From tweet view limits, to exorbitant API pricing, to randomly shutting down key API calls, Twitter under Elon is hammering nails into that coffin as fast as it can.

Decentralized social apps like Lenster and Gumm are the best options, but they’re a long way from mass adoption.

It seems like every week another app is the latest Twitter-killer. Post, Bluesky, Mastadon, Buttrfly… the list goes on and on.

And now Threads from Meta enters the picture.

So what is Threads?

Well, It’s Twitter, but with your Instagram handle and followers, an algorithm you have absolutely no control over, all the data privacy concerns Facebook brings, and none of the basic features you’d expect.

But Solana folks have taken over the app!

Yeah, it’s shiny and new, but the vibes are fun (for now at least).

If you’re checking out Threads, give me a follow there @mikehale.sol 

🏆 Synap wins Web3athon Solana Track

Synap uses information from social media and on-chain transactions to build a “social passport” with a scoring mechanism to assess the quality of users on Solana.

Projects looking to onboard new users can use Synap to offer discounts, airdrops and personalized dApp experiences.

I took part in Web3athon, building the first version of Vanward, and while I didn’t win a prize, I was quoted in this article about my experience!

Web3athon 2023 Reveals Its Winners

🥊 Solana NFT Showdown Winners

The Solana NFT Showdown announced 5 winner (and 4 runners-up).

The nine finalists were selected from a pool of over 159 entrants, with NFT brands covering everything from fashion and entertainment, funding for NGOs, environmental conservation, brick and mortar restaurant businesses, and everything in between.

Winners include:

• Alchemy: Battle for Ankhos (Strategy game)

• FAST (Food and Spaces Together)

• IAM (Fashion)

• ID8R (Design)

• Lupers (NFT Collection)

Meet the winners of the Solana NFT Showdown

🪦 Cardinal Labs Shutting Down

It’s not all fun and games this week..

After raising more than $5 million to add NFT utility such as staking, rentals, subscriptions, royalties and trading, Cardinal is winding down due to “incredibly difficult macroeconomic” conditions in the NFT space and the team’s desire to move on to new projects.

Projects using Cardinal for lending and staking will have time to move away from the platform before operations begin ending on July 19 and the withdrawal period ending on Aug. 26.

All of Cardinal’s code is open source, so anyone can easily deploy a new version for their own use.

While it’s unfortunate to see Cardinal coming to an end, the open source nature of Web3 means the code will live on, benefiting future projects by giving them sa headstart vs. having to build entirely from scratch.

Solana’s Cardinal shuts down

💎 Solana Developer News

Solana Producers List
A list of active and verified wallet addresses that represents people working in the Solana Ecosystem for airdrops, community building, voting & more. (Yay! I made the list)

NFT Staking Program Tutorial
A detailed tutorial and sample code to create an NFT Staking Program on Solana using Anchor.

Convert an existing Solana application into an xNFT
This tutorial explains how to make an existing Solana application available as an xNFT in Backpack without having to recode from scratch, but simply by adapting your code so that it can run in both a browser and Backpack.

Confidentiality and Privacy with Elusiv and Token2022
Token-2022 Confidential Transfers encrypt the amount you send, but the interaction is broadcast to the whole chain. Private Transfers powered by Elusiv encrypts the public key associated with a specific token. When combined, these two tools provide complete privacy for the user.

⚡Quick Hits

Wallet Standard support comes to Solana Playground - Tweet

Helius adds Datadog RPC dashboards - Tweet

Prorocol Developer Stats dashboard by ecosystem - Tweet

Phantom adds partial support for Token-2022 - Tweet

Overview and use cases for transaction parsers - Tweet

Adding secp256r1 signature verification to Solana - Article

Expense Tracker and Bank Simulator workshop tutorials live on SolPg

⚙️ Tools & Resources

solana-verifiable-build is a command line tool to build and verify Solana programs by comparing the hash of the on-chain program and the given codebase.

AnchorPy is the gateway to interacting with Anchor programs in Python. It provides a static client generator, dynamic client similar to anchor-ts, Pytest plugin, and a CLI with utilities for Anchor Python development.

account-fetch-cache-hooks adds automatic batching and caching to Helium’s getAccountInfo API call.

debridge-solana-sdk allows you to connect your Solana programs to the debridge infrastructure to enable decentralized transfers of arbitrary messages and values between various EVM blockchains.

ExtendProgram adds a feature gate to enable extending the program data by a specified number of bytes so that developers don't need to pre-allocate program data accounts.

🗓️ Events

Solana Day at Encode Club Hacker House

Paris
July 19, 2023

You can expect a day of expert talks, high-level technical workshops, and socializing with founders and Solana builders at an amazing venue in central Paris

Register

🎙️ Listen to This

Validated - Bringing Real World Assets on Chain

RWAs (Real World Assets) are assets that exist in the real world that are tokenized on chain.

The RWA market comprises things like equity, fine art, loans, and more, all of which globally account for trillions of dollars in value.

In this episode, Trevor Bacon discusses Parcl's unique approach to real estate as an RWA. He's bullish on opportunities such as higher liquidity and lower barriers to entry for retail investors.

Although RWAs are a promising new frontier in crypto, we also discuss some of the concerns they raise, such as centralization and information asymmetries between on chain and off chain data.

Bringing Real World Assets on Chain

Thanks for reading ✌️

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