Solana’s Hackathons: From 0 to hero (Part I)

We are going to go through the winning projects of the most important competitions in Solana (for now).

13 min readSep 18, 2024

There’s something I feel isn’t talked about enough. It doesn’t happen in all ecosystems, but in Solana, I think we don’t give enough credit to what hackathons have done to nurture our blockchain with absurdly innovative projects that, if it weren’t for these competitions, would surely never have seen the light of day.

Throughout Solana’s history, there have been more than 30 hackathons (or at least I have only found information about these). And many of the projects we use and enjoy today were born from one of these.

It would be prudent to remember that it’s not a rule that you continue with the development of your project after winning a hackathon, but I’m sure that “morally” it would be what is expected of you.

That said, I think it’s time to take a (long) walk through the history of the hackathons we’ve had in Solana.

Solana’s Inaugural Hackathon — Whormhole Hackathon

This would be the first of many competitions with which Solana would seek to attract developers and projects to the ecosystem.

It was held in 2020, and the announcement of the winners came in November of that year, letting us know that 14 projects out of a total of 66 shone brightly enough to win.

This was the distribution:

Four first-place winners, each receiving a total of $30,000 in USDC.
Five second-place winners, each receiving $10,000 in USDC.
Five third-place winners, each receiving $5,000 in USDC.

I would love and be proud to say that at least one of these 14 projects is still within the ecosystem, but no, none of these projects exist today.

Solana Foundation x Serum DeFi Hackathon

In February 2021, the announcement of a new hackathon arrived, with the support of Serum, a decentralized exchange protocol built on Solana, in addition to at least 19 other projects, including Chainlink, CoinGecko, and Circle.

For this second hackathon, the prizes would be a little different. Participants would compete for a total of $400,000 in prizes. A pool of $200,000 would be distributed among the 9 best projects presented during the hackathon. In addition to this, the 9 winning teams would have the opportunity to continue developing their projects to compete for a seed funding round.

The announcement of the winners came in mid-March of the same year after having 3,000 registrations and more than 100 projects submitted.

The first place was shared by two projects, and each received $50,000 in USDC. These projects were:

Mango Markets: a decentralized, cross-margin trading platform with up to 5x leverage and integrated limit orders on Serum DEX’s on-chain order book.
PsyOptions: a project that implemented American-style options on Solana, with SOL and SPL token support.

The second place was shared by three projects, and each received $20,000 in USDC. These projects were:

Parrot: a synthetic debt protocol that bridges existing yield-bearing tokens on Ethereum layer 1 into Solana’s DeFi ecosystem.
Synthetify: a decentralized protocol for synthetic assets, built on Solana. The system works similarly to the Ethereum-based Synthetix protocol.
Solrise Finance: a decentralized, p2p asset management and trading protocol that allows fund managers to create investment funds, deposit tokens, and choose assets to trade.

The third place was shared by four projects, each of which received $10,000 in USDC.

Serum Tax Time: a tool to automatically sift through a user’s Serum DEX trades and present them via clear data analytics to determine tax payments.
DTF Protocol: a Solana-based system that enables users to implement an asset management strategy in which others can invest.
Sushi Warrior: a multiplayer tournament-style battle game that includes no-loss lotteries, similar to PoolTogether, and leverages Solana, Arweave, Torus, USDC, and AAVE to bring composable DeFi to the world of gaming.
Tenderize Me: a liquid staking solution that enables users to generate tenderSol, a value-accruing staking derivative token, which allows them to enter or exit staking with no bonding and unbonding period.

In addition, this edition of the hackathon had a special category called “Community Choice Prize”. The community had the opportunity to vote for their favorite projects, and with more than 10,000 votes counted, the winner of this category received a prize of $5,000 in USDC. The winner was:

COPE: a token project that enables traders to rank their performance and view other traders’ performance in an index based on their Cope score.

When researching this hackathon, we found that the two projects that shared first place managed to get through the darkest moments of the ecosystem. PsyFi operated until June 2024, although we don’t know what led them to cease operations, we are pleased to know that they were operational for more than 3 years.

For its part, Mango Markets is still active and has reinvented itself and overcome various inconveniences it had along the way. Today, it is very active and describes itself (according to its bio on X) as “The OG Solana DEX with the best UX”.

Solana Season

At the end of April 2021 came the announcement of a new hackathon: Solana Season. This one promised to be considerably larger than its predecessors, with up to $1,000,000 to be distributed in prizes and seed funding.

In addition, it brought the novelty of dividing the competition by categories, within which we would find: DeFi, Web3, and NFTs, each with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners who will receive $20k, $10k, and $5k prizes in USDC respectively. Not only that, but for the first time, there would be regional tracks for China, India, Eastern Europe and Brazil.

For this hackathon, the participation was incredible. More than 13,000 people participated, and more than 350 projects were submitted.

The grand winner of this edition received $30,000 in USDC + $1,500 airfare stipend + 2 tickets to “a special Solana event in Lisbon in November.” The project that resulted with this great distinction was Zeta: an under-collateralized DeFi options platform.

DeFI track:

First place: Solend, an algorithmic, decentralized protocol for lending and borrowing. Received $20,000 in USDC.
Second place: DeFiLand, a multi-chain agriculture-simulation web-game created to gamify Decentralized Finance. Received $10,000 in USDC.
Third place: Switchboard, a decentralized, community-curated oracle network on Solana. Received $5,000 in USDC.

NFT track:

First place: Coral Reef, an NFT marketplace with the ability to fractionalize. Received $20,000 in USDC.
Second place: All-Art protocol, a liquidity provider for NFTs, introducing a new type of liquidity pool AMMs, while upgrading the current NFT standard. Received $10,000 in USDC.
Third place: Bubl, a decentralized event hosting and ticketing platform. Received $5,000 in USDC.

Web3 track:

First place: Solarium, a fully decentralized, end-to-end encrypted, censorship-resistant instant messenger based on the Solana blockchain. Received $20,000 in USDC.
Second place: GRAPE, a protocol for building token-gated Discord communities using SPL tokens. Received $10,000 in USDC.
Third place: Wum.bo, who were bringing Creator Coins to a social network near you. Received $5,000 in USDC.

Community Choice Award

This edition also featured community participation to choose the winner of this category, who would receive $5,000 in USDC. With more than 100,000 votes counted in total, the winning project in this category was:

Boring Protocol: a decentralized VPN built on Solana.

In addition, seven special prizes were awarded, courtesy of sponsors of the competition, as well as winners by region.

Serum Prize

Slope a community-based decentralized exchange built on Solana. Received $25,000 in USDC.

Kin Prizes

Cyclos: a concentrated liquidity market maker on Serum order books. Received $12,000 in USDC.
Francium: a leveraged yield aggregator built on Solana. Received $3,000 in USDC.
Kurobi: an app that allows you to connect 1:1 with your audience and earn crypto or cash. Received $3,000 in USDC.
Switchboard: a decentralized, community-curated oracle network on Solana. Received $3,000 in USDC.
Solaris: a lending/borrowing protocol that brings flash loans to the Solana blockchain. Received $3,000 in USDC.

Our Network Prizes:

Solana.FM: a robust indexer engine built in Rust for the Solana blockchain. Received $11,000 in USDC.
Data Dragon: an easy-to-use analytics platform for the Solana network. Received $11,000 in USDC.
Blockpour: a real-time Solana DEX Data Analytics & Aggregation Platform. Received $3,000 in USDC.

Pyth Prize

Solana.FM: a robust indexer engine built in Rust for the Solana blockchain. Received $25,000 in USDC.

Raydium Prize

Laguna Finance: an asset management ecosystem built on Solana. Received 3,000 RAY tokens.

Media Network Prize

HOAG: a peer-to-peer censorship-resistant Twitch. Received $30,000 in USDC.

Orca Prize

Orca Arb: an arbitrage bot built on the Orca AMM. Received $52,500 USDC.

East Asia supported by Dorahacks

First place: Apricot, an over-collateralized loan protocol. Received $40,000 in USDC.
Second place: Francium, a leveraged yield aggregator. Received $25,000 in USDC.
Third place: Port Finance, a user-friendly money market on Solana. Received $10,000 in USDC

Eastern Europe

First place: Everlend, a decentralized cross-chain lending protocol with leverage yield farming and liquid staking. Received $25,000 in USDC.
Second place: Solaris, a lending/borrowing protocol. Received $15,000 in USDC.
Third place: UNQ Club, a platform for NFT collectors and communities that allowed users to create clubs, buy and sell NFTs across chains. Received $10,000 in USDC.

In addition, some projects sponsored special tracks by region. For Eastern Europe, these tracks were:

Serum Prize

Everlend: a decentralized cross-chain lending protocol with leverage yield farming and liquid staking. Received $40,000 in USDC.

HAPI Prize

Solbridge: a bridge between EVM chains and Solana. Received $25,000 in USDC.

Akash Prize

Newsystem090: a Keplr Integration for Akash deploy. Received 2,500 AKT tokens.
Minatofund: deployed the open-source project management tool, Kanboard, on Akash MAINNET 2. Received 250 AKT tokens.
CoffeeRoaster: Akash CLI wrapper. Received 250 AKT tokens.

Spacemind Prize

Solarea: A community-driven explorer and On-Chain Application Builder. Received $10,000 in USDC.
Solaris: a lending/borrowing protocol. Received $10,000 in USDC.

Velas Prize

Solarea: A community-Driven Explorer and On-Chain Application Builder. Received $10,000 in USDC.
Solbridge: a bridge between EVM chains and Solana. Received $10,000 in USDC.

Brazil/LATAM

SolanaTip: a Google extension that used Sollet.io to allow you to tip your favorite tweets with $SOL. Received $15,000 in USDC.

India

First place: MetaSol, a protocol that enabled metatransactions. Received $25,000 in USDC.
Second place: Stader Labs aimed to be the Amazon for Staking on PoS networks. Received $15,000 in USDC.
Third place: Cyclos, a concentrated liquidity market maker on Serum order books. Received $10,000 in USDC.

Africa

First place: Nova Finance, an initial framework for programmable nAssets. Received $15,000 in USDC.
Second place: Unk Finance, an on-chain options market. Received $7,000 in USDC.
Third place: Kurobi, an app to connect 1:1 with your audience and earn. Received $3,000 in USDC.

Vietnam

First place: UpFi, a stablecoin partially backed by collateral and partially stabilized algorithmically. Received $15,000 in USDC.
Second place: Massbit, a decentralized API and data infrastructure for web3 apps. Received $7,000 in USDC.
Third place: Goriant, an auto-compounding service for Stakers. Received $3,000 in USDC.

In addition to the (long) list of winners, the jury also gave a series of honorable mentions to more than 25 projects.

I believe that from this list of winners, the projects that we can mention that are still active today (September 2024) would be:

Zeta Markets, the grand winner of that edition, carried out the airdrop of its $ZEX token in June of this year. It is definitely one of the most solid projects within the ecosystem.
Solend Protocol, this project was rebranded this year to Save Protocol, Solana’s permissionless savings account.
SolanaFM, which is currently one of the friendliest and most used block explorers in the ecosystem.

IGNITION

The fourth hackathon of the ecosystem, whose announcement was made accompanied by an incredible and vibrant YouTube video in August 2021, had more than $5,000,000 in prizes and seed funding. As a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth a thousand pictures, here is the video of the announcement.

The winners would be announced at the end of that October, where the historic figure of 6,000 participants was made public, who submitted 568 final projects.

The grand winner of this edition would take not only $75,000 in USD but also passes to attend Breakpoint, the first annual Solana conference, where they will present their project. The proud winner of this grand prize was: Katana, an asset management protocol building investment products across the risk spectrum.

As is customary in Solana hackathons, the list of winners is quite long, so let’s start detailing it.

DeFi Track

The first place in this track would take $60,000, the second place would take $45,000, the third place $30,000, the fourth place $25,000, and the fifth place $20,000. And as if that weren’t enough, every winner would also take tickets to attend the first annual Solana conference: Solana Breakpoint.

First place: Atrix, an AMM that allowed for seamless creation of liquidity pools and farms on Serum.
Second place: Superposition, a decentralized fixed income protocol.
Third place: Aver, decentralized and trustless betting markets.
Fourth place: 01 Protocol, a decentralized derivatives protocol offering everlasting options.
Fifth place: Fluidity, a system that allowed users to earn yield as a consequence of using their cryptocurrencies through Fluid Assets.

Web3 Track

The first place in this category would take $45,000, the second place would take $30,000, the third place $20,000, the fourth place $15,000, and the fifth place $10,000. And as if that weren’t enough, everyone would also take tickets to attend the first annual Solana conference: Solana Breakpoint.

First place: Project Citadel, a desktop client for Solana protocols.
Second place: Bulldozer, a low-code platform to build Solana programs, powered by Anchor.
Third place: Alon, an IDE empowered by WebAssembly.
Fourth place: Chaincrunch, a platform for on-chain analytics.
Fifth place: Dialect, an on-chain messaging protocol & mobile app that supports dapp-to-user and user-to-user messaging.

Gaming Track

In this category, the first place would also take $45,000, the second place would take $30,000, the third place $20,000, the fourth place $15,000, and the fifth place $10,000. And just like the previous category, all the winners would receive tickets to attend Solana Breakpoint.

First place: Rushdown Revolt, a collectibles and metaverse framework.
Second place: Portals, a web-based metaverse platform.
Third place: Eizper Chain, a multiplayer action role-playing game.
Fourth place: StepN, a move-to-earn mobile game.
Fifth place: Titan Analytics, a commercial analytics platform.

Digital Art & Collectables Track

Just like the two previous categories, the first place would also take $45,000, the second place would take $30,000, the third place $20,000, the fourth place $15,000, and the fifth place $10,000. And all the winners would receive tickets to attend Solana Breakpoint.

First place: Neftify, an NFT lending platform for play-to-earn games.
Second place: SolanaFloor, an NFT data analytics platform.
Third place: Cofre, a peer-to-peer NFT escrow swap.
Fourth place: Sonanalysis NFT Flex, NFT showcase, and value estimation product.
Fifth place: Banksea a pool-based lending collateralized with a user’s NFT collection.

In addition, this hackathon had special awards such as the Community Choice award, and several members of the Solana ecosystem also sponsored Company Prizes for the best integration.

Community Choice award: DarleyGo, a blockchain horse racing game utilizing NFTs. Received $10,000.
Serum Prize: Friktion, a protocol that promised to introduce an automated portfolio manager (APM) to the DeFi ecosystem.
Solend Prize: Superposition, a decentralized fixed income protocol.
Pyth Prize: HydraSwap, whose goal was to become the one-stop app for liquidity providers in a cross-chain world.
Raydium Prize: Superposition, a decentralized fixed income protocol.
Chainlink Prize: Hedge Finance, a pool that offered investors better returns in a down market.
Wormhole Prize: Swim Protocol, offered to provide an avenue where you can move capital to and from different chains all in native assets.
COPE Prize: QuasarProtocol, a protocol that promised to create leveraged tokens in a fully decentralized manner.
Marinade Prize: Superposition, a decentralized fixed income protocol.
Stardust Prize: Genopets, a Free-to-Play, Move-to-Earn NFT game.
Mango Prize: mango-v3-service, provided an easy-to-consume REST and WEBSOCKET API for trading on mango markets version 3.
PsyOptions Prize: Friktion, a protocol that promised to introduce an automated portfolio manager (APM) to the DeFi ecosystem.

This hackathon marked a milestone in the community as it represented a 760% increase compared to the inaugural Wormhole hackathon, which was held at the end of 2020. It was incredible to see such gigantic growth in just one year, and it was proof of the great community that supported this blockchain.

From this edition, we can find a few more projects that are still in our ecosystem. To mention a few:

StepN is today one of the games with the greatest trajectory within the ecosystem.
Solana Floor was acquired by Step Finance and is now one of the largest news source in the ecosystem. The NFT analytics that were once their great novelty remained present on the platform until recently. Currently, Solana Floor is an official media partner of Breakpoint 2024.
Dialect has also reinvented itself and this year has been a protagonist in the ecosystem by helping in the development and launch of Actions and Blinks, which has been a great advance in the community.

Conclusion

Solana’s hackathons have undeniably been a breeding ground for innovation, propelling the development of projects that have shaped the ecosystem’s identity. From the inaugural Wormhole hackathon in 2020 to the electrifying Ignition competition in 2021, we’ve witnessed remarkable growth in both participation and the caliber of projects showcased.

While not every winning project has stood the test of time, many have triumphed over challenges, evolving into cornerstones of the Solana landscape.

The narrative of Solana’s hackathons speaks volumes about the strength of community and collaboration. These events have cultivated an environment where creativity and innovation thrive, drawing in talented developers globally and empowering them to turn their visions into reality.

Continued in Part Two

The saga of Solana’s hackathons is far from its final chapter. In the upcoming installment of this article, we’ll delve into the hackathons held from 2022 onwards, uncovering new and thrilling projects while examining their influence on the ecosystem. Stay tuned for more!