Earlier today attended Colosseum’s Demo Day for their 3rd Accelerator cohort. Colosseum is a hackathon, accelerator, and venture fund focused on the Solana ecosystem.

The Demo Day featured the 10 companies that went through their 2-month accelerator program. Without further ado, here they are in the order they presented:

Note: I am an angel investor

What is it?

‘Precision’ prediction markets. Stake your prediction for clout and cash.

Why is it interesting?

Prediction markets in their dominant form focus on being right, not on accuracy. For example, Polymarket has a prediction market on whether Taylor Swift will announce that she is pregnant in 2025.

If you buy ‘Yes’ and the Queen of Pop announces she’s pregnant at any point this year, the market resolves to 100% yes. What if you could trade a specific date she announces it? 🤔

Or instead of placing a wager on who will win the 2028 US Election, you can predict what the winning margin will be by?

Trepa is building a prediction market platform focused on not just if you’re right, but how right you are. These types of markets are more suited towards forecasts vs. yes/no binary outcomes.

What is it?

A native decentralized data storage layer on Solana. They shared their Demo Day deck here.

Why is it interesting?

Solana is known for and prioritizes speed and cost in its network, with the tradeoff of costly and inefficient data storage. As a result, builders rely on expensive storage solutions, complex processes, and offchain alternatives to support their products.

TAPEDRIVE is working to solve this by optimizing, prioritizing, and incentivizing the most useful segments of data vs. replicating everything.

What is it?

Fantasy sports for tokens

Why is it interesting?

Trading tokens can be complex, intimidating, or even outright boring if you’re just holding it. Crypto Fantasy League (CFL for short) gamifies and applies a fantasy sports angle to it. Matches can be head-to-head or tournament style which last anywhere from 1 minute to 1 day.

What is it?

No-code, customizable trading bots

Why is it interesting?

With the theme of trading being complex, Tempo is making it easier through automation instead of reskinning it. Users can create their own bot with different strategies and parameters that can integrate with other platforms.

What is it?

Payments and loyalty platform for onchain commerce

Why is it interesting?

I’ve been excited about the future of loyalty for some time and how blockchain can help loyalty programs evolve and be more effective (RIP NFTs for loyalty though lol). As businesses warm up to stablecoins as a form of payment, they logically expand into loyalty and rewards programs.

There’s limited public info on Decal at the moment, but let’s just say many of the themes I shared in this piece about stablecoins improving incentive structures for consumers will come to fruition 😉

Are these startups interesting? Yes they are, so share and subscribe!

What is it?

The world’s first crypto keyboard

Why is it interesting?

Keyboards have evolved over the years by providing functionality beyond just messages and emojis.

What if you add another layer for crypto functionality? TypeX is a wallet-embedded keyboard app that supercharges your phone’s keyboard with one-tap wallet functionality. For example, if you’re in a messaging app you can directly send them a token through the keyboard instead of swapping between apps and copy pasting addresses.

Phantom’s CEO shared a sneak peek of what this looks like with their wallet integration. The app also incentivizes usage by rewarding tradeable keycard NFTs that can be added to the keyboard.

What is it?

Logistics payments using stablecoins

Why is it interesting?

International logistics payments (think freight forwarding, shipping, etc.) are slow, expensive, and inefficient. CargoBill helps make the end-to-end process easier while providing additional yield opportunities.

What is it?

Stablecoin payment app for tourists and nomads in SE Asia

Why is it interesting?

LocalPay is a non-custodial wallet that focuses on payments for users who don’t want to exchange their money for local currency. The app launched in Vietnam and can be used to pay any vendor through QR code.

What is it?

Liquidity Pool platform that simplifies the process of providing liquidity

Why is it interesting?

When it comes to trading tokens, the trading itself often takes the spotlight. The other side of the coin is providing liquidity for the token to be traded in the first place, a much more daunting process for the uninitiated.

MetEngine provides advanced tooling to make LP discovery, management, and optimization easier and more profitable.

What is it?

An AI-powered data scientist providing onchain analytics and insights

Why is it interesting?

Solana data is complex and heavy (2+ trillion rows of data!). Meanwhile, all types of companies building on Solana need business intelligence, but don’t have the resources for it. Slant is the AI-powered partner to help fill this gap.

From a lay perspective, Solana is viewed as the memecoin blockchain that has minted overnight millionaires and been the home of some of the most controversial scams. The reality is that there’s a lot more to it than that, and a few themes from this accelerator cohort stuck out to me.

Stablecoins (Trepa, Decal, Cargobill, LocalPay)

Several of the featured startups are focusing on stablecoin integration and we see them used for staking wagers, loyalty, and payments.

Building around trading (CFL, Tempo, MetEngine)

Trading crypto is deeply established, but building the picks and shovels and gamifying it? Not as much.

Reducing friction (all of them)

All of these startups reduce friction in some way. From making data on Solana more accessible to sending a token from your phone’s keyboard, the goal is to make things easier for existing and new users.

Best wishes to all of these teams, and see you next week!