Solana Frontier Hackathon

Submitting Guild to Colosseum’s Solana Frontier Hackathon.

Key dates

Contest period: 2026-04-06 to 2026-05-11 (11:59pm PT)
Individual registration deadline: 2026-05-04 (11:59pm PT, colosseum.com)
Project submission deadline: end of contest period (team leader uploads)
Winners announced: ~2026-06-23
Accelerator invitations announced separately after winners

Rules & logistics

Admin: Colosseum Org LLC. Host: Solana Foundation.
Eligibility: 18+ or age of majority. No sanctioned countries. Must not violate employer/contractual obligations.
Team: Each member registers individually on colosseum.com. One team per person. One submission per team. No max team size. Team leader uploads submission and acts as contact.
IP: Entrant retains all IP. Admin retains rights to marketing materials only.
Content: Must be in English. Must be original, no IP infringement.
Judging criteria: Functionality, Potential Impact, Novelty, UX (Solana performance for great UX), Open-source (composability with Solana ecosystem), Business Plan.
Prizes: Paid as CASH-SPL. Sent to team leader. May require wallet setup and prize acceptance docs. Winner responsible for taxes.
No confidentiality: Don’t assume any right of confidentiality in submission or profile info. Info shared with judges and contest sponsors.
Open-source matters: Explicitly part of judging — “Is this Project Submission open-source? How well does the Project Submission compose with other primitives in the Solana ecosystem?”
Disputes: ICC arbitration, Florida law.
Rules PDF: /c/Users/Panat/Documents/dungeonbooks/Solana Frontier Hackathon Rules.pdf

Submission description (500 chars)

Why can’t you use your Starbucks points at Barnes & Noble? Because corporations don’t cooperate across industries. But indies can. Guild is loyalty infrastructure for independent shops — earn points at any shop, spend them at any shop. An RPG layer makes it fun (XP, levels, NFC check-ins). Solana makes it trustless (no clearinghouse, automatic settlement). Built and running at a real bookstore with real customers. The chain isn’t a gimmick — it’s the settlement layer for a cooperative network.

Problem

Why can’t you use your Starbucks points at Barnes & Noble? Because corporate loyalty programs are walled gardens. Starbucks will never partner with Barnes & Noble — they’re competing silos. The incentive structure makes cooperation impossible.

But a bookstore and a coffee shop on the same block aren’t competitors — they’re symbiotic. Shared loyalty makes both businesses stronger. The only reason it doesn’t exist is the infrastructure: no indie shop is building a cross-merchant settlement layer. That’s what Guild is. And Solana is what makes the settlement trustless.

Approach

Two layers: the game and the economy. The game (XP, levels, classes, achievements) stays in Postgres — it’s entertainment, not finance. The economy (points with real dollar value) goes on-chain — because cross-shop settlement is a financial trust problem that a blockchain actually solves.

The GUILD token

SPL token. Ticker: GUILD. Name: Guild Points. User-facing shorthand: GP.

GP is the universal currency of the cooperative network. Members earn GP by shopping, checking in, attending events. They spend GP at any shop in the network. The analogy is Gil from Final Fantasy — it works in every shop in every town. Also maps to credit card loyalty points that are transferable to partners.

Minting = money creation. When a shop awards GP for a purchase, it’s minting currency that other shops in the network must honor. The on-chain program constrains who can mint (registered guilds only), validates the source (purchase hash, check-in ID), and provides a public audit trail. No central clearinghouse needed — the program IS the clearinghouse.

Redemption = burning. Member spends GP at any guild → tokens are burned. Settlement is automatic. Every shop can audit every mint and burn on-chain. No monthly invoices, no bilateral trust agreements.

Earn rate: 1 cent spent = 1 GP minted (network-wide, fixed by protocol). A $20 purchase mints 2,000 GP.

Redemption rate: TBD per-shop. Not a protocol concern — each shop sets how many GP buy $1 of store credit. The Anchor program just burns whatever amount the shop requests.

What goes on-chain

GUILD token (SPL token via Anchor) — the points currency. Mint on purchase/checkin/event, burn on redemption. The settlement layer for the cooperative network.
Guild registry — each shop registers as a guild on-chain, gets constrained mint authority.
Member accounts — token accounts per member, managed server-side (no wallet required for members).
Achievement badges (compressed NFTs) — stretch goal. Level-up milestones minted as cNFTs.

What stays off-chain

The game layer: XP, levels, classes, achievements, leaderboards — all Postgres
Member PII, purchase details, tier subscriptions (Stripe), Square sync
The RPG mechanics that make it fun

Why Solana is load-bearing

A single shop’s loyalty doesn’t need a blockchain. A cooperative network of indie shops honoring each other’s currency does. The moment a second shop accepts GP, you have a settlement problem: who pays when a member earned at shop A and spends at shop B? Three options:

Central clearinghouse (Guild platform) — works, but shops must trust us
Bilateral agreements — doesn’t scale past 3 shops
On-chain token — trustless settlement, public audit, any shop can verify any mint/burn

Option 3 is the only one where “cooperative” is structurally true. The chain isn’t mirroring Postgres — it’s doing something Postgres can’t do across trust boundaries.

Integration points in existing code

src/lib/loyalty.ts — after awarding points in Postgres, mint GUILD tokens (fire-and-forget to devnet)
src/lib/loyalty.ts — after redeeming points in Postgres, burn GUILD tokens
src/app/api/check-in/ — check-in mints GP on-chain with verifiable receipt
Kiosk UX — Solana ~400ms finality keeps tap-to-confirm loop fast
Member portal — show on-chain GP balance + devnet explorer link

Design principle

Crypto is infrastructure, not interface. Members see “Guild Points” and a balance. Shops see “your customers earn points here, spend them at partner shops, settlement is automatic.” Neither needs to know it’s Solana. We only make money when shops make money.

See guild-token-design for full token economics and Anchor program spec.

Judging criteria mapping

Criteria	Angle
Functionality	Working kiosk + portal + NFC check-ins already in production; Solana layer adds ledger
Potential Impact	TAM = every indie shop loyalty program. Cooperative network, not extractive
Novelty	RPG-flavored loyalty for physical retail on Solana — not another DeFi/NFT marketplace
UX	Solana speed = instant kiosk feedback, no “waiting for confirmation”
Open-source	Open-source the guild platform
Business Plan	guild-manifesto — four-layer model from CRM to supply chain

Prizes

Grand Champion: $30K CASH-SPL
Public Goods: $10K CASH-SPL
20 standout teams: $10K CASH-SPL each

Competitive landscape (4 prior hackathons analyzed)

Pattern: what wins

Grand champions are always deep infrastructure — Ore (mining protocol), TapeDrive (storage), Reflect (stablecoin protocol), Unruggable (hardware wallet). Novel protocol design where Solana is structurally necessary.
Consumer track is DeFi in disguise — every consumer winner across all four hackathons is prediction markets, trading, betting, or tokenized speculation. Zero non-financial consumer app winners.
Judges reward projects where Solana is load-bearing, not additive.

Closest comps to Guild

Decal — 2nd Stablecoins (Breakout). Payments + loyalty for merchants on Solana. Placed because stablecoin payments are load-bearing. Direct competitor in concept but focused on payment rails, not membership/engagement.
Aloy — Honorable mention Consumer (Renaissance). Loyalty platform on Solana for India’s ONDC e-commerce network. Didn’t place.
Merit — 5th Infrastructure (Renaissance). On-chain points-as-tokens using Token Extensions. Placed in infra, not consumer.
store.fun — Honorable mention Consumer (Breakout). E-commerce on Solana. Didn’t place.
Crush — 2nd DePIN (Breakout). Real-world receipt data on-chain. Placed because DePIN data collection is load-bearing.
Casino Royale — Honorable mention Gaming (Breakout). Casino RPG with progression, quests, check-ins, on-chain token economy. Closest to Guild’s RPG mechanics. Didn’t place.

Our edge

Only submission with real customers in a real store. Almost every hackathon project is a prototype. Guild is in production with Square POS transactions, NFC kiosk check-ins, Stripe subscriptions, and actual members.
Genuinely novel. Nothing like Guild has ever been submitted. Physical-retail RPG loyalty with NFC hardware.
The network story is what makes Solana necessary. A single shop’s loyalty doesn’t need a blockchain. A cooperative network of indie shops honoring each other’s XP — where no single shop controls the ledger — does. This is the guild-manifesto pitch.
True to the spirit of decentralization. Member-owned reputation, shop-owned infrastructure, cooperative economics. Most hackathon projects rebuild centralized financial products on a blockchain. Guild is building what decentralization was supposed to enable.

Risk

Judges may see the Solana layer as ornamental for a single-shop demo. Mitigate by centering the pitch on the multi-shop cooperative network, not single-shop loyalty.

Target

One of the 20 standout team slots ($10K) + accelerator interview visibility. Treat as a marketing event for Guild’s Solana story. Grand champion is unrealistic given the infrastructure bias.

Mana connection

Hackathon gives a concrete reason to reach out to jimmy-lee now — ask for advice, show the Solana integration. Jimmy’s RPG progression work (set.world, FFRPG) and jeromy-johnson’s IPFS/Filecoin background both align. See mana-inc for full context.

Open questions

Team composition — solo or bring others?
Open-source strategy — what to open, what to keep proprietary?
Demo video / presentation format for submission?
Devnet vs mainnet for the demo? (leaning devnet — adds nothing for judges to use mainnet)
Tier multiplier economics at network scale — resolved: mint universal (1 cent = 1 GP), redeem local (tier multiplier at spending shop). See multiplier-economics-mint-universal-redeem-local
Second guild seed for demo — fictional partner shop to show cross-guild settlement working

Quartz 4

Explorer

solana-frontier-hackathon