About 50% of developers at Solana-focused hackathon Colosseum have "never built on a blockchain before"

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Solana hackathon Colosseum is searching for the best developers globally — both inside and outside the industry

Some of the best startups are founded by teams built in well known hubs like Silicon Valley or NYC, while others are founded by coders hacking away at hackathons at a nearby conference or event.

But for Colosseum, their focused is on bringing more founders into the Solana ecosystem, wherever they are.

“You could be anywhere in the world and join this competition,” Matty Taylor,  co-founder and GP at Colosseum, said on Talking Tokens podcast. (Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube.)

Colosseum launched in the beginning of the year, but its latest hackathon brought in over 8,000 participants and more than 1,000 project submissions.

Taylor was previously head of growth at the Solana Foundation, where he launched Solana’s hackathon program in 2020. Over the years, that program brought in over 60,000 participants, 4,000 projects launched, and $600 million in venture funding for winners.

With that said, recently, Colosseum launched an oversubscribed $60 million venture fund in late June to continue supporting founders building on Solana at early stages.

The Colosseum-based programs are completely free and startups chosen to join its accelerator program receive a $250K investment from Colosseum. While the organization is not directly run by Solana, The Solana Foundation is an LP in Colosseum’s venture fund and works with it to promote the hackathon.

“You don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to participate. That’s one of our missions is to open up the aperture globally.”

In Solana’s early days, there were very few developers building on Solana, Taylor said, so one of his objectives was to convince people outside of the crypto industry to “join and give this a try. That has maintained as a primary goal with these hackathons.”

Of course, there’s a fair amount of experienced developers in these hackathons who have been building on Ethereum or Solana.

But not everyone involved in its hackathons are web3-native.

“About 50% of people the who participate in our hackathons have never built on a blockchain before,” Taylor said. “So it’s pretty split on people who on the nights and weekends have been following crypto.”

“Maybe they work at Google or are a developer at some Wall Street firm and they just want to dip their toes in,” he added. “And a lot of time these people just get hooked over the course of six-weeks.”

Interestingly enough, a lot of the best teams enter one hackathon “as a newbie or developer,” maybe they just left their web2 job and want to get involved, Taylor noted, but over a couple of years, they enter multiple hackathons and by the last hackathon they’re building a full startup.

Taylor said that the US is a hot spot for developers, but Asia Pacific as a region is “most popular,” including India, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and China, to name a few countries. “That mirrors crypto generally, most of crypto trading happens in Asia, so there’s a lot of startups building there.”

There’s also “impressive growth from Germany and the United Kingdom, he said. “There’s also a long tail from other countries,” like Australia, Norway and ones in Africa like Nigeria.

Given that US regulators has cracked down on the crypto space, Taylor sees it as an opportunity to help founders in the States, not with legal advice per se, but to connect them with the right resources, investors and so on to “get them started” and “across the line much faster” post-hackathon.

But the biggest question stands: how can a developer stand out in a now-crowded hackathon space?

“We look for consistent participation and iteration on the product,” Taylor said. “We definitely see that a lot with people coming from web2 and then spending time in web3 and actually building something interesting.”

Check out the next section for more details and the full episode.

The latest Talking Tokens podcast 🎙️

For this week’s Thursday episode, I sat down with Matty Taylor, co-founder and GP at Colosseum. 

We talk about the Solana developer ecosystem, its growth of hackathons, what he looks for in a founder as well as how organizations like his can help non-crypto native developers get into web3.

Talking Tokens episodes are released on Spotify and Apple Podcasts at 6AM EST or YouTube at 10AM EST every Tuesday and Thursday. Listen in!

Make sure to subscribe to keep up with the latest episodes. Feel free to leave a review and tell us your thoughts.

Monitoring blockchains

Looking at some of the biggest developments onchain.

• The Open Network (TON) Applications Chain (TAC) announced it’s creating a new ZK-powered layer-2 chain with Polygon Chain Development Kit that will connect with the AggLayer

• Celo joins the Superchain with launch of layer-2 testnet Dango

• The Superchain DeFi Festival, SuperFest, launched its onchain campaign to reward up to 1.5M OP to Superchain users across OP Mainnet, Base, Mode and Fraxtal

Taking on the tokens 

The total crypto market cap increased less than 1% in the past 24-hours to $2.16 trillion. It is up 1.4% over a 7-day period.

As for the largest cryptocurrencies by market cap…

These metrics were taken prior to publication on Thursday morning EST.

Other numbers we’re eyeing…

• 3 - that’s the number of tokenized funds Goldman Sachs plans to launch this year, the firm’s digital assets global head Mathew McDermott told Fortune

Money and people moves

Latest updates on crypto startups that secured funding and industry players who are starting something new.

1. Former Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald announced she is now the CEO of Cypherpunk Holdings

2. Austin Marrazza joined Dragonfly Capital’s investing team, departing from Offchain Labs

3. Crypto Investment Firm Hypersphere Unveils $130M Market Fund (CoinDesk)

4. Frictionless Capital’s fund raised $20M to invest in “high performance blockchains and category defining applications,” its managing partner said

5. Dora raised $5.5M in an early stage fundraise led by Dragonfly and Lemniscap for its multi-chain ecosystem search engine

Talking points for the road 

Here’s some headlines and topics that you can talk about at your next dinner party, crypto event or on a first date to look smart (results may vary.) 

1. Bitcoin whales are accumulating at their fastest rate since April 2023: CryptoQuant (The Block)

   1. Speaking of bitcoin…German government continues transfers, moves $638 million in BTC to various entities

   2. And…Bitcoin Dip Buyers Pour $438 Million Into US ETFs in Two Days (Bloomberg)

2. New security council debuts with Coinbase, Anchorage as founding members (Blockworks)

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Please note that this content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Any views shared should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research. We may have a direct or indirect financial interest in content mentioned in this newsletter.