Superteam Turkey Member Spotlight: SolAuth Team
Three close friends, Onur, Oğuz and Tunahan, who are engineering students from ODTU, have developed an exceptional project Solauth within the Solana Ecosystem and were granted $5.000 by SuperteamTR
About Tunahan & Onur & Oğuz
Tunahan was one of the many young people who have taken the first step towards pursuing their passion as a career by diligently preparing for the university exam and landed software engineering. Afterward, this effort continued to get high marks and honed his skills with a particular focus on front-end development.
Onur, has always been looking for ways to solve problems - so, coding was naturally his hobby. Driven by the allure of creating software products, he chose to pursue computer engineering. Since his two defining qualities - staying updated with new technologies and ensuring robust work - it was inevitable for the Rust community to draw him in.
Oğuz pursued a degree in Industrial Engineering, however his fascination with coding persisted. Taking a tangible step towards this passion, he enrolled in Patika.dev's coding bootcamp launched in partnership with ODTU. Subsequently, his journey led him to the realm of blockchain, where he emerged as one of the managing members of the ODTU Blockchain community.
There was another common point Tunahan and Onur between them, aside from their mutual friends who brought them together: they realized that studying for exams alone wasn't enough to achieve success in real life. Therefore, they made the decision to enhance themselves by solving real-life problems using the latest technologies. They built a platform for 2022 World Cup and a QR code generation app together.
Then their blockchain journey has begun with hearing about it on social media and started researching & building on top of it. They joined ODTU Blockchain Club and started to contribute to the community. Later as they understood the technology better, decided to join hackathons and test their knowledge in real-life problems - they won two hackathons together including Superteam Turkey Solana Mini Hackathon and EthPrivacy Istanbul Unirep track.
As their achievements on the development front expanded, they aimed to embark on a journey of transforming their ideas into actual products. With the addition of Oğuz to their ranks, they became a cohesive team.
SolAuth and Superteam Turkey
Onur, Oğuz and Tunahan's paths crossed with SuperteamTR at the ODTU Blockchaindays event. Then, they participated in the Ideathon event organized by Superteam Turkey, where they challenged themselves and meet other individuals in the community who shared their interests. It was during this time that they first learned about the Istanbul Hacker House.
Since they wanted to know more about Solana, Istanbul Hacker House was a great opportunity to robust Solana development knowledge. They were particularly diligent about keeping up with the workshop schedule, and as a result, they achieved significant technical growth at a rapid pace. Later as they decided to join Grizzlython thought it will be a nice experience.
Throughout the hackathon journey, they benefited from Superteam Turkey’s events, resources, and mentorship as a Lurker. Superteam Turkey Mini IRL Hackathon was the game changer - it was the first together hackathon experience - they built Solauth, one place sign-in platform on Solana with a social recovery function. It offers an abstract wallet for sending and withdrawing money, and a recovery feature that lets appointed "wardens" change the wallet admin in case of a lost private key. Their exceptional work and innovative solution propelled them to a well-deserved victory in the competition and became a member of Superteam Turkey.
They took part in Grizzlython by developing this product. During the evaluation process, global venture capitalists reached out to them - they became even more convinced of the potential of the product they had developed and they made the decision to pursue their entrepreneurial journey by applying to the Solana Acceleration program. Their efforts paid off, as they became one of the eight startups from Turkey to be accepted into the program.
Merely creating an MVP for a hackathon fell short in terms of meeting the requirements for a fully-fledged real-life product. To bring the product to its final form with a robust user interface and a backend that adheres to best practices in every aspect, they applied for the Superteam Tr grant and were awarded a $5,000 grant.
From the perspective of Onur, Oğuz and Tunahan:
Superteam has endless support for those who want to develop new products and contribute to the blockchain community. When our paths crossed, we had no idea that we could get so much support!
While you want to focus on your product full-time, at the same time you need to make some money to live. Thanks to Superteam Turkey, we managed to navigate through this challenging situation and found the chance to fully focus on our product.
In addition to the initial grant they provided, they also offered global mentors in every area we needed, fulfilling our requirements perfectly. But in our opinion, their most significant contribution is their support in promoting our product to the world.
We think one thing to keep in mind is that people generally undermine the importance of marketing when developing a product. Even though most start-ups came up with a decent idea and implementation, they couldn’t profit out of their product because of the lack of marketing.
Why it matters
Onur, Oğuz and Tuna, three driven university students, have become an outstanding success story, showcasing how developers can quickly launch their careers in their desired fields by staying focused on their goals. Remarkably, even before completing their education, their entrepreneurial journey, fueled by a single idea, has already propelled them onto the global stage.
We take great pride in their achievements and share in the joy of witnessing their dreams turn into reality.
If you want to know more about how to become a Superteam Member and meet with some of the most extraordinary people in web3 and Solana Ecosystem, join us!