Colosseum Codex: 2026 Hackathons, Updraft Solana Course, Offline Signer CLI

Here's what's featured in this week's issue:

• Colosseum announces its hackathon schedule for 2026.
• Cyfrin Updraft launches Solana Development Course
• Chainflow releases the Offline Signer CLI
• Inco Lightning Beta goes live on Devnet

🏟️ 2026 Hackathons

Colosseum’s 2026 Solana hackathon schedule is set, with the spring online hackathon running from April 6 through May 11 and the fall edition from September 28 through November 2. 

If you are already building a crypto startup and do not want to wait for the next event, you can initiate an Eternal sprint, Colosseum’s ongoing onchain competition for founders.

Colosseum 2026 Hackathon Schedule

👩‍🏫 Solana Development Course

Cyfrin Updraft has launched a free Solana Development Course on Updraft focused on building real-world onchain programs in both Anchor and native Rust. The curriculum combines foundations, applied projects, and security, with 31 lessons and 16 hands-on projects.

Developers start by learning core Solana concepts and architecture, accounts model, rent and state, programs, instructions and transactions, Program Derived Addresses (PDAs), Cross-Program Invocations (CPIs), and IDLs. 

The course is designed to build the mental models needed to reason about Solana’s execution environment.

From there, you build concrete onchain components such as oracles, a time-locked “piggy bank” using PDAs, Dutch auctions with SPL tokens, and a constant-sum automated market maker. Every project is implemented twice, once in Anchor and once in native Rust, giving you parallel exposure to both approaches and a total of 12 shipped programs.

The course concludes with four security Capture the Flag challenges that cover common Solana vulnerabilities, including missing signer checks, missing authorization, incorrect PDA validation, and rent-cleanup issues. You identify and exploit bugs, then learn how to avoid them in production code.

All content is delivered through videos, written guides, and visual explanations, with transcripts and community support via Discord.

Introducing: The Solana Development Course on Updraft

📝 Offline Signer CLI

Chainflow has released Offline Signer CLI, an open source Solana tool for securely handling high-value transactions without exposing private keys to the internet. The CLI is designed for validators, DAOs, custodians, and teams managing treasuries or long-term cold storage who cannot rely on browser wallets or online signing flows.

The tool is packaged as a single standalone binary with no external dependencies and runs entirely on an offline machine, so the private key never touches an internet-connected device. 

The workflow separates transaction construction, signing, and broadcasting. You build the transaction on an online machine, move it to an air-gapped environment to sign, then return it to an online machine to submit hours or even days later. 

The key technical piece is support for Durable Nonces, which removes Solana’s usual 1 to 2 minute recentBlockhash expiry as a blocker for offline signing.

It supports versioned transactions, Address Lookup Tables, and provides a human-readable preview of key transaction fields such as recipient, amount, and network before signing. 

Offline Signer CLI: How to Sign Solana Transactions Without Ever Touching the Internet

🌩️ Inco Lightning

Inco has released Lightning beta on Devnet. The system introduces encrypted computation primitives for Solana so sensitive data stays encrypted throughout execution while still being usable inside programs. 

Developers can write confidential Solana programs in Rust, including Anchor based workflows, and integrate them with frontends or backends using Inco’s JavaScript SDK. 

Inco Lightning is built around a network that processes encrypted operations off chain with cryptographic guarantees. Programs receive ciphertext from clients, turn it into encrypted “handles” via CPI, and operate on those references instead of raw values. 

The model supports arithmetic, comparisons, encrypted random numbers, conditional logic, and programmable access control for decryption. 

Inco provides quick start guides, examples, and documentation so Solana teams can begin experimenting with confidential applications.

Build with Inco on Solana

⚡ Quick Hits

Developing on Arcium by Quicknode (video) - @solana_devs

Umbra Privacy v2 Docs are now live - Umbra Privacy

Beyond Stablecoins: The Rise of the Internet Financial System - Circle

Framework Kit now has docs - @GuiBibeau

Ledger Flex vs Solflare Shield, and the blind signing drama on Solana (video) - @quicknodesolana

DeCharge Network: Building Onchain Energy Capital Markets - Messari

Introducing the DoubleZero Grants Program - DoubleZero

⚙️ Tools & Resources

gg-program-resurrect "resurrects" onchain Solana programs by reconstructing historical binaries from upgrade buffer writes, even after they have been upgraded.

solana-dev-skill is a comprehensive Claude Code skill for modern Solana development using best practices.

token-helpers is a set of helpers and wrappers around multiple Solana token libraries that enable developers to create token accounts with one-liners, supporting different token standards including Token Program, Token-2022, and Token-ACL.

execute-explore is a minimal example program that shows how to use CPI calls to transfer SOL from an NFT-owned account to an arbitrary destination using Metaplex Core’s execute instruction by treating an NFT as a wallet.

💀 RIP

$SEND is being sunsetted because the team’s focus has shifted to AI x crypto, which they believe requires a fresh capital structure and fewer short-term token distractions. $SEND will no longer be a core token for any products, but holders can burn their tokens by Jan 31, 2026 to receive a non-transferable NFT that may entitle them to a share of any future token or rewards.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

• Quicknode is hiring a Senior Technical Account Manager
• Raiku is hiring a Senior Validator Engineer
• Anza is hiring a Software Engineer, Consensus
• BloXroute Labs is hiring a Software Engineering Team Lead

🎧 Listen to This

The Gwart Show

Max Resnick, Lead Economist at Anza, joins Gwart to talk about optimizing Solana for financial markets. He discusses the shift from Ethereum, the mechanics of MCP to stop censorship, and how “ACE” (Application Control Execution) empowers apps. Max discusses dominance of Prop AMMs, the controversy around block packing, and how Solana plans to compete with Hyperliquid in the perp market.

1 Year After Leaving Ethereum For Solana - Max Resnick

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