As the Solana Hackathon, Radar, kick off, developers are forming teams to work on the next million dollar idea and compete for prizes and recognition.
Metaplex has consistently played a significant role in these competitions, providing hackers with a digital asset standard that can be leverage for any project. Previous hackathon winners who successfully utilized Metaplex and NFTs include Tensor, Sollinked, and Torque, among many other talented builders.
To inspire and guide participants in this hackathon, we’ve curated a list of six promising project ideas with significant potential:
Digital Badges
In the digital age, there’s a growing demand for modernizing how we represent and verify skills and achievements.
Digital badges have emerged as a compelling solution, aligning with the evolving landscape of education and the job market. Unlike traditional degrees, these badges offer a more granular and dynamic representation of an individual’s capabilities, encompassing a wide array of skills and micro-credentials.
NFTs presents an opportunity to grow the digital badges market leveraging:
- Enhanced Verification: Employers can more easily authenticate credentials.
- True Ownership: Individuals gain greater control over their credentials, reducing reliance on issuing institutions for validation and mitigating the risk of predatory annual fees for credential display.
Moreover, the programmable nature of NFTs opens up possibilities for interactive elements within digital badges, such as code snippets or audio files, providing a more vivid demonstration of skills.
Fitness as a Vertical
The fitness sector on Solana has seen a rise in workout-to-earn applications like Stepn and Moonwalk Fitness, as well as DePin health trackers like Cudis. However, there’s still an opportunity to introduce digital badges that could serve as verifiable tokens of fitness milestones and healthy habits. These could act as motivational tools and allow individuals to digitally curate and display their health and fitness achievements.
There’s significant potential in focusing on a specific vertical and creating the infrastructure to power all the applications in that ecosystem, especially in a growing sector like fitness.
How to Leverage Metaplex Core for Digital Badges
The first requirement for a Digital Badge, would probably be that it has to be soulbounded. Thanks to the plugin system, adding this type of behaviour enforcer is easy, for example the PermanentFreezeDelegate is the perfect candidate for this use case!
Then to organize badges efficiently, and univocally link the owner with all the badges they earn, there is the possibility of deterministically derive the collection address using seeds and linking it to both the specific vertical and the user publickey (for example: seeds = [b”fitness”, user.publickey]) and add all the specific badges to that collection for faster indexing and composability!
Ticketing Platform
Another idea we’re very excited, and that we have previously discussed in an example on the Developer Hub, is how “Core could revolutionize the Ticketing System”. Given the current landscape of predatory fees and practices in the ticketing industry, there’s a big need for a solution that empowers both fans and artists.
For those interested in this vertical, we recommend reading our in-depth analysis and technical overview on creating a ticketing system. You can find this comprehensive guide here!
As a quick summary, here are some advantages of using digital assets as tickets:
- Authenticity and Security: Each ticket, as a unique digital asset, makes counterfeiting virtually impossible and provides an immutable record of ownership.
- Smart Contract Integration: Ticketing platforms can incorporate smart contracts to automate processes such as transfers, refunds, or access to special perks, all governed by predefined rules.
- Enhanced User Experience: Tickets can serve as digital collectibles post-event, offering attendees a lasting memento that potentially appreciates in value.
- Controlled Secondary Market: Event organizers gain increased oversight and control over ticket resales, with the ability to embed royalty structures directly into the asset.
Digital Identities
The current social and profile layer, especially on blockchain, is highly inefficient due to the proliferation of disparate standards, with each platform focusing on its own approach rather than leveraging a new composable and general identity standard (for harvesting points for example).
Imagine the potential of a generalized method for tracking various blockchain actions, saved in a digital NFT passport owned by the user. Protocol creators, instead of developing their own standards to identify power users, could leverage this passport to ensure they’re rewarding genuine active participants rather than airdrop farmers. By tying this to wallet uniqueness verification and, for protocols requiring compliance, allowing selective access to certain data, it could become a powerhouse for protocols to effectively track and engage their users.
Creating such a system is relatively straightforward. You could develop a highly composable instruction that adds points based on specific actions, such as spending or other relevant behaviors and saving then all this “behaviour points” directly on the NFT itself, so newer protocols could just leverage past actions across various platforms to give out tailored rewards.
By then making it soul-bounded will make sure that this identification will not shared between different users
Tokenized RWA Assets
The market for high-value resellable assets such as watches and collectibles is often plagued by inefficiencies that result in substantial costs.
For example when an asset is sold to a buyer, it incurs numerous expenses like import taxes, which in Europe can reach up to 20% of the asset’s value, shipping expenses, insurance costs for collectibles worth up to $100,000, as well as authentication and storage fees. These costs can drastically reduce potential margin for resellers whose primary business model relies on moving objects quickly rather than holding them for long-term appreciation.
Leveraging NFTs and tokenization could dramatically reduce these fees. By issuing a digital twin, trading and reselling can occur without incurring import taxes or shipment costs and a company specialized in creating these digital doubles could capitalize on economies of scale to lower both authentication and storage costs.
Then just when a collector decides they want physical possession of the item, they could redeem it and pay the associated fees.
If you’re interested in a more detailed reasoning on why “Core is the standard for Tokenised Assets”, you can find a blog post I made some time ago here.
How to Leverage Metaplex Core for Tokenized RWA Assets
The Permanent Plugins available for assets allow governing bodies to retain certain controls (like transfer, burning and freezing) over the asset even after issuance and trading. This means that in cases of foul play by any party, the asset could be recovered and returned to the rightful owner, providing an additional layer of security and trust in the system.
For collectibles like rare cards and figurines, the Autograph Plugin can add significant value since it enables virtual signatures by the creator of the figurine to be embedded directly into the digital asset. Other than this, by storing this signature on the blockchain, it ensures that this valuable addition will never be lost or damaged, unlike physical autographs.
Managing IPs
Solana’s ecosystem has a wide range of valuable assets with strong intellectual properties (IPs), such as Claynosaurz, Degen Ape Academy, and Solana Monkey Business. However, current methods for managing and licensing IP assets are outdated, making it challenging to effectively track and leverage assets like NFTs.
Additionally, traditional licensing systems is burdened by manual processes, potential disputes, and the complexities of managing global agreements, leading to inefficiencies, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities for both IP holders and licensees.
By representing licensing agreements as digital artifacts, we can create a system that provides:
- Immutable Record-Keeping: Storing all licensing terms directly on the assets and recording every associated action as a transaction creates an unalterable history, reducing the potential for disputes.
- Automated Execution: Automating key processes, such as royalty payments, license renewals, and other agreement-related actions through smart contracts, minimizes human error and significantly simplifies the auditing process.
- Real-Time Tracking: By embedding licensing data directly within the assets in an easily indexable format (using tools like the AppData plugin and Digital Asset Standard (DAS)), owner can have instant visibility into all licensing activities and allowing for continuous auditing and up-to-date portfolio management.
Existing NFTs as a Vertical
As the NFT market continues to grow and larger companies begin leveraging blockchain for their IPs, there is a clear need for an accessible platform where collection creators and holders can define and monetize usage rules for their assets. For example, allowing third parties to use their assets for specific campaigns.
By leveraging a combination of smart contracts, digital twins, or the AppData plugin to embed all licensing agreements within the assets themselves, every holder can set their own rules and prices. This setup empowers creators to earn royalties on their creations while sharing revenue with current asset holders.
Stake Incentivization and Managing
The validator market is highly competitive, and smaller validators often struggle to attract sufficient stake while generating enough fees to remain profitable.
While building a strong community around your validator could help, we know that it’s not an easy feat. However, the solution could be simpler: in the crypto space, showcasing recognizable art through profile pictures fosters a sense of belonging among like-minded individuals who share common values.
So, now imagine leveraging high-quality art to incentivize stake deposits and enhance position management.
LSTs as PFP
By integrating staking mechanisms with art through locked LSTs, users can enjoy the benefits of both. For example, Lilypad has demonstrated the appeal of exchanging valuable art for “secure” investments in staked assets, which can later be dissolved to recover the initial investment.
Building on this concept, users could lock their LSTs, mint a “starting” PFPs with randomized traits, and start accruing “yield points” over time. These yield points, tied to staking rewards, could be used to:
- Purchase unique, time-limited traits to customize PFPs.
- Reroll traits on existing PFPs, with creators managing available options and setting prices for rerolls.
This gamified approach allows users to continue earning staking rewards while being drawn to validators whose art resonates with them — transforming staking from a sterile financial transaction into a more immersive and engaging experience.
Congratulations! You are now equipped with 6 full ideas that you can spin into the next big thing on Solana! Hopefully this article has been helpful and you learned something insightful!
If you want to learn more about Core, and Metaplex in general, check out the developer hub: here and reach out to our community devs on discord!
