Meet Solana’s Next Potential Billion-Dollar Unicorns: Winners of Breakout Hackathon Announced

On July 2, 2025, Colosseum, a leading organization that fosters early-stage projects on the Solana blockchain, announced the winners of the Solana Breakout Hackathon in a blog post.

The Solana Breakout Hackathon 2025 concluded on May 16, 2025, with Colosseum serving as the host in collaboration with the Solana Foundation. This edition represents the third run under Colosseum’s guidance and the eleventh official Solana Foundation hackathon. With over 10,000 participants from more than 140 countries submitting 1,412 projects, Breakout stands as the largest crypto hackathon to date.

The competition attracted projects across a broad spectrum, including Infrastructure, Gaming, DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure), Stablecoins, DeFi, AI, and consumer applications. Notable sponsors such as Pump.fun, Wormhole, MagicBlock, Render Network, Perena, Walrus, Metaplex, and Replit joined the Solana Foundation to provide support and visibility to emerging projects.

Dan Albert, Executive Director of the Solana Foundation, stated, "Solana Hackathons demonstrate the rapid growth of both developer talent and innovation within the ecosystem. The ideas and founders emerging from the Solana Breakout Hackathon are driving real momentum, and the next wave of products will strengthen the ecosystem."

Grand Champion: TapeDrive

The top honor of Breakout 2025 went to TapeDrive, a scalable decentralized storage network that incentivizes users for storing data. As Grand Champion, TapeDrive received a 50,000 $USDC prize and earned exclusive passes to attend Breakpoint 2025 in Abu Dhabi.

“Absolutely Glorious Set of Winners”

Reacting to the announcement, Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-founder of Solana, described the winning participants as an "absolutely glorious set of winners" and called the results "insane."

Each of the seven tracks awarded prizes to standout projects, while a dedicated university category within each track recognized student-led innovations.

Consumer Track

First Place: Trepa — a mobile app for predicting public sentiment. Instead of betting on events, users stake on how the crowd will vote on polarizing issues. ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• Melee Markets — combines speculation with prediction markets

• TypeX — transforms typing into onchain value

• Glympse — fantasy sports for Web2 engagement

• Deks — bridges crypto adoption through gift cards

DeFi Track

First Place: Vanish — an onchain privacy layer for Solana, enabling high‑volume traders, token teams, institutions, and everyday users to execute large SPL‑native swaps without leaving a public trail. ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• MetEngine — liquidity provision platform

• Encifher — encrypted DeFi operations

• BananaZone — a gamified trading platform

• Paystream — peer-to-peer lending

AI Track

First Place: Latinum — a payment middleware that lets AI builders earn revenue. In recent months, developers created thousands of MCP servers but had no way to monetize them. Latinum addresses that gap with an MCP-compatible wallet that enables agents to pay for the services they use. ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• Project Plutus — a deployment tool for AI agents

• Agent Arc — non-custodial AI trading terminal

• Daiko — trading assistant with sell signal predictions

• theintern.fun — platform for X automation agents

Infrastructure Track

First Place: FluxRPC — the first Solana RPC fully detached from the validator layer, offering simple bandwidth‑based pricing. ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• Vertigo — sniper-proof decentralized exchange

• Unruggable — a hardware wallet for Solana

• One-time Action Codes — improved Solana Pay UX

• CONYR — real-time Solana analytics engine

Gaming Track

First Place: Crypto Fantasy League — a fantasy sports app using crypto tokens ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• Chosendotfun — PvE token launch platform

• Scrim — wagering for competitive gamers

• Block Stranding — first survival OMRPG on Solana

• Lana Roads — onchain game with Ephemeral Rollup

Stablecoins Track

First Place: CargoBill — a stablecoin payments platform for supply chains. It enables you to execute real-world logistics payments in seconds, halve your transaction costs, enhance your liquidity, and earn cashback on operational expenses using non-custodial multisig business wallets on Solana.

Runners-Up:

• Decal — a platform for payments and loyalty rewards

• LocalPay — stablecoin payments for emerging markets

• Xelio — global transfers via SMS

• Bagel — privacy-focused self-custody wallet

DePIN Track

First Place: Decen Space — reduces cost and complexity of satellite communication through decentralization. The platform links satellite companies that need to transmit data with a global network of individuals, institutions, and businesses that own ground‑station antennas. ($25,000 USDC)

Runners-Up:

• Crush — turns receipts into micro-assets

• Home Harvest — decentralized farming network

• Soulboard — marketplace for ad space

• NovenGrid — renewable energy DePIN protocol

Special Category Awards

In addition to track-specific awards, the hackathon highlighted several projects for their broader ecosystem contributions.

University Award: OpenSOL — recognized as the top student-led project across all categories ($10,000 USDC)

Public Good Award: IDL Space — honored for open-source work benefiting Solana developers ($10,000 USDC)

Solana Mobile Award: LootGo was recognized for the best integration with Solana Mobile and the upcoming Seeker dApp store. The project received $25,000 in USDC. As Solana Mobile prepares to launch Seeker starting August 2nd, applications like LootGo are positioning themselves to take advantage of the new platform. The growing anticipation reflects developer enthusiasm for building mobile-first experiences in the Solana ecosystem.

A Glimpse Into Solana’s Future

The results of Breakout 2025 reflect the creative range and technical ambition of developers building within the Solana ecosystem. From privacy and payments to gaming and infrastructure, the projects demonstrate a shift toward practical, scalable, and user-oriented solutions. The hackathon provided participants not only with financial support but also with increased visibility and feedback from a global community of builders and experts.

While only a few teams walked away with prizes, the hackathon served as a launchpad for many more who will continue building and iterating. As Colosseum and the Solana Foundation prepare for future events, the community looks forward to seeing these projects evolve from prototypes into full-fledged platforms that power the next generation of decentralized applications.

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