's Beam Chain announcement, why it's more important than ever for projects to execute today in crypto, JITO's outage, staking on Solana & so much more.
Crypto Picsou
Et si les Meme Coins avaient un Supercycle ? π Discussion avec βͺMustStopMurad
Merci Γ dYdX qui soutient mon contenu
Logan Jastremski Podcast
The end game of the Zero Knowledge with Matter Labs Founder Alex Gluchowski
Alex Gluchowski (gluk64) is the CEO and Co-Founder of Matter Labs building ZkSync. ZKsync is an ever expanding verifiable blockchain network, secured by math.
Good Game
A Brief History of Solana with Raj Gokal
Imran sat down with Raj to talk about the history of Solana. No BS crypto insights for founders.
Written by TSBDIGITAL