Mad News: December 2025
Breakpoint Abu Dhabi
December could be summarized by the energy of Solana Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi, reminding everyone that even as markets fluctuate, the ecosystem keeps building. From December 11th to 13th, thousands of developers, builders, and projects gathered at the Etihad Arena for what many expected to be the biggest Solana conference yet, featuring product announcements, infrastructure breakthroughs, and high-level ecosystem updates
A single event doesn’t define an entire month, but Breakpoint certainly shaped December’s rhythm. Key moments included the official launch of Firedancer on Solana mainnet, demonstrations of new institutional real-world asset (RWA) products, and talks about Solana’s growing role as both a blockchain technology platform and a settlement layer for traditional finance
Through all of this, the Mad Lads community kept its spirit strong both online and offline, showing up, sharing highlights and staying plugged into every corner of the Solana ecosystem
Another Lads union
As some of you may know, if you’ve been following us long enough, we’ve already witnessed a couple of Mad Lads getting married
This week, we had another special moment to celebrate, as one Lad officially got engaged to his Lassie
https://x.com/TDoxys/status/2000783530511733130
Solana under DDoS
Do you remember the good old days when the Solana chain was often slowing down or even shutting off completely? Those times are behind us
Solana recently withstood the fourth-largest DDoS attack ever recorded on any distributed system, and most users didn’t even notice it. The network handled it smoothly, proving just how far Solana has come in terms of performance and resilience
Backpack News
Monad Validator
If you received a Monad airdrop or picked up a bag, you can stake your $MON with one of the very few 0% fee validators… Backpack!
You can also lend MON on the Exchange and earn a 16% APY all while being able to use it as collateral for perps, spot-margin, and borrow lending
New Listing
December was a bit quieter on the listings side for Backpack, but we still saw a few new pairs added, each one arriving with its own quests and rewards to keep traders excited
MON (Monad)
STABLE (StableChain)
With these new listings, Backpack now supports USDT transfers on :
Solana
Ethereum
Tron
Arbitrum
Optimism
Polygon
Sei
Aptos
Plasma
Monad
Stable
Exchange Features
Backpack rolled out a very solid and awaited feature, the Grid Bots!
Traders can now natively and seamlessly :
Automate repetitive trading without APIs or external tools
Capture volatility in sideways markets
Combine active trading with passive yield
Keep full custody of funds inside Backpack
Reduce screen time while staying active 24/7
Backpack’s goal is to make advanced trading tools accessible to everyone, not just power users. While external bots exist, they often require API keys, separate interfaces, and added risk. Grid Bots remove that friction entirely by running natively inside your Backpack account
Find more informations on https://learn.backpack.exchange/blog/grid-bots-on-backpack
Another feature was introduced this month but has flown a bit under the radar so far: withdrawal delays. You can now configure custom withdrawal delays directly on your account
This feature is especially useful in the event of a hack or device compromise, as it gives you a time window to cancel unauthorized withdrawals before funds leave your account, adding an extra layer of security to your Backpack experience
The End Game 〇△□
Backpack hosted a live perps trading competition in Korea, inspired by the Squid Game theme, in collaboration with ReboundX
https://x.com/Backpack/status/2001583700736405622
Backpack Mobile
If you read our October edition, you may remember the special deal launched by Backpack on Solana Mobile, where new users received a $1000 fee credit voucher
Two months later, the metrics are looking very promising :
3754 users
$13.8B volume generated
$2M fees reimbursed
S4 Updates
Season 4 is officially underway and currently in its Week 4. Traders are reporting that it feels easier to snag points this season, so if you haven’t jumped in yet, now might be a great time to give it a go!
It’s also worth highlighting that during Week 2 of Season 4, Backpack Exchange reached $250 billion in total perps trading volume
PnL Royale
During Week 5 of Season 4, take your shot in PnL Royale and compete for a share of the $100K reward pool
Head to your Quests tab and opt in to get started!
Breakpoint ‘25
From the 11th to the 13th of December 2025, Solana Breakpoint took place in Abu Dhabi
In this edition of Mad News, you’ll find a recap of everything that happened and all the great news that was announced (sorry in advance if we missed anything)
Breakpoint ‘26
Let’s kick off this section by revealing where the next edition will take place
We hope you like beans, eggs, and tea, because we’re heading straight to London
The venue
Breakpoint 2025 took place at the Etihad Arena, offering everything attendees could possibly need
From food and drinks to activities, conferences, and even dedicated relaxation areas, the venue was designed to keep everyone comfortable, energized, and fully immersed into the Solana ecosystem
Eye-catching activities
Over the three days of the conference, countless activities and side events stood out. Solana Spaces definitely raised the bar this year with an absolutely stacked booth experience
You could :
Join Bald Point to get a fresh haircut and officially enter the Solana Bald Gang
Give in to your shopping fever by grabbing exclusive merch
Test your luck at the gacha machines and pull legendary collectible cards like Pokemon, Pudgy, and more
On top of that, BitRobot Network brought the action with an activity featuring robot fights straight out of a Real Steel movie scene
Honorable mention to Aurory and Pudgy, who both delivered truly outstanding booths as well
News & Announcements
Breakpoint is always the event where project announce exciting new things
This is also the place to be if you want to see winners of hackathons and other activities in live
Let’s do a small recap of the Solana ecosystem announcements :
After 3 years of development, Firedancer is now live on Solana Mainnet
The country of Bhutan is tokenizing their sovereign gold reserves on Solana
Kamino announces fixed rate, fixed term borrowin and borrow intents
Phantom will allow users to trade Kalshi prediction markets directly from their wallet
LightProtocol announces a new token standard 200x cheaper than SPL
DeFiCarrot announces turbo tokens, leveraged exposure with liquidation risk
Figure launches PRIME a token yielding 8%
bitget will have every solana token available for 100M users through UEX
ChinaAMC_HQ will launch Asia’s first and largest MM fund (HKD, USD, RMB) deploying on solana
orogoldapp launches StGOLD, yield primitive for gold
FlashTrade will have commodities, metals and equities soon
project0 will launch a token in Q1 2026
Ryder_ID launches a hardware wallet
CopperxHQ launches Kosh (neobank)
PythNetwork announces Pyth Reserve, a new token flywheel
DriftProtocol announces DLP (new liquidity provider token)
metaplex launches Genesis SDK
Titan_Exchange to launch LO
ranger_finance to launch their token through MetaDao
JupiterExchange announces $1M in rewards for swapping in Ultra as well as VRGD, Terminal, JupUSD, and offerbook
coinbase launches solana DEX
ellipsis_labs launches Phoenix Perpetuals, a new high performance solana native DEX
animocabrands to tokenize their equity on Solana
solflare shield (hardware wallet) is live and launches MagicAI, a way to interact with your wallet with conversations
cryptocom adding more Solana based projects
osldotcom launches USDGo (new stablecoin)
keel_fi announces $50M fund for Solana RWAs
Aurory announces the rename of their game, Amiko Legends
humafinance to provide Solana-based stablecoin liquidity for global rare earth mineral trades
solanamobile partners to offer a hardware integration kit for chipmakers of over 2 billion Android phones
uraniumdigital_ trade uranium on solana
heliuslabs launches getTransactionsForAddress, a Solana API for sorting and querying transactions by wallet address
helium is launching in Mexico and Brazil
Arcium launches Cerberus Protocol, a practical dishonest majority protocol for zero-trust
wormdotwtf launches leveraged prediction markets
glider_fi launches an AI investing app that editing strategies without gas
tixprotocol has rwa tickets for sports, concerts…
Kalshi tokenized their prediction markets on Solana
streamflow_fi partners with m0 to announce USD+, a Solana stablecoin backed 1:1 by US Treasuries with daily yield payouts
SquadsProtocol debuts Smart Transactions, a new autonomous finance tool
sendaifun announces Suzi, an AI investment banker for Solana
S/O to @molusol for sharing those infos
Colosseum Hackathon
On December 13th, Colosseum took the stage to announce the winners of their latest hackathon
All the following winners got an award of $25000 USDC
DeFi Track : YumiFinance, an onchain “buy now, pay later” solution
Stable Track : MCPay, an open payment infrastructure connecting MCP and x402
Infra Track: SEER, a transaction debugging developer platform on Solana
Consumer Track : Capitola, a prediction markets meta-aggreagator
RWA Track : Autonom, a specialized oracle for RWAs
Undefined Track : attn.markets, a protocol for tokenizing revenues to bank onchain businesses
and the Grand Champion is Unruggable, a new hardware wallet and companion app built for Solana with a $30000 USDC award
Solflare Community Spotlights
Solflare introduced something new this year with its Community Spotlights awards campaign. Users were able to submit their votes online across multiple award categories
Here are the winners :
OPOS : Solana Spaces
DeFi : Reflect
Consumer App : Collector Crypt
Trading : Ranger Finance
Gaming : Play Solana
Web2 Bridgoors : Bitwise
Most Viral X Campaign : Pudgy Penguins
Collaboration of the year : Solana Gaming
Solana Ambassador : Mert
Content Creator : Jussy
Artist : Wut
Most Degen Moment : Sol Big Brain
The People’s Award : Raposa
Memelord : Bangerz
Watch the full video on X https://x.com/solana/status/1999842996867489887
Rare pictures of Lads and a fan
During the event, Mad Lads holders were everywhere, proudly posting photos of themselves… with a fan
End of the year
As the year comes to an end, we want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to read, engage, and support Mad News throughout the year
Your feedback, energy, and involvement mean everything to us
We wish you a happy New Year filled with health, success, and plenty of wins both on-chain and off
Stay MAD
Chocoo
PODCAST CORNER 🎙️
This time we don’t have podcast to share but some interviews from Armani on stage at Breakpoint :
Fireside: Backpack’s Armani Ferrante
https://x.com/11AMdotclub/status/1999509553290051976 (go to 10:05)
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, we really appreciate it!
If you enjoyed it or found it helpful, feel free to leave a comment and share it with your friends!