HackIon Recap
Clearmatics hosted a blockchain hackathon focusing on Ion, the platform-agnostic interoperability framework on February 5th & 6th, 2019.
Last week was an action-packed week for us at Clearmatics.
Across two days, we hosted our inaugural hackathon, HackIon, at Barclays Rise. We welcomed great developers who all rolled up their sleeves and got stuck into our blockchain hackathon that focused on Ion, the platform-agnostic interoperability framework.
Interoperability is an important topic, not just for blockchains and distributed ledger technology, but for any systems that need to communicate and transfer state. Building interoperability between the multiple peer-to-peer networks increases the overall resiliency of the system and removes one of the main barriers to adoption.
So we challenged our contestant teams to focus on Ion and build use cases. Prior to the hackathon, we developed the Fabric-Ethereum interface with a basic example use-case. We wanted to see how people would utilise these interfaces or expand them to create innovative ways to connect systems.
We had five teams taking part: Adhara, Santander, Bedford School, Barclays, Web3Labs. The judges representing the technology departments from four banks, comprised of Dr. Lee Braine (Barclays), John Whelan (Santander), Ian Cusden (UBS) and Dr. Dragos Crintea (HSBC).
It was a great 48-hour hack and, by the end of it all, each team had managed to use the Ion framework to address a potential real-world use case.
The Ion-focused projects they built were:
- Adhara modelled a two currency FX Swap, moving between Rinkeby and the Autonity Testnet, which they managed to develop to a working implementation stage.
- Santander modelled an issuance workflow on Fabric with settlement on Ethereum, which they developed to a working implementation stage.
- Web3 Labs built a system that published LIBOR rates on a Quorum chain. By putting it on a public chain, they could successfully reference it on another Quorum chain. They managed to reach the working implementation stage.
- Bedford School built an awesome smart contract that would allow exam boards to update a single contract with exam results. Talk about real-world implementation!
- Barclays worked to develop a Corda trade, which settled on an Ethereum chain. No prior work had been attempted ahead of the Hackathon to interoperate with Corda.
On the second day of HackIon, we opened the doors to the public with members of the blockchain community, journalists, Blockchain Insider as well as the Barclays’ CTO coming by Barclays Rise to see what the teams had come up with. Needless to say, they weren’t disappointed as our teams had clearly shown how the Ion framework was able to model a number of use cases and technology platforms, both using Ethereum and non-Ethereum.
All of our teams did brilliantly with the team from Bedford School stealing the show. But as we all know, it was a competition and the results as decided by our esteemed panel of judges were as follows:
A very big well done to the guys from Santander but, above all else, a big thank you to all of our teams for taking part and for making the hackathon such a great success. Additionally we’d like to thank the judges and Barclays Rise for making it such a great event. The success of HackIon means that we’ll certainly be looking to host similar events in the weeks and months ahead.
Moving forward, we want to continue building and growing the #Ionosphere into a deep and rich library, which is the name we’ve given to all Ion-extensions or applications built on Ion. So if you’ve built or if you’re currently working on any cross-chain smart contract use-case, please let us know about your project on our Ion Gitter channel.
In the meantime, we’re packing up and heading off to #ETHDenver, a #Buidlathon that is a get-together for all those who want to build the decentralized future. We’re really looking forward to the event where we will be showcasing both Ion and Autonity, our IBFT geth-based Ethereum client.
You can read a little more about #ETHDenver here and stay tuned for the outcome!
Cheers,
Christophe MacIntosh, cmacintosh, Community & Communications Lead, Clearmatics
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