What We Learned at Solana Network State Malaysia: The Real Blocker to Solana Payments

What Was Solana Network State?

Solana Network State was a five-week Build Station at Network School that brought together builders, founders, and developers to build projects during the Solana Colosseum Hackathon.

In April 2026, we joined as workshop partners. The in-person sessions were held at Network School Johor and the AWS Office in Kuala Lumpur, with online participation available for remote teams.

The program focused on builders who were serious about winning Colosseum. Teams received partner workshops, weekly pitch sessions, mentor office hours, and preparation for Demo Day on May 14.

What We Did: Two KIRAPAY Workshops on Solana Payments

We ran two workshops focused on one question:

How could builders start accepting Solana payments today?

Workshop 1: Founders & Merchants Track

We covered the practical side:

• Setting up a payment link in minutes

• Sharing a QR code with customers

• Receiving payments directly to a Solana wallet

Workshop 2: Developer & Integration Track

We covered the technical side:

• How to integrate KIRAPAY into a dApp

We expected technical questions. Instead, we got better ones.

What builders actually wanted to know

• How could I get paid in USDC if the customer paid in SOL?

• Did I need to hold crypto to accept it if I just wanted fiat?

• Could I settle directly to my wallet?

We had in-depth discussions around all of these questions. The room stayed engaged and practical.

The Numbers

Across both KIRAPAY workshops:

• 37 total submissions across the Colosseum and side tracks

• $1,500 in prizes awarded across the winners

• More than 15 people onboarded to accept Solana payments for the first time

Two workshop participants were also selected for our TIF 2.0 program, which provides milestone-based grants of up to $10K for teams integrating KIRAPAY and driving merchant adoption on Solana.

What We Learned From Conversations

The biggest learning came from the conversations between workshops. We met builders working on different problems: SNS identity integration, MagicBlock private payments, GameFi economies, and agent dApps. Different problem spaces. The same pattern.

What was that pattern? Everyone building on Solana wanted the same thing:

They wanted to accept payments without friction.

A DeFi protocol didn't care about blockchain details. A GameFi studio didn't care about settlement mechanics. An agent deployer didn't care about the technical implementation.

They cared about one thing:

Could a customer send SOL, and could they actually use the payment?

The answer was yes. But making that possible required payment infrastructure that removed the friction between "a customer wants to pay in SOL" and "a builder has usable funds."

That was the problem we were solving at KIRAPAY.

The Insight That Changed Our Thinking

For years, crypto adoption narratives focused on education: people needed to understand blockchain better.

After Network State, we didn't think that was the main constraint anymore for Solana builders. Most builders didn't need more education about Solana. They needed a solution that worked.

We showed them a payment link. We showed them a QR code. We showed them the funds arriving in their wallet minutes later.

There was no need to explain program architecture or cross-program invocations. We simply showed them that it worked. We tested that across both workshops at Network State, and it held up.

What This Meant for Solana Builders

The teams at Solana Network State were already thinking about payments as core infrastructure. When we removed the friction—showing them they could accept Solana payments without a merchant account, approval processes, or settlement delays—something changed.

Integrating payments on Solana no longer felt like a difficult problem. It became a better way to get paid. That was the opportunity we continued to focus on.

For Solana Builders

If you're building on Solana and need a payments solution for your dApp, DeFi protocol, or marketplace, we'd love to hear from you. If you're a Solana founder wondering whether payments should be part of your product, we'd love to talk.

We spent time at Network State learning what Solana builders actually needed. We continued building the infrastructure to deliver it.

Next Steps

Want to integrate KIRAPAY into your Solana project?

Explore the docs: https://docs.kira-pay.com

Get started: https://dashboard.kira-pay.com

Special thanks to Superteam Malaysia and Network School for hosting Solana Network State. The conversations, the builders, and the concentration of talent made the experience invaluable.