📅 Solana Development in 2024

If 2023 was a year of survival for Solana, all signs are pointing to 2024 as the year of Solana!

Despite all the setbacks, developers have stuck around to keep building, and now the world is starting to notice.

Here’s a roundup from Solana Labs of just some of the things Solana developers can look forward to in 2024:

Developer Community is Booming

Over 2,500 devs now, and more than half are seasoned pros with over three years of experience. That's means we're not just growing in numbers but in expertise too.

Token Extensions are a Game Changer

Early 2024, we're getting token extensions. Confidential transfers, transfer hooks, metadata pointers – the works. It's going to make token creation super flexible and much easier.

Big Names are Getting Involved

AWS and Google Cloud are in the game now. AWS is making it easier to set up nodes, and Google Cloud’s BigQuery supports Solana data which are big moves for enterprise adoption.

Tooling and Learning Resources are Everywhere

There's a ton of new tools, SDKs for more than 10 different languages, and lots of learning resources, courses, and bootcamps popping up. It's never been easier to learn development on Solana.

New Tools 

Gameshift for blockchain gaming, Armada Markets for tokenomics, SPEs for big businesses, a sleek new web3.js, and even a Shopify plugin.

With all these developments, we're gearing up for some major leaps – more devs, more tools, more support from big names. It's a great time to be in the Solana space!

What Solana Devs Can Look Forward to in 2024

🆕 GameShift Updates

Solana Labs has announced two major updates for GameShift!

Dynamic NFTs

Now, you can tweak your NFTs' traits and even their looks after they've been minted. This is cool for RPGs, sports games, card battlers, and simulators, because your NFTs can grow and change right alongside your players and mirror their achievements and progress in real time.

Asset Lending

Asset Lending lets players lend game assets to each other. Borrow cool gear or items to amp up your gameplay, especially if you're just starting out. And for those lending stuff, you get to power up your guild or help out your buddies without saying goodbye to your assets.

GameShift

🗜️ cHack Compression Focused Hackathon

cHack, hosted by Metaplex, is a compression focused hackathon for developers building the future of Compressed NFTs and tooling.

Teams that compete in the cHack will have a chance to build breakthrough apps and tools with Metaplex’s Bubblegum program and DAS API with a 1,000,000 MPLX prize pool for the winners.

There will be six individual tracks with 100k MPLZ prize pools for expanding NFT use cases:

1. Dev Tools

2. Social

3. Mobile

4. Gaming

5. RWAs

6. DePIN

Submissions are judged on their creative use of cNFTs, early traction, and product and tech quality. Winners will also have access to Metaplex’s Startup Program for support from industry leaders.

cHack Early Bird Sign Up Form

⚔️ Architectural Tradeoffs of Modern Blockchains

This report focuses on fundamental differences between integrated and modular blockchain design that have been chosen by different platforms.

Solana’s design philosophy is an execution-focused, vertically integrated blockchain.

A monolithic integrated architecture like Solana’s offers several benefits compared to a modular architecture:

Performance - Integrated designs often result in faster processing speeds, as all components are tightly integrated'.

Simplicity - It can be simpler to develop on Solana and maintain code due to its single, unified codebase.

Consistency - All components share a single database which ensures immediate consistency of data

These benefits do come with trade-offs through important properties like scalability, decentralization, security, and interoperability and this comparison provides details on the technological choices and strategies influencing the growth of various smart contract platforms.

Protocol Prism: Unveiling the Architectural Tradeoffs of Modern Blockchains

💎 Solana Developer News

Solana en Español, por favor
Heavy Duty Builders is launching an Online Boot Camp entirely in Spanish running from Feb 5th until Mar 1st. In this free program you’ll learn how to create dApps on Solana.

Token Extensions Grants Program
Solana Foundation has launched a small, short-term code-based grant program to support the adoption of Token Extensions. Projects should benefit future builders, be open source, and priority will be given to tooling and infrastructure applications, over project-specific use cases. Use the “Token Extensions” category when applying.

⚡Quick Hits

Your A-Z Guide to Solana's Most Important Tools: Every tool explained - YouTube

5 ways block explorers can help you dive deeper into on-chain activity - @solanafm

High-level details of Solana’s accounts database (accounts-db) - @0xNineteen

Revolutionizing Gaming with Solana Unity SDK - andrewisworking

The State of Solana’s Bridging Landscape - LI.FI

Meso is live for US users and looking for developers integrating custom payments into their apps - @meso_network

Saga Holders Genesis Token Hashlist for Airdrops - @bonfida

LD Capital announces establishment of Solana Ecosystem Fund - @LD_Capital

⚙️ Tools & Resources

solana-block-cacher is a high-performance CLI designed to efficiently pull blocks from the Solana blockchain by intelligently measuring the user's connection speed and the rate limit to calculate the optimum number of threads for fetching blocks.

solana-anchor-examples is a collection of detailed notes and project examples shared by @_derked. Currently the repo has a program written with anchor utilizing a PDA with unit tests written in Rust, how to interact with a deployed program on-chain using Rust, and an example of how to use the Jupiter API to conduct a swap on Mainnet in Rust.

idl-to-schema is an open-source utility converts any program's IDL to a SQL schema instantly to make indexing programs become easier.

inscriptions-ui-mantine is an open-source Metaplex Inscriptions reference UI for Inscribing NFTs on Solana. Currently the UI can be used to test Inscriptions on devnet, or do cost estimates on Mainnet NFTs

Wallet Adapter for Mantine is a wrapper for the Solana Wallet Adapter that lets you easily integrate Solana wallets into your Mantine app with a familiar UI and API.

🎧 Listen to This

Podcast Title

Eugene Chen joins Lightspeed to discuss why Solana's local fee markets aren't real. Well, they are real, but they don't yet work as advertised.

Eugene is the co-founder of Ellipses Labs, Phoenix Protocol, and Umbra Research and he is one of the sharpest builders in Solana!

In this episode, they discuss how Solana transactions work, how to improve Solana's fee markets, MEV on Solana, how apps can accrue their own MEV, Solana's DeFi risk, Phoenix's limit order book and more!

Solana's Local Fee Markets Aren't Real | Eugene Chen

Thanks for reading ✌️

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