Dean's Letter https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter undefined Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:38:27 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html https://github.com/jpmonette/feed en Dean's Letter https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/af34f093b6fc53dfe19091db65a5d366 https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter All rights reserved <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #12]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-12 dQUOUG42fW6E8IpDoFpm Tue, 08 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT Top Ledger Dashboard 

Data is everything that drives informed decisions in the web3 ecosystem. The guys at Top Ledger understand this and are making data analysis easy for both protocols and users of different ecosystems. If you've ever felt overwhelmed at interpreting on-chain data and needed an easy way out, then you need to check out Top Ledger dashboard. Check it out here 👇

Grape Vine 

Here's a deep dive on some dope stuff going on with Solana:

  • 🔷TipLink allows you to send any digital assets to your buddy who doesn't own a wallet with just a link. Simply add your assets to TipLink and share the link! 

  • 🔷Solana floor is dropping an on-chain newsletter to Underdog using cNFT

  • 🔷Sphere labs is making it easy for creators to receive payments for their work. Tested out on tonyplasencia.com and it's super dope! 

  • 🔷Solana legacy is rewarding active users in their community using insights gotten across platforms with the help of cNFT 

Get more details here 👇

🔷Man won over $50k with just $10 by playing a new game on Bonk protocol 🔥 This can only be possible on Solana👇

🔷We've long waited for the moment where selling NFT would be easy. Seems that time is here with Instant Sell on phantom wallet.

🔷Creating loyalty and reward systems on Anybodies just got sleeker with Solana's compression functionality.

🔷Tensor recently introduced a new mint mechanism for NFT creators. Adding color for shards makes it even more fun🔴🔵🟢🟣. If you're an NFT artist, you should ship it ⚛️ on Tensor.


Dean's List Updates 

Dean's Network State keeps shipping dope ideas as evident from the bullish proposals on our Realms dashboard. You too can build out your ideas with us by joining our community either by becoming a Citizen through purchasing our NFT on Tensor or becoming One-of-Us through our one month free Business Visa route.

Here are some active work you could jump on👇

🔹Sporting Labs - $650 + 2 Sporting Labs NFTs to the top 2 feedback🔥 

🔹Whale's Video Editing - $225 per video set

🔹Onboarding App Test - 50 $Dean

On the fun side, we have weekly poker games and tournaments for a chance to win more $Dean to participate in active work. And that's a wrap! See you on the inside! 


]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #11]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-11 2QuCKT5qs4ZDJCpBFGj3 Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the 11th issue of Dean's Letter! 


Here's a rundown of all of the past weeks happenings in the Solana ecosystem as well as in Dean's List network state. 

Hot takes 🔥

  • Top Ledger 📊 - Solana Programs dashboard

  • The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana news) - Solana DeFi and the next bull run, Marginfi gaining more traction, Solana Foundation committed to its promise of delivering its goals 

  • Dean's List Update🦍 - quick chat with guys at top ledger, active work for members 

Top Ledger 📊

Last week, we sat down with @shahiabhinav2 to discuss the latest Top Ledger dashboard, which allows you to view important metrics for Solana programs. including, daily gas used, most active wallets, and more!

The Grape Vine 🍇 In and around Solana 

Solana DeFi is gearing up with the emergence of incentive programs like Cypher, and MarginFi trading points. People are also anticipating a couple events in the space, like  the SolBlazes rumored airdrop. Equally, the release of Jupiter v3 will increase the efficiency of routing swaps. These and more are what's making people super bullish on Solana DeFi which is slowly heating up for the next bull. 

Austin Federa shares some great insights on the work going on at Solana Foundation during a live podcast with The Cove Podcast. being a not-for-profit arm of the Solana ecosystem, their goal borders round adoption, advancement, decentralisation and security of Solana blockchain. This is one take we agree with as Solana Foundation is very instrumental to the work we do at Dean's List. They believe in our vision and so far are our biggest client. 

Catch up on the conversation right here 👇

Solana blockchain keeps proving its mass adoption with its DeFi app, Marginfi, gaining quick traction. JSYK, Marginfi started as a service for larger players looking to invest funds. But they recently noticed the importance of a consumer facing app, so they've provided a user interface for their lending market. They have also had to consistently raise the deposit caps of their assets week-over-week, showing strong signs of adoption

  • Hivemapper uses the Solana blockchain to create a community-powered, incentive-driven online map.

  • The Helium community minted nearly one million hotspots as NFTs using state compression.🔥

  • GainForest uses the transparent nature of Solana to power a dashboard of verifiable, trackable donations that ensure donors reach the local people maintaining forests directly. 

  • Solana is positioned to lead crypto gaming pack with its PlayGG event. 

Dean's List Update 

We had the pleasure of speaking with guys from top ledger. Check out their dashboard to get a hint of what to expect and listen in on the full conversation with the link below 

Active work for members 

We're all about quality feedback and we keep tweaking the process to arrive at perfection. Here are some active feedback sessions you can hop on

  • Align 2nd hackathon - reward pool of 650 USDC (review) 

  • Sporting Labs 2nd hackathon - reward pool of 650 USDC (review) 

  • Case study - reward pool of 3,000 USDC (bounty) 

  • Whale's video editing - reward pool of 225 USDC per video set (bounty) 

There's lots of dope stuff to be done in Dean's List community, so hop in and get your hands dirty.



]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) solana defi daos <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #10]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-10 DHfyU02CWxVgiUfh7pAL Mon, 12 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the 10th issue of Dean's Letter!

Solana Network-at-a-glance 📊

The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana News)

SynapFun is bringing 'social passports' to Solana:

SuperteamDAO releases 'Superteam Security', a resource for developers looking to study Solana and how to mitigate vulnerabilities:

Messari compares staking concentration across hosting providers among the top L1s, with Solana standing out:

SPL-2022, Solana's new token-standard, is live and is bringing new capabilities on-chain:

Solana foundation responds to the SEC's claim that SOL is a security, in the SEC's lawsuit against Binance:

Dean's List DAO updates🦍

The Coinable 5 NFT Competition In line with the approval of our new NFT / Token Schema, it was decided that the 5 members who purchased the interim $DEAN token through Coinable by paying $50 USDC would be whitelisted to participate in a competition to claim upto 3 of our NFTs currently held in our treasury such that the three most active members get one each. In this respect, this is a call to @el_obino @xentoshi🦊 @tanny @Frigate & @0xaryan. Let The Games Begin The Rules:

  • Over the next 30 days, your earnings from feedback and operations will be used as a score to rank you from 1 to 5 with the top 3 being the winners.

  • The winners will not be required to pay anything over and above the $50 they have already paid to obtain the $DEAN token.

  • The losers will forfiet all rights that they have enjoyed under the current regime except being recognized as @One of Us , that is a legacy role. To participate in all earning opportunities, they will, like the others, have to obtain a business visa in case they don't end up in the winning spots.

  • For the winners to claim the NFT, a minimum hurdle rate of $50 in earnings over the next 30 days is required. For abundant clarity, you may be in the top 3 but if your earnings are lower than $50, you won't qualify for the NFT drop.

Good luck!

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

Purchase a Dean's List NFT:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #9]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-9 zfeq1jROZKGnng6648IL Mon, 05 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT 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! 🤗

Tales From Solana Grizzlython 🐻 - Xray Explorer

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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. Got any alpha?

No alpha in particular but expect XRAY to become the best explorer in all of crypto.

Solana Network-at-a-glance 📊

The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana News)

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:

@zachXBT provides thoughts on Atomic Wallet hack:

Messari dives into Solana state compression and its affects on storage and execution:

Dean's List DAO updates🦍

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

Purchase a Dean's List NFT:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) defi daos solana web3 <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #8]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-8 E63eHhgBtNVwtlUM7PA3 Mon, 29 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT What's Hot 🔥

  • Solana Network-at-a-glance 📊 - DEX volume is up ~19%!

  • The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana News) - AI-powered Solana newsfeed, Solana chatGPT plugin, new Solana exchange, and more

  • Dean's List DAO updates🦍 - NEW active work for Dean's List members

Solana Network-at-a-glance📊

The Grape Vine 🍇

@0xCasual breaks down Solana Interfaces:

Solarplex is developing an AI powered Solana newsfeed:

Solana Labs releases a Solana chatGPT plugin so users can query blockchain data with the use of AI:

Solana Labs AI fund is increased to $10M:

Solflare Wallet provides support for specific ANS Protocol domain names:

New Crypto exchange, Cube, is gearing up to launch on Solana:

Dean's List Updates🦍

ACTIVE WORK FOR DEANS LIST MEMBERS

  • w3bber-2nd-hackathon review -- $650 pool ⁠

  • xray-2nd-hackathon review -- $650 pool

  • 3ntertain-2nd-hackathon review -- $650 pool

  • Wonderverse Bounty $100 pool - Check

    ⁠

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #7]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letterdeans-letter-issue-7 20oIW6kPhP2jWGDQJSsv Mon, 22 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the 7th issue of Dean's Letter!

This past week our team had the opportunity to sit down with Tony, co-founder of Underdog Protocol, to delve into the teams remarkable journey through Grizzlython, their decision to choose Solana, and the driving forces behind building Underdog (+ alpha).

Enjoy this exclusive interview from Underdog Protocol + more! Here's the 7th issue of Dean's Letter:

What's Hot 🔥

  • Tales From Solana Grizzlython 🐻 - Underdog Protocol Q&A

  • Solana Network-at-a-glance 📊 - Solana Fees are up 6.84%

  • The Grape Vine 🍇 (Solana News) - Neon EVM White Paper, Dialect and Tensor Trade Partnership, and more

  • Dean's List DAO updates🦍 - Wonderverse Platform Feedback [paid opportunity]

Tales From Solana Grizzlython 🐻 - Underdog Protocol Q&A

What is Underdog Protocol?

We’re Underdog Protocol - we enable startups and developers to seamlessly integrate NFTs into any product or workflow to capture user insights via our API. Our vision is to create enable a data rich blockchain by enabling connectedness between users and their favorite experiences. We’re trusted by teams like Solana Mobile, Metaplex, Superteam, Parcl, Dispatch Forums, and more with their NFT infrastructure. We’ve worked on Solana Mobile’s SAGA Genesis Token and won Solana Global Hackathon, Grizzlython, as Grand Champions. 


What was your motivation — Why did you decide to build Underdog Protocol?

We’ve always wanted to bring important data on-chain in order to create hyper-personalized experiences for users. Giving them power holistically. We are able to create user centric experiences that we never have before. If NFTs were able to accelerate growth for creators, why not social use cases like data ownership, governance, etc? We believe we can contribute to that journey of web3

What was your experience like participating in the Grizzlython?

It was business as usual. We were improving on top of our learnings from launching the beta version zero during Sandstorm. We were building out Underdog Core - we were lucky enough to have some customers like Parcl, Superteam, Solana Mobile that we felt okay submitting the newest version of our API. It was really nice to be named Grand Champions as a reaffirmation of our hard work but was a great way to learn that we’re really onto something and we need to 1000x from where we are now, I LOVED Grizzlython.

Why did you choose Solana?

For Kevin - it’s always been about seperating the service + data layer. Solana allows for this to happens flawlessly based on its architecture and at scale because of its table stakes advantages over other L1s. Also his manager is Bartosh - super early Solana employee. For myself, I gave my mom Phantom late 2021, told her to swap, send, and mint using USDC - she did it. I knew this was the future of products. Once we both were in - the community and innovation is what has kept us around.

What struggles have you faced while building Underdog Protocol?

Building user facing products in web3 is really hard .. nobody is going through the hoops of web3 unless the economic upside is high (But thats not what you want) Getting people to build on Underdog can be hard - we learned we need examples / use cases to give inspiration. It’s pushed us to think about what we can build with UP.

What have you learned during your journey building Underdog Protocol?

Onboarding and first experience is super important specifically crypto. It’s a confusing experience from the start, poor design, doesn’t help. Do alot of customer research and always be learning. We pivoted twice until we got here because we stayed connected our users. Version continuously. Don’t be scared that it’s not perfect, get it into the world, get feedback, iterate!

Do you have any advice for aspiring builders on Solana?

Learn a lot about everything. Your job as a founder should be to learn and build. Everyone is very open to collaboration. If you want to get anything done - have a plan on how to work together and highlight the business value.

Got any alpha?

Compression API is live - we’re covering costs for 10K+ drops. We are launching our builders program and Possibly launching a compression hackathon , stay tuned for either one. Either big prizes or bounties for everyone.

Final Thoughts

Deans List helped us think about our UX for developers to get to their a-ha moment faster BUT also for no-coders. They were very collaborative but straight forward about how to improve our product and messaging. Candidly, they highlighted things we overlooked but we’re so key to having UP click for users. Dean is a leader. He gets it. Super helpful and knowledge. Solana and Underdog is better because of him We think Underdog will be key to the future of web3 experiences. Every company in web3 or that wants to be in web3 will use Underdog but even better Solana

Solana Network-at-a-glance📊

The Grape Vine 🍇

Neon EVM, an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) on Solana, released an updated White Paper:

News on the NFTFi ecosystem on Solana:

Jump Firedancer, A Solana node client created by Jump, explained in ~2 minutes:

Dialect, a Web3 messaging app, teamed up with Tensor Trade to allow trades via messages:

Dean's List DAO's Top Ledger dashboard features the DAOs GDP per capita, population, and other important metrics:

Dean's List DAO was announced as one of the winners of the Deep DAO onboarding bounty in the Aragon DAO global hackathon:

Dean's List Updates🦍

Join Dean's List DAO to qualify for this opportunity

As part of our efforts to automate our processes and improve the experience of our community, we have been ideating & experimenting with various tools. One such tool, that we have shortlisted for further due diligence, is Wonderverse.

Essentially, this is a workflow management application for Web3 communities sitting neatly between Web2 and Web3.

To drive the process forward, we need the help of our community to provide feedback on the platform, and hence have designed a special bounty for this purpose. This bounty is worth $100 and will be paid out for qualifying feedback providers on ⁠xray-2nd-hackathon to those individuals who:

  • Make their profile on the platform

This is a great opportunity to earn a minimum of 23% over and above what you will make off the X-Ray feedback session so don't miss out and in the process help your DAO understand how we can all do things (even) better.

LFG!!!

Interested in joining Dean's List?

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #6]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-6 1xmKRlCJ2hpwRNhXMA0i Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT What's Hot 🔥

  • Network-at-a-glance📊 - Solana Average TXNs are up 8.16%!

  • The Grape Vine🍇 - Solana reaches more daily active addresses than Ethereum and Polygon combined!

  • Dean's List🦍 - Participate in our latest competition for a shot at winning a prestigious Dean's List NFT and $50 USDC!

    Network-at-a-glance📊

The Grape Vine 🍇

Dialect integrates with Magic Eden to allow Dialect users to buy NFTs via Smart Messages:

Degenerate Ape Academy (DAA) collaborated with Hxro Network to create a dedicated DeFi platform for DAA holders:

Underdog Protocol introduces "Dust," a tool for creators and communities to airdrop and send compressed NFTs:

Metaplex discovers compressed NFTs are cheaper and more efficient than SaaS email marketing tools:

Solana reaches more Daily Active Addresses than Ethereum + Polygon:

Dean's List Updates🦍

Do you have an idea for how to revamp our membership and reward model? Then this is the perfect mission for you! Reply to the tweet below or join our Discord and tag @DeanMachine Details here:

Interested in joining Dean's List?

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #5]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-5 e6bHdfP7YD8HXaYxefrr Tue, 09 May 2023 14:20:35 GMT What's Hot 🔥

  • Network-at-a-glance📊 - Solana avg. DEX Volume is up 26%

  • The Grape Vine🍇 - 'anti-rug' meme-coin dashboard, the Solana Saga Mobile is available for public sale, and more.

  • Dean's List🦍 - We've introduced a new Visa program.

Network-at-a-glance📊

The Grape Vine 🍇

@fxnction provides a framework for spotting 'shitcoins' - Memecoins:

Want to learn how to earn money in Web3? Dean's List member @web3investr has created a guide to get you started earning via Dean's List:

Check out this 'anti-rug' meme-coin dashboard to keep your funds and sanity safe:

The Solana Mobile Saga is open for public orders! If you missed the pre-sale, this is your time to get your Saga for an unparalleled mobile Solana experience:

Drift Protocol introduced "Delegate Accounts", which allow users to give account access to another Solana address:

Token Terminal sat down with Anatoly to discuss everything Solana:

Dean's List Updates🦍

Our Business Visa Program is officially live! We are excited to officially announce our "Business Visa" Program, specially designed for the #Web3 enthusiasts.

You can now get access to Deanslist DAO for a 30-day uninterrupted period, without having to pay anything! More power to you The DL Business Visa Program gives you access to our DAO, where you gain access to our discord, servers, and Feedback sessions. You work, and also get paid - our visa entries are allowed to work, earn & take home their rewards. Do you have it in you to prove yourself? Spread the word and let your favorite web3 workers & projects know!

Interested in joining Dean's List?

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #4]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-4 7cKNWtEOUS4xTTQTs3Eg Mon, 01 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Network-at-a-glance📊

Source(s): Artemis.xyz, and DeFillama.com.

The Grape Vine 🍇

Solana Labs is developing a ChatGPT plugin that will allow users to search the Solana blockchain using OpenAI's conversational chatbot technology. The plugin will enable users to perform various tasks, including checking wallet balances, transferring tokens, and purchasing NFTs:

Underdog protocol co-founder, Tony, demonstrates how to create a compressed NFT in less than 5 minutes:

Solana Foundation announces a $1m fund for small-scale grants exploring the intersection of Solana and AI:

The Solana Foundation has teamed up with Mastercard to advance its Mastercard Crypto Credential initiative, which aims to establish a framework of standard practices and infrastructure for verifying trusted interactions between Web2 and Web3:

Parott Finance's "DAO" treasury hostage situation:

Magic Eden vows to redeem itself to SOL community:

Soju helps rectify falsified claims regarding Tulip Finance's integrity:

Dean's List Updates🦍

Happy new month ❤️ I hope y'all had a great weekend!

We have 3 active feedbacks currently. As part of our grant agreement, we’ll be reviewing;

  1. Underdog Protocol- hackathon

  2. Splitwave- hackathon

we have a week from now to round this up and it’s advisable to make your inputs in the respective Discord channels if you would like to be included in the payouts. We'll also. be conducting another round of feedback on:

  1. Zignaly App

Interested in joining Dean's List?

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #3]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-3 kVkQsXQ3NAWsPWcZD77l Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the third edition of Dean's Letter!

It was an exciting week for Solana, with several significant events taking place, such as the release of the Solana SAGA phone and the Mad Lads NFT mint. Meanwhile, the Dean's List DAO was also busy with important developments, having just concluded gathering user feedback for the xNFT Backpack wallet!

Keep reading to discover more about Solana's significant events in the previous week!

Network-at-a-glance📊

The Grape Vine 🍇

MarginFi Launches Crypto + AI Tool

Omni is a new Crypto + AI project that simplifies managing crypto assets and transactions for users. It uses simple text prompts to interact with the blockchain and answer questions about web3, with deep knowledge of the Solana ecosystem and support for all Marginfi actions. Omni is powered by the LLM stack and equipped with its own vectordb focused on web3. Users can access Omni at http://omni.marginfi.com and join the Marginfi Telegram for any questions.

Solana Mobile's Saga phone is Available For Order

Solana Mobile has announced that its flagship device, Saga, is now available for order. Saga is a security-conscious Android device designed specifically for interacting with digital assets, integrated with the Solana Mobile Stack to enhance on-the-go signing experiences and open up mobile web3 experiences. The device comes with access to 16 web3-native apps through the Solana dApp Store, including those from Audius, Ledger, and Mango Markets. Users who pre-ordered Saga can place orders now, and new orders can be placed starting May 8, with shipping starting in the following weeks.

Taking a Closer Look Into xNFTs

The Solana ecosystem team has launched tools that aim to decentralize the web3 stack, including executable NFTs in the open beta of Backpack, an open source wallet. These xNFTs can solve web3's problems of decentralization and distribution by combining executable websites and applications that run locally on a user's computer with a crypto wallet. They can bring interactivity to traditional collections and unlock new avenues for program distribution. The Solana ecosystem has seen many other innovations in the last year, including compressed NFTs and the launch of the Solana Mobile Stack. The community is encouraged to continue building and creating public goods.

Mad Lads Mint

Mad Lads 24H NFT sales volume is larger than those of the next 9 collections combined - $8,167,746 VS. $7,781,155

Helium Fully Migrates to Solana

Helium, the world's largest decentralized wireless network, has successfully migrated from its own blockchain to Solana, offering faster transaction speeds, new smart contract capabilities, and more resources for growth. The upgrade will benefit network users by introducing dynamic markets, lowering costs, and enabling access to DeFi. The migration to Solana will also make Helium's native token, HNT, natively compatible with other platforms within Solana's ecosystem.

Dean's List Updates🦍

Our network state GDP has reached ~$50K:

We've completed our feedback round for the Backpack wallet:

Interested in joining Dean's List?

Learn More Here:

Purchase a Membership:

]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #2]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-2 dFjNK09iuvCtKqSrDsh2 Mon, 17 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the second issue of Dean's Letter! Our newsletter is back to give you another weekly update on the latest developments and on-chain performance of the Solana network. Whether you're an experienced Solana user or just starting out, we hope our newsletter empowers you to build and contribute to the Solana ecosystem!

Network-at-a-glance📊

Sources: Artemis.xyz, DeFiLlama, and Token Terminal

The Grape Vine 🍇

Squads partners with Realms to improve Solana's DAO Governance

Solana's DAO governance has been improved with the launch of the Realms_DAOs app integration. Realms is considered the top platform on Solana for establishing DAOs, allowing for member management, proposal voting, and treasury allocation. Several projects such as Mango Markets, Metaplex, and UXD protocol use Realms to make transparent and decentralized decisions with their communities.

The integration with Squads Protocol allows users to effortlessly create a DAO on Realms directly from their Squads multisig, providing the advantages of both platforms. In addition, a balance history feature has recently been added to the dashboard page, which enables users to keep track of their account balances over time more efficiently. Users can visit their Squad to check out this new feature.

Introducing CAVYAR: The Revolutionary Platform for Solana Developers

CAVYAR, a new platform to save Devs time and energy, offers a range of services, including the ability to search for problems, find the right code snippet, and paste it into their own code. These snippets could be considered as building blocks that combine to create a working program. Additionally, AI-generated explanations are provided, allowing even beginners to enter the world of Solana development.

The platform is accessible to all users, with a configurator enabling the creation of custom snippets. A ranking system will also help to establish the credibility of the snippets and assign them a final score. The creators of CAVYAR claim that users will never have to write anything from scratch again. Solana developers are invited to sign up for early access to the platform.

Introducing Solana Audits AI: The New Tool Enhancing Security for Solana Programs

A new tool called Solana Audits AI has been introduced to enhance the security of Solana programs. The LLM powered CLI tool is designed to detect vulnerabilities, identify their location, and suggest fixes. With just one command, Solana program owners can now secure their programs. Although the tool is currently in alpha, the aim is to provide safe, fast, and inexpensive audits to everyone in the Solana ecosystem.

The tool can be used as a test directly in solpg, as a VScode extension, or run automatically before minting an NFT. The team is currently working on additional features, such as an option to automatically fix the codebase and resolve vulnerabilities and opening a course to educate users on avoiding similar mistakes. The team is inviting beta testers, including small and large projects, students, and anyone building on Solana: https://forms.gle/r895iKfAbAquUW5KA

Thoughts on Solana Compression

Mango Markets Disables Flash Loans in V4 Beta Following Report of Possible Exploit

Mango Markets' contributors recently received a report by SolShield regarding a possible exploit in V4's flash-loan functionality. As a result, the security council held a vote and decided to disable flash loans until further investigation. However, other parts of V4 such as deposits, borrows, and spot/perp markets remain unaffected.

For those currently using V4 Beta, it's important to note that token swaps on the "Swap" page will not work, as they previously relied on flash loan instructions. Additionally, any bots that use flash loan instructions will require adjustments if they don't already fall back on OpenBook trades. In the event of any concerns or questions, individuals are encouraged to create a support ticket in Mango Markets' Discord.

Dean's List Updates🦍

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]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter) <![CDATA[Dean's Letter Issue #1]]> https://paragraph.com/@deans-letter/deans-letter-issue-1 LkjlnDjZX8gsNo1LzEra Mon, 10 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT Welcome to the first Issue of Dean’s Letter!

Our newsletter is dedicated to keeping you informed about the on-chain performance and development of the Solana network. With Dean's Letter, we aim to provide you with a weekly update to keep you engaged in the conversation about everything that’s happening in Solana.

What can you expect from Dean’s Letter?

  • Network-at-a-glance — Get a quick overview of Solana's weekly network performance

  • The ‘Grape Vine’ — Stay informed about the latest protocol updates from the past week

  • Dean's List Updates — Keep up with the latest developments from one of Solana's most active DAOs!

Join us as we explore the exciting world of Solana together. Happy reading!

Network-at-a-glance📊

Source: Artemis.xyz

The Grape Vine 🍇

Nosana Partners with Squads Protocol

Nosana, a platform for crowd-computing and CI/CD tooling, has partnered with Squads, the Multisig standard on Solana to create a ‘multi-sig flow’ for Solana developers.

Nosana's ‘multisig flow’ makes it easy for developers to integrate multisig into their smart contract development workflow and ensure the security of their code during the deployment process. By using multisig for your Solana programs, you can protect your program authority key by dividing it among multiple trusted parties (such as team members, investors, auditors, etc.).

PsyFi Leads Katana into the Next Generation of Decentralized Finance

Katana, a DeFi options protocol has been acquired by PsyFi, a protocol providing risk-adjusted investment strategies in the form of options, futures, and perps.

PsyFi has been handed over the baton to use Katana’s IP of both launched and unlaunched products to carry the protocol moving forward.

Under the agreement of the acquisition, PsyFi will be able to further expand its portfolio of top-class yield offerings for its users, staying true to Web3’s core values. Moreover, for Katana, this is nothing less than the perfect opportunity to fulfill its mission of offering preeminent yield generation products in DeFi. Both Katana and PsyFi intend to work together in perfect harmony in their hopes of contributing to DeFi.

Gum Protocol making Web 3 UX smoother one consumer crypto app at a time

Gum is a decentralized social media protocol on Solana that unbundles traditional social media into ‘Social Legos’ similar to how Defi unbundled traditional finance into ‘Money Legos.’ Gum provides the infrastructure for developers to use the wallet data to build applications that offer a differentiated value proposition.

Say goodbye to the hassle of approving and signing transactions every time you use an app. With Gum, once you connect your wallet, you get a token (session token) that approves a set of actions (handpicked by the developer and known to you), which you can do without signing any extra transactions. That's right - you can use the app just like any other regular web app after connecting your wallet. This is huge for crypto apps that require frequent interaction with your wallet.

DeGods and y00ts bridge vulnerability

It was discovered that the bridge was vulnerable. The vulnerability would allow an attacker to burn random fungible tokens (freshly minted shitcoin by the attacker) on Solana to mint verified NFTs on both Ethereum and Polygon. The vulnerability existed due to the program Dustlabs had developed around the wormhole and had nothing to do with the bridge itself.

Metaplex Token Metadata Program and MagicEden/Solanart Implementation Vulnerability

A bug was discovered in the Metaplex token metadata that allowed anyone to set arbitrary NFTs to certified collections of the attacker's choosing. Imagine thinking you are minting a Degods, or SMB but instead you mint a worthless NFT worth a fraction of the price of the actual NFT. During this process, another bug specific to MagicEden was also identified. The vulnerability was discovered December 22nd, and has since been fixed.

The Whitehat we don’t deserve! —Meet MadCrab David or @thehasheddude

When it comes to security in Web3, it's more like waiting for the house to catch on fire and then asking the fire nicely to go away and save what's left.

@thehasheddude is the lead auditor for SolShield (solshield.io), a Solana Smart Contract Auditing and Security Services. Follow him to show your love, push your favorite projects to take security seriously, and have a bug bounty. Make SolShield a part of the conversation when it comes to sourcing smart contract audits!

Solflare Takes NFTs to the Next Level with Compression Support in its Extension

Compressed NFTs have recently been launched on Solflare Extension and are set to revolutionize the world of digital assets. With Solana's focus on scalability and removing performance bottlenecks, compressed NFTs enable the minting of millions of digital assets at a minimal cost, making it a game-changer for large corporations, events, and the metaverse. The ability to issue millions of tickets and digitize records on the blockchain will also drastically reduce costs and minimize ticketing fraud. This new technology opens up a whole new world of possibilities and use cases for digital collectibles, making it an exciting time for the NFT market.

Dean's List Updates🦍

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]]> deans-letter@newsletter.paragraph.com (Dean's Letter)