Community
Permissionless
The Metaplex team joined founders, builders, and infrastructure leaders at Permissionless NYC, one of the flagship events for technical and DeFi-focused conversations.
Stephen Hess (Director at the Metaplex Foundation) spoke on stage alongside teams from Story Protocol, Aptos, and Soon, discussing the future of decentralized infrastructure, how to scale onchain apps, and the importance of reliability without sacrificing decentralization.
The Metaplex team also connected with partners and developers throughout the event, reinforcing its role as the tokenization layer for Solana.
Solana Solstice
Metaplex was proud to support Solana Solstice, a 3-day event in NYC and the first consumer-oriented "non-conference conference" powered by MonkeDAO. As a Platinum Partner, Metaplex joined leaders across the ecosystem to explore how Solana is scaling consumer apps, NFTs, and onchain experiences.
Clay Helms (BD at Metaplex Foundation) spoke on a main stage panel alongside founders from Madlads, BONK, Claynosaurz and MonkeDAO.
Metaplex also partnered with PUBLIQUE and Solana Foundation to sponsor the closing gallery event at Lume Studios, featuring Solana-native art, auctions, and film screenings.
Metaplex contributed to the Charity Claw Machine activation during Solana Solstice, supporting Buddies for Paws alongside MonkeDAO, Bonk, Solflare, Ledger, and other ecosystem partners. The machine featured collectible NFTs provided by Metaplex from Portals, Player2, SolanaMBS, and Collector Crypt, with all proceeds going to charity.
To help bring new faces to the event, Metaplex distributed Solstice passes through an open community giveaway.
OnionDAO
Metaplex sponsored OnionDAO’s Chicago residency, a month-long IRL activation for builders, developers, and crypto newcomers hosted from June 16 to July 11. The event brought the Solana ecosystem together under one roof, with workshops, talks, and community programming.
Nicholas Strange (BD at Metaplex Foundation) presented on how Metaplex powers token and NFT standards across Solana, and shared an early preview of Genesis, the upcoming Metaplex product suite for onchain token offerings.
Metaplex also supported GREED Academy’s Blockchain 101 course throughout the residency, onboarding new users with $MPLX, $SOL, and $USDC to help them take their first steps into Solana. The course was made possible with support from Solflare, SNS, Spiderswap, and Raposa.
Colosseum Breakout Hackathon
The Solana Breakout Hackathon, hosted by Colosseum and sponsored by Metaplex, concluded with over 10,000 participants from 140+ countries and 1,412 project submissions, the largest crypto hackathon to date.
Metaplex sponsored the Gaming Track, with Crypto Fantasy League taking first place for their fantasy sports platform built entirely on Solana. Additional Gaming Track winners included Chosendotfun, Scrim, Block Stranding, and Lana Roads (by Send Arcade).
Winners were also selected across Consumer, DeFi, AI, Infrastructure, Stablecoin, and DePIN categories, with standout projects like TapeDrive (Grand Champion), Trepa (Consumer), Vanish (DeFi), Latinum (AI), FluxRPC (Infrastructure), CargoBill (Stablecoin), and Decen Space (DePIN) taking home top prizes.
The full list of winning projects reflects the growing momentum for Solana infrastructure, tokenization, and consumer applications, with many powered by Metaplex.
Superteam Europe & Balkan Startup Village
Metaplex joined forces with Superteam communities across Europe in June, supporting early-stage builders and connecting with the next wave of projects participating in the Colosseum Breakout Hackathon.
In Croatia, Scharko from Metaplex Foundation participated in Superteam Balkan’s Startup Village, delivering a session on token generation, joining a panel with Solflare and SOLYD to discuss the state of Solana, and connecting with founders driving growth in the region.
Later that week, Scharko participated in Superteam Europe’s Demo Day, running a workshop titled “Token Generation on Solana,” helping teams better understand how Metaplex standards power token launches and digital assets across the ecosystem.