Colosseum Codex: Solana Payments Hub, Onion DAO, Anchor v2
Solana Payments Hub, Onion DAO 2026, Anchor v2 Proposal, 60 Days of Solana Course, SolanaCDN
Here's what's featured in this week's issue:
- Solana launches payments.org as a live stablecoin payments hub
- Onion DAO announces 2026 edition
- Anchor v2 proposal open for discussion
- RareSkills completes its 60 Days of Solana tutorial series
- Pipe Network launches SolanaCDN acceleration layer for validators
💵 Solana Payments
Solana launched payments.org, a dedicated hub showcasing live stablecoin transactions on mainnet. The platform positions Solana as "production-ready infrastructure for global payments" and includes live payment simulators, integration guides, and real-world case studies for developers building payment applications.
Developer resources include modular payment tools, transaction simulators, compliance-friendly token extensions, and streamlined onboarding documentation.
🧅 Onion DAO 2026
Onion DAO is a month-long in-person technology festival returning to Chicago this summer. The event draws builders, artists, and curious locals into a shared coworking space for workshops, competitions, and community-run activations across AI, cybersecurity, decentralized coordination, and hardware/robotics.
Year one drew 800+ applicants and 400+ visitors across four weeks. The format is open by design. Attendees pitch and run their own activations, with no approval process required.
The shared coworking space runs 24/7 throughout the month, with talks, demos, and sessions organized by whoever is in the room. Workshops are practitioner-led covering vibe coding, music production, AI, and creative entrepreneurship.
⚓ Anchor v2 Discussion
The Solana Foundation opened a public design discussion for Anchor V2, outlining a major redesign of the smart contract framework around five goals:
- Reducing developer burden
- Enforcing secure defaults
- Clarifying performance escape hatches
- Leveraging compile-time diagnostic
- Elevating IDLs to first-class status.
The most significant structural change collapses Account, AccountLoader, LazyAccount, InterfaceAccount, Signer, and Program into a single generic Account<T> type. The shift to the Pinocchio runtime enables lifetime elimination throughout removing the need for 'info lifetimes.
Testing shifts from Node.js to LiteSVM with Rust-native tests, removing the Node dependency from core distribution.
The discussion is open for community feedback.
👩🏫 60 Days of Solana
RareSkills completed its 60 Days of Solana tutorial series, a project two years in the making that grew to over 130,000 words across 50+ lessons in 8 modules.
The series targets engineers with EVM experience seeking Solana proficiency and draws a direct line from RareSkills' 2022 gas optimization course.
The final additions cover three advanced areas:
- Solana programs without frameworks using native Rust (program entry points, Borsh serialization, CPI mechanics, and security validation)
- Programs in raw sBPF assembly (memory layout, register conventions, syscalls)
- How compute units work.
Earlier modules cover Rust fundamentals, PDAs, SPL tokens, Token Extensions, transaction structure, and instruction introspection.
🌐 SolanaCDN
Pipe Network launched SolanaCDN, a free open-source Agave fork that adds a CDN acceleration layer for Solana validators.
The client routes shreds and vote packets through Pipe's global mesh of 35,000+ nodes alongside Turbine, giving validators a parallel fast lane without modifying consensus, leader scheduling, or voting rules.
Performance benchmarks show 3.8x faster shred propagation than standard Turbine. Specific optimizations include 5ms shred coalescing, data shreds delivered before coding shreds, and wider fanout for leaders. Resource overhead is capped at under 1 CPU core and ~100MB memory.
The practical validator case is timing-based: earlier shreds mean earlier votes, more credits, and fewer skipped slots during leader windows. Validators in lower-cost regions can run competitively against premium setups.
The community tier is free with no usage limits.
The fastest acceleration layer for Solana
Want early access to the latest products launching from Colosseum?
We're looking for alpha testers to be among the first to try what we're building!
⚡ Quick Hits
Trident Arena: Multi-Agent AI Security for Solana Programs - Ackee
Sphere Learning Center is Live - Sphere
Introducing Privacy Aggregator Layer (PAL) - @solflare
Txtx (Surfpool) is joining the Solana Foundation - @ludo_txtx
Agent Registry: The trust layer for autonomous AI agents - Solana
mtnDAO interviews: How the best teams in Solana got where they are - @QuicknodeSolana
The final JS DX for the Solana ecosystem, reloaded - @_cxalem
The Ultimate Solana VRF Dice Demo - @magicblock
Why Most DevRel Programs Fail (And the Revenue-First Framework That Fixes It) - Tessa Kriesel
⚙️ Tools & Resources
solana-vault-standard is a Tokenized vault program and SDK for building yield-bearing vaults on Solana with deposit/withdraw operations, share accounting, preview functions, and modular extensions for fees, caps, access control, timelocks, and multi-asset portfolios.
safe-solana-builder is the first Claude skill for writing production-grade, security-first Solana programs. Built by a Solana security researcher, for Solana developers.
Tyche is a competitive price discovery protocol for Solana whose Competitive Execution Engine (CEE) runs sealed, privacy-preserving competition for any asset class at real-time speed, settled by trustless on-chain code.
Solana Priority Fee Analyzer lets you paste any transaction signature to see an efficiency score (0–100) comparing your priority fee against the live market, compute unit analysis, transaction classifier, and lamport delta vs. today's median fee. Built with QuickNode RPC and Priority Fee API.
Zk_compression_Demo is a demonstration of ZK compression on Solana to mint and send tokens to 1M addresses for under $50 using Light Protocol's ZK Compression.
💀 RIP
Magic Eden is winding down its EVM marketplace, Bitcoin (Runes & Ordinals) marketplace, Bitcoin API, Magic Eden Wallet, and NFT buyback program to focus exclusively on Solana, Packs, and its crypto casino/sportsbetting product Dicey.
👩🔧 Get Hired
- MagicBlock is hiring a Senior Rust Engineer
- Jito Labs is hiring a Senior Protocol Engineer
- Solana Foundation is hiring a Security Lead
- Rain is hiring a Software Engineer - Solana
🎧 Listen to This
Billions with Pedro Miranda
Pedro interviews Tuom Holmberg, founder of Collector Crypt, a platform for trading collectible cards on the Solana blockchain.
They discuss Tuom's journey as a collector, the motivations behind building a business in the collectibles space, and the challenges faced in securing VC funding.
The conversation digs into the dynamics between collectors and speculators, the future of collectibles as an asset class, and the importance of creating a safe ecosystem for trading.
Tuom Holmberg - Collector Crypt
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