Welcome to the 9th issue of Dean's Letter!
This past week our team had the opportunity to sit down with Scammo, a Core Contributor of Xray Explorer to discuss his decision to build on Solana, his Grizzlython Hackathon experience, and much more! Enjoy this exclusive interview from Xray Explorer + exciting ecosystem updates!
Here's the 9th issue of Dean's Letter! 🤗
Xray Explorer is a Solana blockchain explorer designed for ease of use and readability. Xray Explorer received 2nd place in the Solana Grizzlython, Infrastructure & Tooling track.
What was your motivation — Why did you decide to build X- Ray?
In my experience, explorers on Solana felt super unintuitive and confusing to read but my decision to build out XRAY is actually much more shallow than my experience with other explorers. During the Sandstorm hackathon, a community organized hackathon that was hosted before Grizzlython, I had no idea on what to build after being unable to find a team. After looking through the Sandstorm website, I saw the idea to build a human-readable explorer using Helius. So during that time frame, I whipped up a very crappy account transaction viewer (if you can even call it that) and submitted it. A little bit before Grizzlython I was dmed on Twitter to help make XRAY, which I ultimately decided to do.
What was your experience like participating in the Grizzlython?
That month working on XRAY during Grizzlython was either one of my favorites or my favorite time I’ve ever had. Just the process of working on and seeing a product come to life, getting it distributed to people early on, and receiving real feedback was eye opening and just super exciting and enjoyable to be a part of. My whole month was consumed with XRAY whether it was coding, talking to teammates, or just thinking about it during my classes.
Why did you choose Solana?
Solana was actually my first crypto experience because the friends I play games with convinced me to flip NFTs with them and SOL was the primary chain they were trading NFTs on. Over time as I continued using Solana, traded some NFTs on ETH, and learned more about blockchain and crypto, I landed on the firm belief that currently, Solana is both the most pragmatic and easiest to use, therefore just making the most sense for me to be on and support. There may be other blockchains that claim or may have similar performances to Solana, but it is the accumulation of the community (very loud and passionate), leadership (toly is the goat), innovation (compression), and experiences (high TPS moments, constant hate barrages, FTX, outages) have only strengthened my conviction in both being in and building on Solana.
What struggles have you faced while building X-Ray?
My main struggles I’ve faced while building XRAY have probably been just keeping up with all of the innovation and new things happening on Solana.
During the Grizzlython month, we had support for users to input their Bonfida (.sol) domains into XRAY but we later became aware and then integrated ANS, a domain name protocol, and backpack usernames, which are actually a very convenient way of searching wallets.
Nearing the Grizzlython submission date, compressed NFTs were becoming a huge topic, so we integrated those into XRAY before the first compressed NFT mints that came from both Crossmint and Dialect sticker packs, with much more compressed NFTs to come from Drip and Helium.
Recently with BonkEarn (BERN), eyes quickly turned to Token2022, a new standard for SPL tokens. So with that, we also added support for Token2022.
Being a part of the forefront of all innovation on Solana has been the most difficult part of building on Solana but has also been by far my favorite part of building in Solana.
What have you learned during your journey building X-Ray?
Everything I’ve learned during my journey of building XRAY ranges from obviously the technical side but also personal side. Technically, building a Solana explorer made me look more into the ins and outs of Solana.
Do you have any advice for aspiring builders on Solana?
My two pieces of advice for aspiring builders on Solana are to simply jump straight into building, don’t overthink it, and to take advantage of the big brains in the Solana community that you are able to have meaningful conversations with since we all have a common interest of building on and expanding Solana.
Got any alpha?
No alpha in particular but expect XRAY to become the best explorer in all of crypto.
Backpack wallet enables Token-22 Standard compatibility, allowing for assets like BERN, to be held, which allows you to earn SOL passively:
Messari compares L1 decentralization, and Solana comes out on top:
Tensor Trade develops compressed NFT marketplace:
COMPRESSION IS HERE 
Trade, List & Bid Compressed NFTs on Tensor Enjooooy the Tensor speed & UI you know & love 
Manage your Compressed NFT portfolio in seconds
@zachXBT provides thoughts on Atomic Wallet hack:
Messari dives into Solana state compression and its affects on storage and execution:
Learn More Here:
CITIZEN UPDATE: The minting of the interim token has been completed and the new token will be sent to all participants as the next step. We are now in Phase 3 as outlined in our announcement. Read the full announcement The Dean's List DAO is looking for talented and passionate individuals to become one of us.
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Dean's Letter
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