The beautiful country of Singapore opened its doors for us to host the 7th instance of the Blockchain Pioneers Hackathon series. This journey was possible thanks to the help we’ve received from SP Jain, who have assisted us in organizing the hackathon inside their illustrious Singapore campus in which they educate thousands of talented students.
Education is, and always has been, one of our main focuses. The recent launch of DCube, our new incubation service for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, students, and developers, has given us leeway in onboarding young talents with a thirst for blockchain — which is, indeed, a purpose alike to that of our hackathons.
Kicking off May, the three-day hackathon event began as spectacularly as ever. We had 6 teams join the competition, coming from all over Singapore and even parts of Malaysia. Our CEO and Founder, Matej Michalko, started off with an informative presentation where he made a surprise announcement. Seeing the tremendous potential that the hackathon contestants had brought, he decided to raise the grand prize from 50,000 DCT to 100,000 DCT!
With the morale boosted and the teams highly incentivized, the hackathon was underway, and after an exhilarating 48 hours of non-stop hacking and finger-twisting, we had finally found our winners.
Third Place: Blockchain with Dignity 🏅
The commendable third place prize was secured by a team of two, Akshay Rao and Prakash Khunti, both well-versed professionals in the IT sphere. These guys came up with a blockchain-powered queuing management system, “ Postally “, through which they wished to greatly improve medical service delivery in developing countries. This would result in improved crowd management, customer service, queuing efficiency and ultimate transparency in service delivery. Quite the noble goal, isn’t it?
Second Place: Make SMEs Great Again 🎖
The second group comprised of entrepreneurs well-versed in banking. They proposed to change the way small and medium enterprises (SMEs) work nowadays — which, according to them, play a major role in worldwide economic development. The proposal of their project, “ smeXpress “, was to incorporate DCore to build trust by storing SME info on blockchain, raising funds via STOs from venture capitals, private equities, banks, and involving buyers and suppliers via smart contracts. If there’s to be an SME revolution any time soon, it clearly starts with these guys!
First Place: Hold for the Drumroll! 🏆
The astonishing prize of 100,000 DCT went to WhatTheHack!, who had obviously gone beyond creative with their name. Their well-thought-out project, abbreviated as “ BRIB “, introduced blockchain reward-incentivized browsing. With BRIB, the team wishes to fight against websites that shove shameless advertisements in our faces whenever we visit a site. This would be utilized through a browser extension that would reward you for watching relevant advertisements, while also integrating any websites to reward their viewers for watching ads.
At the end of the hackathon, WhatTheHack! managed to build a working prototype of their concept and reward the audience directly by showcasing an ad during their pitch. The reward, in DCT, was tracked and sent directly and instantly to the user’s digital wallet after watching the 10-second advertisement.
Enhancing overall user browsing experience, improving privacy and making sure that we get ads that actually reward us is what WhatTheHack! fancy. Their blockchain “life hack” is aimed at improving our internet space with the goal of putting an end to annoying, senseless ads. Our judges agreed that this project has a lot of potential and we look forward to following the team’s progress.
Our partners from Charlie Brown Café also decided to spice things up a little bit. They prepared some wondrous merch for the attendees to be bought with — wait for it — DCT! The great news is that Charlie Brown Café customers will now be able to pay with DCT at their Singapore store at any time. So, the next time you’re in Singapore, don’t forget to go on a DCT shopping spree! Check out the gallery below to see what cool stuff they’re selling.
Get ready! Our Blockchain Pioneers Hackathon series will continue to traverse the world, with the next instance coming to London as part of London Teck Week on June 12–13, 2019. Of course, follow us on social media for all the latest DECENT news and join in the live discussion on .
Originally published at https://decent.ch on May 7, 2019.
