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Builders keep flocking to Solana — with more coming during Solana Grizzlython
It’s a new year — but the builders on Solana keep building. At least that’s what the January 2022 edition of the Electric Capital Developer Report says.
The report, which looked at developer activity across the web3 industry, found more than 2,000 developers building on Solana in 2022 — second in developer activity only to the Ethereum ecosystem, and up 83% from the year before. The entire Solana ecosystem has seen a 16x growth in the number of full-time developers since 2018.
Electric Capital notes that developer activity on Solana tends to spike around hackathons and other events, as new teams sprint to launch their projects and take advantage of the prize pot. That’s why now is the perfect time to start building and fight the bear.
On Feb. 2, the Solana Foundation kicked off Grizzlython, the latest Solana hackathon with $5 million in prizes and seed funding up for grabs. Projects go from ideas to fully-fledged companies during a six week sprint — with special prizes and a demo day for the winners.
In addition to a competition-wide Grand Champion with a $50,000 USDC award, Grizzlython will award prizes across seven tracks core to the growing Solana ecosystem — Mobile, DeFi, Payments, Web3 Consumer, Tools + Infrastructure, Gaming, and DAOs + Network States. Projects must be submitted by March 14.
The devs are on Solana. Are you ready to join them?
Register for Grizzlython here!
Top Ecosystem News
Solana Mobile soft launches in Melbourne
Are you there, anon? It's Solana Mobile — and Saga is starting to make its way out into the world.
At the Solana Mobile event in Melbourne on Feb. 22, Solana Mobile engineering lead Steven Laver showed off how you can turn a selfie into an NFT in seconds with Minty Fresh.
Have you ordered yours? Saga is due to start shipping soon.
Hivemapper sees rise in daily contributions in the last three months, Messari reports
It's time to hit the road. A new report from Messari shows that Hivemapper has seen a surge in contributor activity. In the last three months, more than 300,000 unique kilometers have been added to the network. Even since the start of January, Hivemapper has seen a 4.5x increase in average daily unique kilometers.
The report comes out just as Hivemapper celebrated over 1.5m transactions and 6,000 contributors joining their Discord.
Helium proposes migrating to Solana on March 27
It's a great time for DePin projects! The Helium Foundation, whose community previously voted to leave their own blockchain to join Solana, has officially proposed that the migration occur on March 27th.
The upgrade, which will be overseen by a volunteer committee that will finalize the date, will make the Helium Network natively compatible with other platforms within the Solana ecosystem. Learn more here.
Community Headlines
Here's what's new this month:
- Catalina Whales, a Solana NFT project, announced a record deal for a virtual band with Def Jam Records.
- Typed bytecode is coming to Solana.
- Parcl, a real estate derivatives platform, launches on Solana.
- Kamino Finance launched a Solana DeFi Health Report.
- Base, Coinbase's L2, includes bridge support for Solana.
- CandyPay announces one-click checkouts.
