Space Review: Colosseum upgrades Solana hackathon to create the next unicorn

On March 11, the Solana Foundation and Odaily Planet Daily jointly held an AMA event. The Solana Foundation, Solana Hackathon organizer Colosseum, Pyth Network and Orca gathered together to provide valuable information to the participants based on the experience of this hackathon. We will use our experience and resources to build a new brilliance for the Solana ecosystem.

The following is a transcript of the community dialogue, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily:

**Odaily Planet Daily: First of all, please introduce yourself. **

**Yao: Hello everyone, **I am Yao, who is responsible for Asia-Pacific growth at the Solana Foundation. At present, we are mainly focusing on developers in the Asia-Pacific region. For the ecosystem, developers are the most important resources and wealth. I am very happy to discuss this hackathon with you.

Chris: Hello everyone, I am Chris, who is responsible for the Asia-Pacific market at Colosseum. In the early days, I was responsible for the Asia-Pacific market at the Solana Foundation, and later joined Solana Ventures. Currently, I am helping the Solana Foundation with its global overseas finance at Colosseum.

Ande: Hello everyone, I am Ande, a community contributor of Pyth Network, mainly responsible for business. Pyth Network started with Solana and has developed into a full-chain oracle project. I am very happy to communicate with you and discuss the future development of the Solana ecosystem.

Yibo: Hello everyone, I am Yibo, the person in charge of Orca’s Chinese-speaking area. I am committed to promoting the development and implementation of the Orca ecosystem in the Chinese-speaking area. I am very happy to communicate with you.

**Odaily Planet Daily: Please share with Yao from the Solana Foundation and Chris from the Colosseum the progress of this Solana Hackathon event and which high-quality projects stand out? **

Yao: There have been a lot of important developments in our Solana ecosystem recently, and I want to share them with you.

First, we at Solana have remained dynamic after going through a downturn. Even after the FTX incident, our developer team has been firmly supporting Solana and continues to build for it. We continue to advance new technologies and launch firedancer's second independent validator. The launch of this validator has improved the performance of the Solana network. Even in laboratory tests, we saw a 100-fold increase in network performance, greatly enhancing the stability of the network.

In addition, we are constantly increasing the degree of decentralization of the Solana network and deploying verification node renaissance globally, making Solana one of the most decentralized networks currently.

In terms of the DeFi ecology, the project has also ushered in a comprehensive recovery and officially entered the DeFi 2.0 era. We hope to provide users with a better experience and safer and more stable decentralized financial products through network advantages; in the field of AI, we have launched A US$100 million AI ecological fund has been established to support AI projects created in the Solana ecosystem; in the field of NFT, Solana's market transaction volume has exceeded Ethereum many times, and we also have some native blue-chip projects. In addition, our NFT technology has also made some new developments, such as the application of XNFT technology and CFT technology, making NFT easier to use and more scalable.

Overall, the Solana ecosystem is growing and growing, and we look forward to more developers and users joining our ecosystem to witness the birth of more star projects.

**Chris:**The theme of this hackathon is Renaissance. It started on March 4th this year and will last until April 8th. This hackathon is conducted by the independent organization Colosseum. The overall winner will receive a $50,000 bonus and three tickets to the "Breakpoint" conference. A total of six tracks have been set up, and each track will have prizes from one to five. The winning team will have the opportunity to receive a seed round investment of up to US$200,000.

The leader of this hackathon is Matty Taylor, chief growth officer of Solana. He has summed up some experience in the past three years and believes that what early-stage entrepreneurial teams need most is opportunities, support and capital. Therefore, he established the Colosseum brand, which aims to integrate hackathons, accelerators and venture capital.

The Colosseum will host two to three five-week online hackathons per year for the Solana Foundation. The judges will evaluate the potential and innovation ability of the team based on the quality of the work and decide who will win the award. 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 mentoring and attend weekly online workshops to help them quickly transition to the next stage.

In addition, the team will also receive a seed round investment of US$250,000 as cold start funding. On the last day of the accelerator, also known as "Demo Day", teams will have the opportunity to showcase their results to front-line capital and industry OGs in order to obtain more support and financing.

**Odaily Planet Daily: What factors make Solana a high-quality soil for the development of many projects? Or if you are a developer, what are the factors that lead to choosing Solana? **

Yao: First of all, we have accumulated rich experience in organizing hackathon events and have a clear understanding of the qualities required by founders and the support required by the team. At the hackathon, we attracted some of the top funds and investors as judges. This provides start-up projects with the opportunity to talk directly to senior funds and is a valuable resource.

Secondly, 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 invest very heavily in developers. Every year we invest millions of dollars in hackathons and provide multiple training courses in the Asia-Pacific region to help developers learn the Solana development language from scratch. We also provide some training programs for entrepreneurs to help them enhance their business awareness and hone their entrepreneurial ideas. At the same time, we also provide a large amount of financial support for the project, including specialized funds for different regions.

Chris: I think it is a good idea to fix hackathons several times a year, because this can give all development teams a fixed entry opportunity. Hosting one to three hackathons per year lets teams know when there are opportunities to join, gain exposure, and quickly integrate into the ecosystem. This fixed recurring event helps attract more projects and provides them with a platform to showcase themselves.

I can give you a case to illustrate, such as the running shoe project that everyone is familiar with. They impressed me from the very beginning of my participation in the hackathon. They continued to iterate their products during the competition and submitted very excellent demos. They focused on their operations and social networks earlier, setting up Twitter and Telegram channels to communicate their mission and values. Therefore, they found supporters and seed users earlier than other teams and gained a head start in the market.

The case tells us that products that solve personal problems sometimes become attractions in the global market. Even if it may seem niche at first, as long as it solves a problem, it can eventually attract the attention of the global market.

Ande: When we initially built Pyth Network, we thought about the vision of making all data available on-chain. Choosing to deploy oracles on certain blockchains with poor performance or higher fees may lead to fee issues when using high-frequency financial data, which is contrary to our vision of expanding users and application scenarios to the chain. Solana offers the only solution as it is the best choice both in terms of performance and technology.

Pyth Network will undergo a V2 upgrade in early 2022. Considering our dominant position in the Solana ecosystem, we hope to make data available across chains. To this end, we established Solana's first virtual chain network Pyth, which is completely based on Solana's architecture and technology base and can run independently and maintain the independence of data updates and aggregation.

Solana’s technology enables us to achieve data integration, expand the blockchain ecological network, and improve data availability and coverage. In the eyes of current builders and hackathon participants, Solana is the only option for user scaling and acquisition. Therefore, we choose to start with Solana and look forward to more protocols discovering its technical advantages.

Yibo: I think Solana is excellent in several aspects. The first is its high performance and low cost. This was top of mind when choosing Solana. The high performance of Solana goes without saying, we have seen it in previous examples and its performance is obvious.

Second is low cost. As one of the first people to play on Ethereum, I am well aware of the high cost of interacting with Ethereum, especially during bull markets. But on Solana, the cost is almost negligible, which provides developers with faster and cheaper blockchain infrastructure, thus attracting a large number of projects.

Third, Solana focuses on scalability, which means it can support large-scale applications and complex smart contracts to provide users with a better experience.

Additionally, the Solana community is very active and passionate. In some events, such as hackathons and offline events, I can clearly feel the enthusiasm of the community. This active community provides good support and promotion for the project, attracting more developers and investors.

Finally, the Solana team’s support of the ecosystem is also very important. They provide generous incentives and financial support through events such as hackathons to encourage developers to develop on Solana. Solana's Chinese team's attention and support for developers is also indispensable.

**Odaily Planet Daily: Please ask Chris to introduce to you the popular tracks of this hackathon to help our 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. I personally prefer low-frequency games because they have higher TPS, low interaction frequency, and less competition. As Yao just said, projects such as rendering and Helium are very popular. In addition, we have established university awards and public product awards.

Regarding employment opportunities after entering the Solana developer community, I think developers can be divided into three categories: learners, contributors and founders. Learners may be developers just entering the industry who want to develop on Solana, or developers from Web2 and other ecosystems. Contributors may simply want to develop some applications for the Solana community and may open source these tools as part of their resume. Founders may be looking to grow over the next decade and create new business models and customer segments.

No matter what kind of developer they are, I would encourage them to sign up. You can create a profile on your account and join the talent market. Once you create a profile, you can participate in forum discussions, collaborate with project teams, and even conduct interviews. Our founder search feature and forum feature make it possible to find teammates and validate product ideas before the hackathon begins.

In addition, if you learn the Solana programming language well, there will be no shortage of opportunities in Solana. Our job opportunities are not limited to hackathons, the Solana ecosystem is growing rapidly. Whether you're a developer or someone with a non-technical background, you can find a job that's right for 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 one of the sponsors. What are the reasons for participating in the sponsorship? What are the potential opportunities in your own track and start-up projects participating in the hackathon? What kind of sponsorship resources will you get? **

Ande: Sponsoring the hackathon was a natural fit for us. First of all, we are part of the Solana ecosystem, so we feel obligated to support events like this. Secondly, from a practical benefit perspective, as an infrastructure provider, working with these developers and builders benefits us both from a technical innovation and user experience perspective.

I would like to give listeners some advice based on their respective tracks. First, our ecosystem has many mature teams and technologies, and the Solana Foundation will provide a lot of support. Therefore, I recommend that you take advantage of these resources. Interact with already successful protocols and teams in the Solana ecosystem and learn from their experiences. Learn from their experience in areas such as technology, growth, marketing and even financial planning. In addition, for newcomers who are new to the industry, it is more important to participate with a learning attitude, especially to learn some general skills and knowledge, not just on the technical level.

As for related resources, for contestants, Solana provides a wealth of developer documentation and open source resources, which are completely free and open. If you need to use oracle data and financial data, you can directly visit the Solana official website to obtain the required resources. If your protocol has become part of the Solana ecosystem and integrated Solana's data, then we will do our best to support you and help with marketing, ecological funds, etc. You don't need to buy data, but you can ask for our help as we will do our best to make our resources available to you.

Yibo: First, let me briefly introduce Orca. Orca is a centralized liquidity pool, also known as AMM (Automated Market Maker). This means that our prices will be more competitive on many trading pairs. Therefore, a considerable portion of the transaction volume on Solana is generated on Orca. At the same time, this also brings better benefits to us as a liquidity provider. Since its creation, Orca has earned over $20 million in revenue for liquidity providers. Since we are currently in a bull market, the yields on many pools on Orca are very competitive. Therefore, the main reason why Orca sponsors the hackathon is that Orca is the top decentralized exchange (DEX) in the Solana ecosystem, and we have a responsibility to contribute to the ecological development of Solana.

Next, I would like to give some suggestions to developers participating in this track. Although I am not a developer, I think that for participating developers, they must first fully understand Solana's technical features and the entire ecosystem, so that they can better utilize Solana's advantages to build products. Secondly, choosing the right framework and tools is also very important. We have held the Orca Builders Program before, based on Solana's SDK, and everyone can build their own products on it. At the same time, our community and technical teams will also provide support and guidance to help solve problems encountered during the development process.

In addition, security and compliance are also very important. As a DeFi product, the first priority is the safety of user funds. Therefore, entries need to pay special attention to this. In addition, optimizing user experience is also crucial. Simple interface and operation process can attract more users. Finally, I agree with the point mentioned before, which is to actively develop social networks and partnerships with other ecological 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 us some suggestions for the contestants. **

Yao: First of all, Solana Hackathon is not only a technical competition, but also a business competition. Therefore, I recommend that all developers and founders stick to first principles when creating their own projects. In other words, don’t just be satisfied with products that you think are useful or interesting, but really think about and discover a product that truly meets user needs. Only such a product can be successful in the market, and I think it is the most important of all products.

Secondly, in addition to focusing on technology development, commercialization capabilities are equally important. Therefore, I suggest that you not only devote yourself to technical research and product polishing, but also look for partners or co-founders with good business experience or background to build this project together. This can help the project have more room for commercial expansion in the later stage. The team's commercial capabilities are also an important aspect for us to consider.

The third point is that technology is of course also crucial. Especially in a highly competitive market, we will consider which team's technology and code are more complete. We require contestants to submit a GitHub repository, so during this process, you can refine and polish the core functions of the product and demonstrate the completeness of the code.

Finally, I think it is very important to make an excellent PPT. In PPT, you need to clearly express your ideas, projects and business potential, preferably concisely and directly. It would be more helpful if you could make a PPT in the form of a video.

Chris: Regarding entry suggestions, I would like to share some experiences. I have participated in five hackathons before, each with about 1,000 projects, so each hackathon is a test. I know it’s not easy to stand out among so many projects, but I’ve summarized some methods that I hope will be helpful to everyone.

First of all, it is very important to find teammates. If you are an independent developer and are used to developing alone, I suggest that you must find one or more partners to share the work. Because the judges will not only judge your programming skills, but also your business capabilities. Having more teammates can help you share the workload, increase work output, and provide complementarity in areas where you are not good at.

When it comes to teammates, I recommend looking for the right people among your familiar connections. Because you may have had previous cooperation experience, it is not easy to have running-in problems. In addition, you can also find teammates in the community's cooperation directory or forum.

The second is product thinking. I think Yao has said this very well. Another important point is to try to choose an area that you are good at. For example, if you are good at making sports shoes, you may have some experience in running shoes, which will give you a deeper understanding of market demand.

In addition, once you decide to develop, you need to find something that you can invest your time in for a long time. Because the hackathon is just the beginning, there is still a long way to go. So once the teammates and product direction are determined, it’s time to develop. The hackathon is five weeks in total, so if you have a lot of features to implement, you won’t have time to do them all. So dealing with priorities is very important. I recommend spending most of your time developing core functions, so that at the end you can submit a demo that will impress the judges and let them quickly understand what needs and pain points your product solves.

At the end of the competition, in addition to submitting projects and presentations, I recommend that everyone not use traditional PPT, but use a format similar to Loom. In this way, while the PPT is explaining, there is a video that allows you to explain the PPT content. The presentation content includes team composition, product overview, why the product was developed, marketing plan, etc. In addition, you must make demonstration videos and demos. The sooner you start on these two points, the better.

Finally, we released some information about the hackathon in the community, and also compiled and shared some resource libraries and tools for your reference.