NEW: Dedicated Solana Platform!

Currently, The Solana Ecosystem Is Lacking A Dedicated Platform For Thought Leaders, Developers, Users And Protocols To Keep Informed And Share Ideas.

January 10, 2023

GM!

Currently, the Solana ecosystem is lacking a dedicated platform for thought leaders, developers, users and protocols to keep informed and share ideas.

This is what we want to achieve with The Sleuth, your weekly newsletter where we uncover all things Solana in 5 minutes or less.

All our newsletters will also be posted to our website—thesleuth.co—so that data and information can be kept in one central, easy to browse, repository and does not get lost among your dusty Twitter bookmarks.

Additionally, we will open up our website to anyone who'd like to publish concepts, insights and opinions—all with the aim of further increasing the discoverability of the broader Solana ecosystem.

We'd like to thank our 1,000 current subscribers, which helped us test out ideas and shape The Sleuth into what it is today 💙

Enough about us, let's get right into it. 

In the news bites section, click on any bullet point hyperlink to learn more.

Spotlight

Sandstorm Hackathon

From Jan 10th to Jan 23rd, the Solana community is coming together to host a grassroots hackathon—the first of its kind!

The event is organised by Lamport DAO and Helius and includes sponsors such as the Solana Foundation, Phantom, Jito, Clockwork, Flipside and Monke DAO.

Details

  • Tracks: DeFi, automation, gaming, CTF, governance, order books, mobile, sports betting, ZKs & privacy, MEV and 10 more.

  • Place: Virtual (with physical workspaces available from various sponsors).

  • Registration: Not needed, anyone can participate—no prerequisites required.

  • Prizes: Over 200k USD total prizes, VC intros, merch, Breakpoint tickets & more.

  • Further Benefit: All submissions that open source their code will receive $BONK rewards.

If you'd like to get involved or have any questions, please reach out—we're happy to help!

The Resurrection

Both NFTs and meme coins have significantly increased the user base on Solana.

As a result, daily active wallets on Solana have taken off.

Equally, DEX activity is up across the board.

This has led to an increase in priority fees, without impacting user fees or user confirmation times.

$BONK is one of the largest drivers of this adoption wave on Solana—here you can keep up with all the latest developments: 

News Bites

  • Polygon 💜 Solana: Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, might be enjoying the meme coin season on Solana as well. Wallets attributed to him seem to have been getting in on the $BONK action.

  • Priority Fees: Jupiter has released priority fee support, allowing users to choose between high, turbo, or custom priority fees to speed up transaction processing times.

  • Saga Arrives: Saga development kits are being sent out to be tested by the broader community. These phones are not in their final form, but a pre-production version for dApp store builders to tinker with.

  • Community Pokémon: Solana developers are further pushing the envelope and have now introduced Pokémon on-chain, allowing anyone to participate and vote on the next move. The game can also be played on Saga.

  • Invisible Backpack: Coral, the makers of the Anchor development framework, are continuing to build their Backpack wallet in public. The newest idea is the introduction of a multi-user account system to bolster anonymity and privacy on-chain.

  • Jito 🤝 MEV: Solana has been prone to spam wars which take up significant blockspace and degrade performance for users. Jito is taking this issue head on and recently presented its MEV-enabled validator. ➡️ MEV Dashboard

  • Solana Handbook: Frictionless Capital, a private equity firm run by Logan Jastremski and Solana Legend, released a handbook to make steelmanning Solana more fun.

That’s a wrap.

If you'd like to reach us, respond to this newsletter or DM me on Twitter.

Talk to you soon!