My First Web3 Hackathon 🔋 with Blu3 DAO 🦋, StorJ & Harmony 💙
A few weeks ago, a friend I’d only met once texted me, “Hey! This is kinda crazy/last minute, but would you want to come to Miami for a week to do Web3 things next week?” I had never done anything in Web3, had no idea what this would entail or why anyone would want me on their team if I couldn’t write any fancy Web3 code, but immediately knew I needed to go.
She told me about Activate x Wormhole and about Blu3 DAO, an organization she went to ETH Amsterdam with, was sponsoring 20 women/nonbinary/ally hackers to attend the hackathon thanks to StorJ and Harmony. I was an easy sell — I applied within the hour for a Blue3 DAO scholarship and was accepted the following day.
“I’m in!”
What is Harmony?
Harmony is an open and fast Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain. Their mainnet runs Ethereum applications with 2-second transaction finality and 100 times lower fees!! This is incredible — how fast and cheap it is to run on Harmony.
Their secure bridges also offer cross-chain transfers with Ethereum, Bitcoin and other chains.
Harmony’s Vision is an “Open Consensus for 10B People”. That means that there will be an open platform for our future generations to create in harmony.
Some of the most notable DEX and games on Harmony includes Defi Kingdom and Sushiswap.
If you are a builder or a dev — Build on Harmony, bridge to all chains! Check them out!
Once again, thank you Harmony for sponsoring Blu3 DAO Hacker House at Active Miami — a place allowing women and non-binary builders, creators and dreamers to meet, network and build together!
What is StorJ?
StorJ is a decentralized cloud storage platform!
With Storj DCS (Decentralized Cloud Storage) files aren’t stored in centralized data centers — instead, they’re encrypted, split into pieces, and distributed on a global cloud network. (StorJ)
Shout out to StorJ for sponsoring Blu3 DAO scholars, and shout out to their founder Shawn for spending time with the Blu3 DAO scholars during the week in Miami! 🦋💪
Check out StorJ!
Pre-Hackathon
Years ago I attended Hack Reactor in San Francisco, so I’m no stranger to all-nighters trying to code for a deadline. But… I haven’t done it in years and I’d never even coded for Web3 before! 😱 I was feeling major Imposter Syndrome about my technical skills going into it.
Thanks to Blu3 DAO, I made it to Miami and got to attend a number of events that eased my worries about the hackathon during the week leading up to it.
We met with the rest of the Blu3 DAO scholars and learned about and how to implement Harmony protocol and StorJ in cool Web3 projects, attend talks about a huge range of technical topics at Miami Dade College, went to events hosted by sponsors and meet cool people building even cooler products, and really get to pick the brains of other Web3 developers who had spent much more time than me in the space.
I am still in awe at how much I learned in just a week, and how it’s just the tip of the Web3 iceberg. 🧠 🌊
The Hackathon 🔋
After our ideation session at the Blu3 DAO hacker house, our group of scholarship recipients split out into multiple groups, each of which would pursue an idea and build it between noon on Friday and 10am Sunday morning.
We determined roles — two of us would be the developers and the three other members would manage presentation, branding, and general management of the process. We spent a ton of time and two late nights building WenGo — a progressive NFT move-to-earn 🚶♂️application that would incentivize users to get up and be active to benefit their physical and mental health while watching their NFT progress over time!
Saturday night we stayed up until we were delirius, starting back up a few hours later Sunday morning. After getting together our documentation and getting our bounty submissions sent in and our other miscellaneous chores finished, we got our app deployed and hoped for the best!
Major Takeaways
Here are a few bullet pointed things I learned that I thought were cool, and if you’re new to Web3 you might think so too!
- It’s not too late to jump into Web3. Everyone I spoke to about it emphasized just how early it still is, and dipping your toes in(or fully diving in!) now is far from too late.
- Establishing roles and goals for each individual member of your hackathon team and for the team as a whole is essential! We didn’t appoint an official PM, and I think things might’ve gone more smoothly if we had.
- Be sure to remember any mandatory submissions! We were literally submitting our bounty applications and sending in our app 9 minutes before the deadline. In a world where wifi can be unreliable and things glitch, this was SO STRESSFUL!! I think the whole WenGo team learned a valuable lesson! 😂
- Setting up Coinbase Wallet in our application was so much easier than I would‘ve thought! Note: this took me forever. I’d blame the typo in their docs, but I believe my frustration and that typo were equally at fault. My teammate Jen got it up n’ running in no time, and explained her implementation to me after the fact. Shout out Jen!
- WAGMI — We’re all gonna make it. This is a goofy acronym seen a lot in the crypto community, but after experiencing a Web3 hackathon with Blu3 DAO, I realize how real it is! Web3 practices what it preaches about the importance and value of community.
- Web3 isn’t a dystopian hellscape where we all sit in pods and experience our reality through a VR headset. Its primary quality is its emphasis on community and inclusion, something I never would’ve guessed when all I knew about Web3 was how annoying “Crypto Bros” are.
- Web3 isn’t scary and if you’re a developer (or just interested in Web3 in general) and you’re reading this, I really encourage you to jump in!
Our team ended up winning a few prizes (shoutout WenGo team!). Because it was each team member’s first hackathon, we didn’t expect to win anything, and it ignited my excitement about both Web3 and hackathons even more.
I can’t wait to hack with Blu3 DAO again, and if you’re curious about Web3 and are looking for a likeminded, awesome community of women, non-binary, and ally devs, I really encourage you to look at Blu3 DAO! 🦋
