Colosseum：全新的Solana生态黑客松与加速器平台

Colosseum has been announced to host Solana’s hackathons, empower winning founding teams with long-term acceleration, and invest in the next generation of groundbreaking crypto startups.

The crypto market is at an inflection point, with many promising experiments being confined to small corners of the internet, constrained by a lack of scalable infrastructure for developers and end users. Solana has made a lot of innovations at the basic level, making the next generation of encryption products expected to surpass existing projects.

Colosseums mission is to discover the huge potential of global builders, find the founders of on-chain products in the next era, and let the wave of innovation continue.

The Colosseum is an independent organization composed of three integrated parts

Hackathon:The Colosseum will host 2-3 online hackathons per year for the Solana Foundation and the broader ecosystem, and these competitions serve as a crucible for innovation in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The five-week hackathon levels the playing field for global innovation teams to showcase the potential of the products they build.

accelerator:Colosseums Accelerator is an online, five-week program tailored for hackathon winners to gain an in-depth experience of the Solana ecosystem. They will join an elite network of founders, gain access to a diverse range of users, receive 1-on-1 mentoring, and receive ongoing coaching. The accelerator cohort will launch directly after each hackathon, with each batch of winners being a part of it. Participating in the Colosseum Hackathon and being selected as a winner is the only way to enter the program.

Venture capital:Teams selected for the accelerator program will receive a $250,000 seed investment from Colosseum on founder-friendly terms. In addition, the accelerator team will receive ongoing assistance as they continue to develop the product and raise future rounds of funding. The program will kick off with Demo Day, where founders will demonstrate and make direct introductions to dozens of venture capital funds.

For founders who weren’t initially accepted into an accelerator, we encourage you to keep trying. Developers often participate in multiple hackathons before being selected as winners. Finding the right product and the right team can take some time.

For selected founders, Colosseum support does not end after Demo Day. At the heart of Colosseum is a community of founders and alumni where you can find support throughout your journey. Teams will continue to have access to all private tools, discussion boards and other features offered by Colosseum’s online platform.

Colosseum Team

Colosseum was co-founded by Matty Taylor, Clay Robbins, and Nate Levine, among others. The team will support founders through hackathons, accelerator programs, and other assistance.

Matty previously served as head of growth at the Solana Foundation, where he launched the Solana Hackathon in 2020. Over the past three years, the program has attracted more than 60,000 participants, launched 4,000 projects, and raised $600 million in venture capital for winners. Solana ecosystem founders from Tensor, Squads, StepN, Jito, and dozens of other leading projects got their start through Solana Foundation hackathons. Matty previously worked at 0x Labs and Square.

Clay is a principal partner at Slow Ventures, one of Solana’s first investors. He helps lead the firms cryptocurrency investment efforts and has been an active angel investor in the ecosystem through many market cycles. Prior to joining Slow, he was a product and growth expert at 0x Labs and Square. Clay and Matty met on their first day at Square and worked together for the third time after exchanging daily text messages.

Nate was a software engineer at Stripe and worked on their cryptocurrency team. While at Stripe, he built the developer tools and API infrastructure responsible for moving billions of dollars every day. Previously, Nate led the engineering team at YC-backed fintech startup LendUp. Nate and Matty became interested in Bitcoin when they were classmates in college.

Chris Ba will be participating in the hackathon in charge of Asia. Chris served as the head of Solana Greater China. During his tenure, he made many contributions to the Asian market, including establishing media influence, building communities, establishing and maintaining ecological funds and Asian exchange relations, obtaining SPL support on multiple exchanges and wallets, and committed to increasing participation in Asian hackathons and incubating early teams, including the star project StepN. Chris will serve as an advisor to find and support more high-quality Asian teams and projects for the upcoming hackathon.

In addition to the support of its team, Colosseum works with leading ecosystem developers and founders, many of whom are previous hackathon winners. Founders will receive extensive mentoring and support during the accelerator program and become part of an exclusive founder community.

The Solana Foundation’s Hackathon is now the largest regular hackathon not just in the entire crypto space, but in technology, in terms of number of participants, product submissions, and amount of venture capital received by the winners.Remarkably, 80% of startups in the Solana ecosystem that received VC dice were founded during online hackathons.

Therefore, there is a huge opportunity to scale ecosystem hackathons even further. The Solana Foundation will end its internally managed hackathons and instead partner with Colosseum to realize this vision.

This is a positive step forward for the Solana ecosystem’s decentralized hackathon, which also allows Colosseum’s team to work more closely with peers in the ecosystem to further develop the platform.

Colosseum will enhance the hackathon and accelerator experience through several key areas

Online platform:Solana Foundation’s hackathons have evolved to the point where they are not as easily managed as any traditional hackathon. So Colosseum built its own custom platform that simplifies everything from finding co-founders to discussing product ideas to submitting hackathon projects. Founders in the accelerator will also receive a unique set of features that will help them as they launch their journey. If you are a developer looking to attend the next Solana Hackathon, you canCreate a Colosseum profile。

cooperate:One of Colosseum’s goals is to embed the broader ecosystem directly into competitions. It is therefore actively working with various companies, ecosystem developers and investors who can contribute to judging and sponsorship. If you are interested in cooperating,The Colosseum can be contacted。 

support:After a hackathon, good teams often receive insufficient support to help them develop further, or are underfunded. Colosseum’s accelerator fills this gap by selecting hackathon winners to join the program and helping them early on in their entrepreneurial journey. While Solana Foundation’s hackathons are startup competitions first and foremost, it’s true that many participants don’t want to be founders. Colosseum supports these developer communities through online platforms and discussion forums. Improving these hackathons is an evolving process and we hope to work with the community to understand pain points and opportunities. So if there is any feedback, alsoThe Colosseum can be contacted。。

If you are a developer, founder, or team interested in participating in the next Solana Foundation Hackathon starting March 4th,Please register for a Colosseum account here, registration for the hackathon will open on the platform in a few weeks.

You can also follow @ColosseumOrgX account @ColosseumOrg updated.