On March 11th, the Solana Foundation and Odaily Planet Daily jointly held an AMA event. The Solana Foundation, the organizer of the Solana Hackathon Colosseum, Pyth Network, and Orca gathered to provide valuable experience and resources for participants based on the experience of this hackathon, jointly building a new brilliant future for the Solana ecosystem.
The following is a transcript of the community dialogue, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily:
Odaily Planet Daily: First, please introduce yourselves.
Yao: Hello, I'm Yao, responsible for Asia-Pacific growth at the Solana Foundation. Currently, we mainly focus on developers in the Asia-Pacific region. For the ecosystem, developers are the most important resource and wealth. I am very happy to discuss this hackathon with everyone.
Chris: Hello, I'm Chris, responsible for the Asia-Pacific market at Colosseum. I previously worked at the Solana Foundation in the Asia-Pacific market and later joined Solana Ventures. Currently, I am helping the Solana Foundation with global overseas finance at Colosseum.
Ande: Hello, I'm Ande, a community contributor at Pyth Network, mainly responsible for business. Pyth Network originated from Solana and has developed into a full-chain oracle project. I am very happy to exchange and discuss the future development of the Solana ecosystem with everyone.
Yibo: Hello, I'm Yibo, responsible for the Chinese-speaking region at Orca, dedicated to promoting the development and implementation of the Orca ecosystem in the Chinese-speaking region. I am very happy to exchange ideas with everyone.
Odaily Planet Daily: Please share the progress of the Solana hackathon and highlight any outstanding projects with Yao from the Solana Foundation and Chris from Colosseum.
Yao: Recently, there have been many important developments in the Solana ecosystem. I would like to share some of them with everyone.
First, despite a period of downturn, Solana has remained vibrant. Even after the FTX incident, our development team has continued to firmly support Solana and has been continuously building on it. We are constantly advancing new technologies and have launched the second independent validator for firedancer. The launch of this validator has improved the performance of the Solana network. In laboratory tests, we have seen a 100-fold increase in network performance, greatly enhancing network stability.
In addition, we are continuously increasing the decentralization of the Solana network and deploying validator nodes globally, making Solana one of the most decentralized networks currently.
In terms of the DeFi ecosystem, projects have experienced a comprehensive recovery and officially entered the DeFi 2.0 era. We hope to provide users with a better experience and more secure and stable decentralized financial products through network advantages. In the AI field, we have launched a $100 million AI ecosystem fund to support AI projects created in the Solana ecosystem. In the NFT field, Solana's market trading volume has surpassed Ethereum multiple times, and we also have some native blue-chip projects. In addition, there have been some new developments in our NFT technology, such as the application of XNFT and CFT technologies, making NFTs easier to use and more scalable.
Overall, the Solana ecosystem is continuously growing and developing. We look forward to more developers and users joining our ecosystem to witness the birth of more star projects together.
Chris: The theme of this hackathon is the Renaissance. It started on March 4th and will continue until April 8th. This hackathon is executed by the independent organization Colosseum, and the champion will receive a $50,000 prize and three "Breakpoint" conference tickets. There are six tracks in total, and each track will have first to fifth place prizes. Winning teams will have the opportunity to receive up to $200,000 in seed round investment.
The leader of this hackathon is Matty Taylor, the Chief Growth Officer of Solana. Over the past three years, he has summarized some experiences and believes that early-stage entrepreneurial teams most need opportunities, support, and capital. Therefore, he established the Colosseum brand, aiming to integrate hackathons, accelerators, and venture capital.
Colosseum will hold two to three five-week online hackathon events for the Solana Foundation each year. Judges will assess the potential and innovation of teams based on the quality of their work and decide who will win. Winning teams will have the opportunity to join the Colosseum accelerator, a five-week program. After joining the accelerator, teams will receive one-on-one guidance and participate in weekly online workshops to help them transition to the next stage quickly.
In addition, teams will also receive $250,000 in seed round investment as initial funding. On the last day of the accelerator, also known as "Demo Day," teams will have the opportunity to showcase their achievements to first-line capital and industry OGs in order to gain more support and financing.
Odaily Planet Daily: What factors make Solana a fertile ground for the development of numerous projects? Or, as a developer, what factors would lead you to choose Solana?
Yao: First, we have accumulated rich experience in organizing hackathon events and clearly understand the qualities founders need and the support teams require. In the hackathon, we have attracted some top funds and investors to serve as judges. This provides early-stage projects with the opportunity to have direct dialogue with high-level funds, which is a valuable resource.
Second, our ecosystem is very united, unlike other ecosystems that may have malicious competition. Projects in the Solana ecosystem are willing to support each other because everyone believes that Solana is a common home. Only when the entire ecosystem thrives can projects develop and grow better. This supportive attitude makes it easier for new projects to gain attention and support.
Third, we have made significant investments in developers. Every year, we invest millions of dollars in organizing hackathon events and provide multiple training courses in the Asia-Pacific region to help developers learn Solana development languages from scratch. We also provide training programs for entrepreneurs to help them improve their business awareness and refine their entrepreneurial ideas. At the same time, we also provide substantial financial support for projects, including dedicated funds for different regions.
Chris: I think holding hackathon events a few times a year is a great idea because it provides all development teams with a fixed entry opportunity. Holding one to three hackathon events each year allows teams to know when they have the opportunity to join, gain exposure, and quickly integrate into the ecosystem. This fixed periodic activity helps attract more projects and provides a platform for them to showcase themselves.
I can give an example to illustrate this. Take the well-known running shoe project, for instance. They left a deep impression on me from the beginning of the hackathon. They continuously iterated their product during the competition and submitted a very outstanding demo. They paid earlier attention to their operations and social networks, setting up Twitter and Telegram channels to convey their mission and values. As a result, they found supporters and seed users earlier than other teams and gained a first-mover advantage in the market.
This case tells us that products that solve personal problems sometimes become the focus of the global market. Even if they may initially seem niche, as long as they solve problems, they can eventually attract global market attention.
Ande: When we initially established Pyth Network, we envisioned making all data available on-chain. Deploying oracles on blockchains with poor performance or high costs may lead to cost issues when using high-frequency financial data, which contradicts our vision of expanding users and application scenarios on-chain. Solana provides the only solution because it is the best choice in terms of performance and technology.
Pyth Network underwent a V2 upgrade in early 2022, considering our leading position in the Solana ecosystem, we aimed to achieve cross-chain data availability. To this end, we established the first virtual chain network Pyth on Solana, fully based on Solana's architecture and technology foundation, capable of independent operation and maintaining the independence of data updates and aggregation.
Solana's technology enables us to achieve data integration, expand the blockchain ecosystem network, and improve data availability and coverage. In the eyes of current builders and hackathon participants, Solana is the only choice for achieving user expansion and acquisition. Therefore, we chose to start with Solana and look forward to more protocols discovering its technical advantages.
Yibo: I think Solana excels in several aspects. First is its high performance and low cost. When choosing Solana, we first considered this. Solana's high performance needs no further explanation, as we have witnessed its performance in previous examples.
Second is the low cost. As one of the earliest players on Ethereum, I am well aware of the high costs of interacting with Ethereum, especially during bull markets. But on Solana, the costs are almost negligible, providing developers with faster and cheaper blockchain infrastructure, thus attracting a large number of projects.
Third, Solana emphasizes scalability, which means it can support large-scale applications and complex smart contracts, providing a better experience for users.
In addition, the Solana community is very active and passionate. In some events, such as hackathons and offline activities, I can clearly feel the enthusiasm of the community. This active community provides good support and promotion for projects, attracting more developers and investors.
Finally, the support of the Solana team for the ecosystem is also very important. They provide rich rewards and financial support through activities such as hackathons, encouraging developers to develop on Solana. The attention and support of the Solana Chinese team for developers are also indispensable.
Odaily Planet Daily: Please have Chris introduce the popular tracks of this hackathon to help developers better choose fields and join the Solana development ecosystem.
Chris: This year, we have six tracks, each with five awards, from first to fifth place. These tracks include consumer applications, payments, low-frequency games, technical architecture, and development. Personally, I prefer low-frequency games because they have higher TPS, low interaction frequency, and less competition. As Yao just mentioned, projects like Render and Helium are very popular. In addition, we have also set up the University Award and Public Product Award.
Regarding job opportunities after entering the Solana developer community, I think developers can be divided into three categories: learners, contributors, and founders. Learners may be developers who have just entered the industry and want to develop on Solana, or developers from Web2 and other ecosystems. Contributors may just want to develop some applications for the Solana community and may open-source these tools as part of their resume. Founders may seek development for the next decade and create new business models and customer bases.
Regardless of the type of developer, I would encourage them to register. You can create a profile on your account and join the talent market. Once you have created a profile, you can participate in forum discussions, collaborate with projects, and even interview. Our founder search feature and forum functionality make it possible to find teammates and validate product ideas before the hackathon begins.
In addition, learning the Solana programming language, coming to Solana is full of opportunities. Our job opportunities are not limited to hackathons. The Solana ecosystem is developing rapidly. Whether you are a developer or a non-technical person, you can find a job that suits you. In addition to entrepreneurial opportunities, there are many job opportunities waiting for you.
Odaily Planet Daily: In this hackathon, Pyth Network and Orca are also sponsors. What are the reasons for participating in the sponsorship, and what potential opportunities are there in their respective tracks? What sponsorship resources will startup projects participating in the hackathon receive?
Ande: Sponsoring the hackathon is a natural choice for us. First, we are a member of the Solana ecosystem, so we feel obligated to support such activities. Secondly, from a practical perspective, as an infrastructure provider, collaborating with these developers and builders is beneficial to us from both a technological innovation and user experience perspective.
Regarding the tracks they are in, I would like to give some advice to the audience. First, our ecosystem has many mature teams and technologies, and the Solana Foundation will provide a lot of support. Therefore, I suggest everyone make full use of these resources. Interact with successful protocols and teams in the Solana ecosystem and learn from their experiences. You can learn from them in terms of technology, growth, marketing, and even financial planning. For newcomers to the industry, it is more about participating with a learning mindset, especially learning some general skills and knowledge, not just technical aspects.
As for related resources, for participants, Solana provides rich developer documentation and open-source resources, completely free and open. If you need to use oracle data and financial data, you can directly access the resources you need on the Solana website. If your protocol has become part of the Solana ecosystem and integrated Solana's data, we will do our best to support you, providing assistance in marketing, ecosystem funds, and more. You don't need to purchase data, but you can seek our help, as we will do our best to provide our resources to you.
Yibo: First, let me briefly introduce Orca. Orca is a decentralized liquidity pool, also known as an Automated Market Maker (AMM). This means that on many trading pairs, our prices are more competitive. Therefore, a considerable portion of the trading volume on Solana is generated on Orca. At the same time, this also brings better returns for us as liquidity providers. Since its creation, Orca has earned over $20 million in returns for liquidity providers. Due to the current bull market, the returns on many pools on Orca are very competitive. Therefore, the main reason for Orca sponsoring the hackathon is that Orca is a top decentralized exchange (DEX) in the Solana ecosystem, and we have a responsibility to contribute to the development of the Solana ecosystem.
Next, I would like to give some advice to developers participating in this track. Although I am not a developer, I think for participating developers, it is important to fully understand Solana's technical characteristics and the entire ecosystem, so that they can better utilize Solana's advantages to build products. Second, choosing the right framework and tools is also very important. We have previously held the Orca Builders Program, where you can build your products based on Solana's SDK. At the same time, our community and technical team will provide support and guidance to help solve any issues encountered during the development process.
In addition, security and compliance are also very important. As a DeFi product, the security of user funds is the top priority. Therefore, participating projects need to pay special attention to this. In addition, optimizing user experience is crucial. A simple interface and operation process can attract more users. Finally, I agree with the point mentioned earlier, which is actively developing social networks and collaborating with other ecosystem projects. This can bring more exposure and resource support to the project.
Odaily Planet Daily: As the organizer of the hackathon, from the perspective of project incubation, please give some advice to the participating contestants.
Yao: First of all, the Solana hackathon is not just a technical competition, but also a business competition. Therefore, I advise all developers and founders to adhere to first principles when establishing their own projects. In other words, do not just be satisfied with products that you think are useful or interesting, but truly think and discover a product that meets a real user demand. Such a product is more likely to succeed in the market and is the most important aspect of all products, in my opinion.
Next, in addition to focusing on technical development, commercialization capability is equally important. Therefore, I suggest that everyone should not only dedicate themselves to technical research and product refinement but also seek partners or co-founders with good business experience or background to build the project together. This can help the project have more commercial development space in the later stage, and the team's business capabilities are also an important aspect we consider.
Thirdly, technology is of course crucial. Especially in a competitive market, we will consider which team's technology and code are more complete. We require participants to submit GitHub repositories, so during this process, everyone can refine and polish the core functions of the product, demonstrating the completeness of the code.
Finally, I believe that creating an excellent PPT is very important. In the PPT, you need to clearly express your ideas, project, and business potential, preferably in a concise and direct manner. If you can create video or other forms of PPT, that would be even more helpful.
Chris: For participant advice, I would like to share some experiences. I have participated in five hackathons before, with about 1000 projects in each, so every hackathon is a test. I know it's not easy to stand out among so many projects, but I have summarized some methods that I hope will be helpful to everyone.
First, finding teammates is very important. If you are an independent developer used to working alone, I suggest you find one or more partners to share the work. Because judges will not only evaluate your programming ability but also look at your business skills. Having more teammates can help you share the workload, increase output, and provide complementary skills in areas where you may not excel.
Regarding teammates, I suggest finding suitable candidates from your existing network. Because you may have previous collaboration experience, it is also less likely to have compatibility issues. Additionally, you can also find teammates in the community's collaboration directory or forums.
The second point is product thinking. I think Yao has already mentioned this very well. Another key point is to choose the field you are good at. For example, if you are good at making sports shoes, you may have some experience in running shoes, allowing you to have a deeper understanding of market demand.
Furthermore, once you decide to develop, it's important to commit to a long-term investment of time. Because the hackathon is just the beginning, the road ahead is still long. So once you have determined your teammates and the product direction, it's time for the development stage. The hackathon has a total of five weeks, and if you have many features to implement, there definitely won't be enough time to complete them all. Therefore, prioritizing is very important. I suggest spending most of the time developing core features, so that at the end, you can submit a demo that impresses the judges, allowing them to quickly understand what needs and pain points your product addresses.
At the end of the competition, in addition to submitting the project and presenting, I suggest not using traditional PPT, but using a format similar to Loom. This allows you to explain the content of the PPT while having a video to accompany your explanation. The presentation content includes team composition, product overview, why the product was developed, and marketing plans, among others. Additionally, be sure to prepare a presentation video and demo, the earlier you start on these, the better.
Finally, we have posted some information about the hackathon in the community and will also compile and share some resource libraries and tools for everyone to reference.
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