RPC Fast × Colosseum Crypto World’s Fair: Free Solana Infrastructure for Builders

RPC Fast is supporting teams participating in the Colosseum Crypto World’s Fair with free Solana infrastructure during and after the hackathon.

The program has two tracks: up to two months of free Focus plan access for participating builders, plus a $10,500 post-hackathon infrastructure sidetrack where 21 selected teams receive Stream or Aperture infrastructure. The Colosseum hackathon runs from September 14 to October 12, while RPC Fast infrastructure support runs from September 15 to November 15.

TL;DR

• Colosseum participants get 100% off the RPC Fast Focus plan for up to two months.
• The infrastructure offer runs September 15 – November 15.
• RPC Fast currently provides Solana mainnet endpoints hosted in Frankfurt (FRA).
• A separate post-hackathon sidetrack offers $10,500 in RPC infrastructure credits.
• 21 teams will be selected, each receiving about $500 in infrastructure credits.
• Winners choose either 1 month of Aperture, valued at $499, or 2 months of Stream, valued at $498.
• Stream targets workloads centered on Yellowstone gRPC.
• Aperture targets high-load and trading workloads using Shredstream gRPC and optimized TxStream gRPC.
• Sidetrack participants need meaningful infrastructure usage and consistent public engagement around their build.

Start right now: Create an account and submit the hackathon infrastructure application.

Two infrastructure tracks, two different goals

The first track removes infrastructure cost while teams build. The second extends support beyond the hackathon and rewards projects that put RPC Fast into meaningful use and interact with RPC Fast on social media.

Track 1 removes the RPC infrastructure bill while you prototype, test, and continue development after the hackathon. Track 2 rewards teams that keep building, integrate the infrastructure into a real workload, and share what they learn.

Track 1: 100% off Solana RPC infrastructure

Every registered Colosseum participant gets the RPC Fast Focus plan free for up to two months, covering the hackathon and the post-hackathon evaluation period. Other RPC Fast plans are available on request when the workload requires a different infrastructure profile.

The offer fits teams building:

• Early prototypes and dApps;
• DeFi applications;
• Potentially (with additional request for the Stream and higher): data-intensive systems, trading infrastructure, higher-traffic products;
• Projects preparing to continue development after judging.

This is not limited to teams that already run large production workloads. The point is to give builders a stable mainnet infrastructure layer without forcing infrastructure cost into the first weeks of product development.

How to claim the free Solana infrastructure for the Crypto World’s Fair

Teams should start with the RPC Fast Solana documentation before integrating.

The technical limitations to know before you integrate

The hackathon offer currently applies to Solana mainnet infrastructure hosted in Frankfurt (FRA). We recommend CherryServers or TSW providers for your application hosting.

If your hackathon design depends on another Solana network or requires an RPC region close to users outside Europe, account for that before building the infrastructure path around the offer.

For teams running backend services, trading engines, DeFi logic, or data pipelines in Europe, FRA placement also makes infrastructure locality a factor worth considering when deciding where to host the application layer.

The offer removes infrastructure cost. It does not remove the need to test your own end-to-end latency, request profile, data volume, retry behavior, and transaction workflow.

Track 2: $10,500 for teams that keep building

The second track extends the program beyond simply providing a free endpoint.

RPC Fast is running a Superteam Infrastructure Sidetrack from September 15 through November 15, with 21 teams selected for a total advertised reward pool of $10,500 in RPC infrastructure credits.

Participants use RPC Fast infrastructure during the sidetrack, starting with free Focus access. Other plans are considered on request based on the project profile.

Selection looks at four areas:

• Project: concept, originality, and execution.
• Infrastructure use: whether RPC Fast forms a meaningful part of the product.
• Community presence: consistency and quality of participation.
• Impact: useful visibility and value generated for the broader RPC Fast community.

The objective is not raw posting volume. The program explicitly evaluates the quality and overall impact of the engagement.

What the 21 selected teams receive

Each selected project gets an infrastructure package worth about $500 and can choose between two configurations.

Option 1: Aperture for one month—$499 value

Aperture targets high-load and trading-oriented applications.

The package includes access to:

• Shredstream gRPC;
• Optimized TxStream gRPC;
• Decoded shred-derived transaction streams;
• ALT resolution;
• Optional real-time transaction simulation.

This route fits systems where transaction visibility and processing latency sit on the critical path: trading, execution systems, DeFi automation, or other latency-sensitive backend workloads.

Option 2: Stream for two months—$498 value

Stream targets data-intensive applications whose main requirement is real-time Solana data rather than the lower-latency transaction path included with Aperture.

The package is positioned primarily around Yellowstone gRPC usage with less extensive compute requirements.

The tradeoff is straightforward: one month of the more specialized Aperture stack versus two months of the Stream plan.

Which prize fits which workload?

A team building an indexer or event-driven backend with Yellowstone as its primary source gets more time from Stream. A trading team whose strategy depends on transaction flow gets access to the more specialized stack through Aperture.

Do not choose by nominal plan value: the difference is $1. Choose by the data path your application needs.

Example: Moving from hackathon prototype to trading infrastructure

You build a Solana trading application during Crypto World’s Fair.

During the hackathon, your team uses the free Focus plan for its standard mainnet infrastructure while validating the application and execution logic.

The project then joins the sidetrack, keeps using RPC Fast through November 15, publishes technical updates about its integration, and demonstrates meaningful infrastructure usage.

If selected, your team chooses the one-month Aperture package instead of two months of Stream because its next bottleneck is transaction data rather than general Yellowstone ingestion. That gives the project Shredstream and TxStream access for the next stage of performance testing.

Infrastructure changes when the workload changes—not simply when the project gets larger.

Sidetrack participation requires more than submitting a project

Teams entering the sidetrack need to:

• Submit their project to the Colosseum hackathon
• Submit an application to the RPC Fast infrastructure sidetrack on Superteam
• Use RPC Fast infrastructure during the sidetrack
• Follow @rpcfast on X
• Join the RPC Fast Telegram and Discord
• Publish at least 2–3 posts per month about your RPC Fast experience, progress, use case, or feedback

Additional useful engagement includes technical content, replies, reposts, project updates, and discussions with the community.

The selection process looks at the substance of that activity rather than treating the sidetrack as a post-counting exercise.

What happens after teams are selected

The rewards are infrastructure subscriptions, not cash or cryptocurrency.

Selected teams receive either:

• One month of Aperture, worth $499;
• Two months of Stream, worth $498.

Prize subscriptions are assigned within two weeks after the official sidetrack results and begin immediately after assignment.

Unused subscription time, Compute Unit credits, or other included resources do not roll over, move to a later period, or convert into a monetary reward.

Usage also remains subject to the RPC Fast Terms of Service, including restrictions around abuse, prohibited activity, spam, and unreasonable infrastructure load.

Building on the previous Superteam sidetrack

This is not RPC Fast’s first infrastructure program around a Colosseum hackathon.

RPC Fast previously ran an infrastructure sidetrack for Colosseum Frontier. The earlier program and its results are available through the Superteam listing and the RPC Fast winners recap.

Crypto World’s Fair extends that model: infrastructure during the build phase, followed by additional support for teams that continue developing after the hackathon.

Have fun and build first. Scale the infrastructure with the workload

Hackathons compress months of product decisions into weeks. RPC infrastructure should not become the reason a team spends that time debugging access limits instead of validating the product.

For Crypto World’s Fair builders, RPC Fast provides a path from free mainnet RPC access during development to Yellowstone gRPC, Shredstream, and TxStream infrastructure for projects that continue into more demanding workloads.

Create your account at rpcfast.com, complete the application form, and join Telegram or Discord for infrastructure questions during the program.