codex

Colosseum Codex: Seeker Seed Vault Wallet, Squads x Coinbase, Step Wallet

Seed Vault Wallet Deep Dive, Squads Partners with Coinbase, Step Wallet, BAM Community Forum, Solana Foundation Deployment Subsidies

Mike Hale

14 Aug 2025 — 5 min read

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

A deep dive into Seeker's Seed Vault Wallet
Squads announces a strategic partnership with Coinbase
Step Finance introduces Step Wallet
The official BAM community forum is live
Discussion on Solana Foundation deployment subsidies

👛 Seed Vault Wallet Deep Dive

The new Seeker phone, which just started shipping, includes the Seed Vault Wallet as a built-in feature.

The wallet combines a dedicated hardware security module, which stores private keys in a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), with a native mobile app interface, so keys never leave the hardware, and all signing is done securely within it.

The wallet hardware operates independently from Android, isolating keys from the operating system and potential software threats. Recovery phrases are stored offline on a physical Seed Card, reducing exposure to online attacks.

Each Seeker device comes with a Genesis Token and Seeker ID. The Genesis Token enables automatic verification for all Solana dApps, while the Seeker ID provides a human-readable address format recognized across the ecosystem.

Developers can integrate support for Genesis Token–based authentication and Seeker IDs to simplify user onboarding, improve trust, and eliminate the need for complex address entry in their applications.

This deep dive provides a complete look at Seed Vault Wallet, covering its security architecture, setup process, core features, and how developers can integrate its capabilities into their Solana applications.

Seed Vault Wallet Deep Dive

💵 Squads x Coinbase

Squads has announced a strategic partnership with Coinbase to accelerate adoption of USDC and expand the role of stablecoins in onchain finance.

The agreement makes USDC the default stablecoin across the Squads product suite, building on an existing base of over $1 billion in USDC secured through its platform, representing nearly 15% of USDC supply on Solana.

By integrating USDC throughout its infrastructure, Squads can offer stable, reliable value transfer for both institutional and retail use cases.

USDC is now embedded in all major Squads offerings:

Altitude: A business account for saving, earning, and transferring dollars.
Fuse: A personal finance app with stablecoin management and a Visa card for spending USDC anywhere.
Grid: An API stack enabling fintech developers to embed stablecoin accounts into their applications.

Developers building on Solana can leverage these integrations to create products with built-in stablecoin capabilities, streamline user onboarding, and access a secure, liquid settlement asset.

Squads Announces Strategic Partnership with Coinbase to Accelerate USDC Adoption

👣 Step Wallet

Step Finance has launched Step Wallet (iOS/Android), a mobile crypto wallet designed to integrate earning, tracking, and market insights for Solana users.

The wallet builds on the Step Dashboard, adding mobile-first capabilities and introducing One-Click earning powered by Dialect Blinks. Users can deploy tokens into yield products across the Solana DeFi ecosystem directly from the wallet interface.

Key features:

One-Click earning with direct access to Solana DeFi yield opportunities
Integration with Step Dashboard for portfolio tracking and management
Multi-wallet portfolio tracking with historical net worth data
Live market data with custom watchlists and SolanaFloor news feed integration
Available on the App Store and Google Play, with Solana dApp Store support coming soon

By leveraging Dialect Blinks, Step Wallet enables instant DeFi interactions from within the wallet.

Developers integrating with Step Dashboard or building DeFi products on Solana can benefit from a streamlined mobile user experience, reaching both experienced users and new entrants to DeFi.

Introducing Step Wallet: The easiest place to earn on Solana

💬 BAM Community Forum

The official Blockspace Assembly Markets (BAM) community forum is now live, providing a dedicated space for discussion, support, and collaboration around BAM’s transaction scheduling system for Solana.

The first forum post introduces a plugin proposal for Application-Controlled Execution (ACE), which would allow participating applications to prioritize specific transaction types such as market maker cancels, liquidations, and oracle updates. The forum enables developers, validators, and node operators to:

Explore BAM integration and technical details
Share optimization experiences
Get technical support from the BAM team and community
Connect with peers and propose ecosystem improvements

The launch aims to foster collaboration in advancing Solana’s transaction scheduling capabilities and to gather feedback on new features such as ACE.

Welcome to BAM Community Forum

💰 Program Deployment Rent Subsidies

@redacted_noah shared a suggestion for the Solana Foundation to subsidize rent costs for deploying programs, reclaiming funds if programs remain unused for 3+ months. This idea is aimed at lowering the $500-$1,200+ deployment barrier.

The discussion warned of liability if adopted programs lack funding and how costs can stem from Anchor bloat, solvable via optimization with a framework like Pinocchio. Others suggested bonds, KYC, or audit subsidies to prevent abuse and enhance security.

The biggest risk being spam or abandoned programs. Paying the initial rent for all deployments could result in unused or low-quality programs consuming resources.

Developers could be required to meet certain eligibility criteria, such as project verification, contribution history, or a grant application, before receiving rent coverage with periodic reviews to reclaim resources from abandoned programs.

The next step would be to design a pilot program where the Solana Foundation covers initial rent for a limited number of eligible deployments, with community feedback, qualification criteria, security safeguards, and a process for reclaiming resources from unused programs.

Program where Solana Foundation pays the rent cost for deploying programs

⚡ Quick Hits

What are p-tokens and How Will They Make Solana 19x More Efficient? - SolanaFloor

A Deep Dive into Rotor: Solana’s new block propagation protocol - @anza_xyz

Solana Spotlight August 2025: Speed, Stocks, and S&M - Mike MacCana

Advanced Solana Vulnerabilities w/r0bre (video) - Rektoff

Solana Transactions and Instructions Explained (video) - bri

Timing Games on Solana: Validator Incentives, Network Impacts, and Agave's Hidden Inefficiencies - @ChorusOne

At The Edge Of Determinism: Transaction Lifecycle in Solana Sealevel and Sui Object Runtime - Helius

You don’t need more followers. You need more clarity. - @SkyRiseLabs

⚙️ Tools & Resources

Slipless is a sample program using Token-2022 transfer hooks to enforce whitelist rules at the token level that creates a mint, issues “token badges” to eligible addresses, and uses a transfer hook to check badge ownership before approving transfers.

DePIN Playbook has been updated with best practices for blockchain use in DePIN projects, reward distribution design, cost reduction with compressed accounts, and implementing Proof-of-Contribution without full data persistence.

sbpf is a simple scaffold to bootstrap, build, and deploy sBPF assembly programs with ease

batch_token_transfer_pinocchio is a sample app to batch token transfers in Pinocchio.

👩‍🔧 Get Hired

Molecule is hiring a Senior Full Stack Developer
Artemis is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer
Phase Labs is hiring a Mid-Level Frontend Engineer
Pye is hiring a Data Scientist - Protocol Data & DeFi Research
Syndica is hiring a Senior React Native Engineer

🎧 Listen to This

Lightspeed

In this episode of the Lightspeed podcast, Phantom’s Brandon Millman and Sam Rosenblum discuss the wallet’s future direction and the broader Solana ecosystem.

The conversation covers the current state of Solana DeFi, Phantom’s vision to become a super-app, opportunities in areas like onchain equities, partnerships, and the importance of owning the end-user relationship in product development.

Phantom CEO: The Next Chapter For Phantom | Brandon Millman & Sam Rosenblum

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