🌞 Solana Developer Report

The Solana developer ecosystem made big strides in 2023, cementing itself as a top blockchain platform. 

The backbone of Solana’s success in 2023 has been its expanding developer base, with 2500-3000 monthly active developers contributing to its open-source repositories, with 3-month retention rates increasing from 31% to over 50%.

That’s quite a jump from 75 developers!

This growth is attributed to improvements in the developer onboarding process and an increase in opportunities.

More than half of the developers entering Solana have more than 3 years of experience, bringing advanced skills to the ecosystem.

In the past three years, more than 3,000 projects have been launched within the Solana ecosystem, with over $600 million raised in funding.

Solana's focus on developer onboarding and support has been a game-changer.

Approximately 50% of the top submissions in the Solana Hyperdrive Hackathon were from developers who completed Solana bootcamps.

The availability of SDKs in languages like Rust, TypeScript, and Python open Solana to a wide range of developers and languages. Game developers have access to fully featured SDKs for platforms like Unity and Unreal Engine.

Solana has tightened its security with tools for CI scanning, comprehensive audits, and live scanning of transactions.

As the ecosystem matures, the focus is on refining local development environments, implementing robust event systems, and providing comprehensive product examples. 

The 2023 State of the Solana Developer Ecosystem

📇 Developer Lists

Solana developers have two new places to hang out one’s shingle!

Solfate, a podcast I’ve featured several time in the “Listen to This” section, and The 76 Devs, a developer Discord community, have both launched a vetted directory of Solana developers.

Devnet.Directory

The 76 Devs have introduced the Devnet Directory, an on-chain directory of Solana developers.

To create a profile you just need to complete the application and mint your exclusive Dev Card NFT.

After a manual approval process your profile will be featured on the Devnet Directory website, making it accessible for public viewing and search.

The application process asks for your social media identities (X, Discord, GitHub, Solarplex, etc) and you bio, plus a spot to share what you’ve worked on or contributed to in the Solana ecosystem.

More than 280 developers have already been verified, and even if you aren’t verified, you’ll still have a public profile page to share.

You can check out my Dev Card as an example, and get your own here:

devnet.directory

Solana DevList

Solfate’s Solana DevList is a publicly accessible list of wallets owned by verified contributors to the Solana ecosystem.

The project’s goal is to create a publicly available list of wallet address for developers in the Solana ecosystem that have meaningfully contributed to open source code in the Solana ecosystem.

After applying, they’ll check your GitHub account for public code contributions including multiple popular Solana focused repositories and libraries.

Once a person is verified to having made meaningful contributions they can claim and mint a non-transferrable token with their Solana wallet address.

This soul-bound token acts as a public notice to all that the owner has contributed source code to the Solana ecosystem.

Holding this token may make you eligible for community airdrops, product discounts, services, etc.

To apply you just need to connect your Twitter and GitHub accounts, and answer a couple questions about what you’ve done and how you’ve contribute to the Solana space.

I’m still under review for this one, but you can apply here:

Solana DevList

💰 Bonkathon Hackathon

Radiants is hosting a new event for the BONK ecosystem: The Bonkathon.

This 5-weeek community hosted hackathon is positioned as a significant step towards enhancing the BONK ecosystem and fostering broader web3 adoption on Solana.

The Bonkathon isn’t just about creating utility for BONK. It’s goal is to leverage the momentum that exists on Solana and its 600k+ holders.

Bonkathon will channel its energy into consumer applications, pushing the boundaries of what's been explored in the crypto space.

Bonkathon will feature 2-3 judges per track, selected in collaboration with the Bonk Council, bringing in a wealth of expertise and industry insight to evaluate the projects, which could be invaluable for feedback and networking.

$300,000 is the proposed prize pool for the Bonkathon with $100k for consumer facing apps that leverage the unique capabilities of Solana in dApps that are useful for a wide audience.

Another $200k will be split across these four tracks:

1. AI: Integrate with Solana for smart, adaptive dApps.

2. DeFi: Build solutions offering transparency & inclusivity.

3. Gaming: Create games with unique economies & assets.

4. Public Goods: Address social, environmental, & public needs.

Submissions will be judged on multiple factors, including user adoption strategy, Solana utilization, market research, video demo, GTM strategy and how they will scale and gain user adoption.

There's a specific emphasis on open source contributions, especially for projects under the public goods track.

Participating in this hackathon offers developers a chance to showcase their skills, contribute to the Solana ecosystem, gain valuable feedback from experts, and access post-event opportunities for growth and exposure such as participation in the Winners' Panel, the Scaling Success Spaces series, GTM Strategy Sessions, and a special Winners' Meetup at NFTNYC.

Bonkathon will kick off near the end of Q1 2024 as a collaborative effort between @bonk_inu, @phaselabs_, and @RadiantsDAO

Bonkathon - Accelerating Web3 Adoption on Solana

💎 Solana Developer News

Rise In Build on Solana Course
Build on Solana is a free beginner course from Rise In that teaches basic skills, setting up a local environment, and building a variety of different projects that explore basic concepts with hands-on tasks.

Helius Priority Fee API (Alpha)
When Solana gets congested, you can add a fee to your transactions to ensure they get prioritized by validators. This can be difficult due to local markets, global markets, and granularity for sampling your data. This new API from Helius defines a new method, getPriorityFeeEstimate, that simplifies the response into a single value while considering both global and local fee markets.

Mastering xNFTs
This comprehensive tutorial offers a step-by-step walkthrough and examples of developing an xNFT for Backpack Wallet, as well as how to handle some common issues that may occur.

Solana Speedrun 2 Game Jam Winners
With more than 300 registrants and 35 games submitted, the winners have been announced with Rebirth Rumble taking first place.

⚡Quick Hits

Shyft indexes and offers GraphQL APIs for Tensor marketplace data - @Shyft_to

Messari State of DePIN 2023 Report - Messari

Introducing Exodus, a feature-rich and user-friendly wallet - Exodus

Twitter list of all The 76 Devs verified developers - @mmatdev

wtf is (Jito) StakeNet? - @buffalu__

Luzid Sneak Peek: Solana Test Validator on Steroids - YouTube

What's the actual point of cNFTs? - Superteam

Metaboss 0.35.0 new snapshot commands use the DAS API instead of gPA calls - @samvwaal

Reframing the Solana Narrative - @kelxyz_

Etherscan expands into Solana ecosystem with Solscan acquisition - CryptoSlate

⚙️ Tools & Resources

byo_mint is a compressed NFT mint program that enables creators to mint and distribute cNFTs with minter customization and control.

explorer-kit is a framework agnostic Solana data parser for parsing a transaction or account state for a particular program.

stakenet Validator History Program from Jito Labs is an on-chain record of verified Solana validator in a single account per validator. This enables validator data to be used in on-chain programs.

sol is a command line explorer for the Solana Blockchain. Currently only transactions are supported but future plans include account and block queries.

Tiny SPL token standard utilizes state compression to enable ownership of Solana tokens without incurring rent fees.

🎧 Listen to This

Lightspeed

Bartosz Lipiński joins Lightspeed to discuss how Cube is building the first crypto-native centralized exchange.

Cube leverages MPC wallets, Solana's client (creating a Solana appchain) and native integrations to offer the best trading experience in crypto.

In this episode, Bartosz's shared his journey with Solana Labs, how he helped launch Solana's NFT ecosystem and Hacker House program, Cube's crypto-native functionality, what it takes to build a crypto company and more!

Cube: The Solana Aligned CEX | Bartosz Lipiński

Thanks for reading ✌️

I hope you found something useful here! If you have any suggestions or feedback just let me know what you think.