Freedom Using Code: Why Hackathons are a Big Win for Blockchain Companies
By Tomer Weiss on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
Librathon hackathon came to an end last month (November 2018), with over 60 developers, mentors, and judges who joined us from France, Libraland, Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Belarus and Ukraine.
Our goal was to use code to build tools for the nations of the future and to increase liberty and individual freedoms using the P2P tech of Spacemesh and Liberaland
Great results for the participants and organizers of the hackathon
I led the Liberathon hackthon for Spacemesh in collaboration with the President of Liberland, Vít Jedlička.
Spacemesh is developing a decentralized protocol that has fairness as its central value, while Libraland is developing tomorrow’s nation using applied blockchain technology with the motto, “Live and let live”. The connection was natural and brought about some amazing results: Most of the projects used Libraland’s or Spacemesh’s technology and 13 teams of the 15 finished the hackathon with working products.
In addition to the three winners, the President of Libraland chose to give prizes to three more teams that impressed him and asked to continue to collaborate with a total of six teams.
The hackathon’s participants worked with Spacemesh and Libraland technologies and helped the latter’s development team with their process by giving relevant recommendations from talented developers, recognizing opportunities and solving problems.
The hackathon was covered by leading publishers in Israel and across the
Globe (Globes, Finance Magnets, CryptoPotato and BlockTV).
The Winner
The first prize went to Wist — Kirill Gandyl and Amin Vaknin who built a blockchain based system for online digital identity.
“We solved the problem of personal information disclosure when signing up for online services. We store on a blockchain a minimal amount of publicly readable information such as citizen ID number and first and last name. An ordained authority translates the citizen ID number into a point on the elliptic curve by combining it with a random number. From now on the owner of the ID can prove he or she holds a document that was issued legally and can use it without the need to share additional personal information. In the hackathon, we built an App that uses this solution to allow authorized citizens to vote with full privacy and anonymity”.
This project won them a prize of 10,000 Shekels and 15,000 Merits in Librland’s currency.
The second place went to Nessy — Yoni Svechinsky, Nataly Shvartzman, Avi Kozokin who built a P2P network for sovereign identity.
The Third place was plucked by Librascrow — Nicolas Wagner who flew in from
France in order to disrupt traditional escrow accounts!
How can a hackathon make your product or protocol accessible to the developer community?
Hackathons are a great way to encourage developers to build on your protocol, in this Spacmesh and Libraland hackathon most of the teams used the technology of both the companies and build amazing projects, but the beautiful thing was that it was optional. Teams were allowed to use any P2P technology as in the previous hackathon I lead (by the side of Sarah Wiesner and our friends from Bitcoin Embassy Tel-Aviv). It wasn’t mandatory to use the Lightning Network (an off-chain payment network built for Bitcoin) but due to the correct facilitation, the large majority of developers in both hackathons chose to use the technology we were promoting while creating a space for freedom and creativity.
A hackathon does not only make a company’s technology accessible to developers, but also its vision, culture and stakeholders. This helps contribute to the company’s good image and strengthen its draw in the job market.
Organizing a hackathon is a wonderful but challenging experience. Before you start you ask yourself these questions:
How can we grant developers freedom of action while encouraging them to specifically work on your technology?
What tools can you give developers to achieve as many working and operational projects, instead of just presentations and ideas?
Why should 100 developers give up a day’s work and a day off in order to sleep for two hours in a sleeping bag and write code 30 hours straight in your hackathon?
Who is your target audience for the event you want to organize?
And last, how do you define a successful hackathon?
What’s next:
If you create a hackathon correctly, it’s an effort that has a huge aggregated value. The developers, the supporting companies and the organizers of the hackathon all benefit. I organize hackathons because it combines working with companies, people and technology in a way that has an impact and an ability to define an agenda. I enjoy very much the two hackathons I lead, experienced and learned a lot.
There’s another hackathon coming up in the following months, it’s going to be innovative, big and fun and you’re welcome to contact me for additional details and for joining in, or to ask for advice on a hackathon you’re planning.
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