Mizuxe, an Internet Computer-Enabled Tool for Entrepreneurial Women, Wins Hackathon for Social Good
DFINITY partnered with Hacker Fund on an event that inspired the development of open source blockchain projects to benefit the public.
As the internet evolves into an era where developers can build and deploy software directly on the open internet using the Internet Computer, the world’s first web-speed, internet-scale public blockchain, it’s important to ensure that students are equipped with the appropriate guidance and tools.
To support this mission, the DFINITY Foundation recently partnered with Hacker Fund to host a virtual social-impact hackathon where Hacker Fund mentors conceived and developed open-source projects for the Internet Computer that help the disadvantaged, educate the broader community, and protect the environment.
Hacker Fund is a 501(c)(3) public charity with the mission of empowering technologists to create social change. Through their Career Pathway Program, their team inspires positive social change by connecting students to educators and mentors, with a focus on providing curriculum around science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (S.T.E.M.) as well as access to educational resources for underserved communities across the US. Since 2014, Hacker Fund has served more than 30,000 students by fostering the nation’s largest nonprofit network of S.T.E.M. mentors to drive volunteer workshops, tech events, and career development.
During the hackathon, Hacker Fund’s mentor base of elite technologists joined professional development workshops with DFINITY team members to learn the basics of building on the Internet Computer. In the course of these workshops, they became familiar with the platform’s native Motoko programming language and began using the DFINITY Canister SDK to deploy front and back-end canisters to build open-source projects that promote social good. The event was partly supported by Dokia Capital, the lab behind the decentralized social media app Distrikt.
“This hackathon was just a taste of what can be done with the Internet Computer,” remarked Hacker Fund Executive Director Justin Brezhnev, “and our mentors are excited to continue using it to build tools that drive social change.”
Here are a few of the notable projects that emerged from the hackathon…
Winner: Mizuxe by Miko Aro
Mizuxe aims to help entrepreneurial women and families build businesses that enable financial mobility by bridging legislation and blockchain. Miko’s inspiration for the project came from a federal policy in the US that awards contracts to certified women-owned small businesses. These contracts and information around them is typically difficult to find, so Mizuxe aims to be a platform for enabling easier access to wealth opportunities for women-owned businesses.
Mizuxe aims to act as a powerful, transparent donation platform leveraging the security and decentralization that is built into the fabric of the Internet Computer. Mizuxe includes unique features, such as enabling an individual to use a browser to recognize and authenticate their account access without having to provide login credentials. In addition to being built with a React front end connected to canisters written in Motoko, Mizuxe has also created a connector to external APIs, such as SendGrid for emailing involved parties transactions and receipts — demonstrating how the Internet Computer can be interoperable with existing systems and frameworks.
The Mizuxe GitHub can be found here: https://github.com/mikoaro/mizuxe
2nd Place: EarthDay Cleanup by Nicolas Grenié
EarthDay Cleanup was inspired by the observance of support for environmental protection that occurs on April 22 each year. Nicolas built a platform that extracts and cleans Arcgis data from EarthDay.org’s map of global “cleanup” activities. He used the Internet Computer to store the data for the cleanup events and applied native Motoko functions to run the search through a purpose-built UI that made it easier for people located around the world to find cleanup events in their area. The front end was built using Vue.js and Buefy connecting to a back-end canister hosted on the Internet Computer. EarthDay Cleanup not only gives us a great tool to find ways to be more ecologically active in our local communities, but also shows the potential for creating open versions of existing event hosting platforms.
The EarthDay Cleanup GitHub can be found here: https://github.com/picsoung/dfinity-earthday
3rd Place: Shadow by Brian Cottrell
Shadow uses the Internet Computer to build a platform that gives budding educators the opportunity to shadow mentors as they offer guidance and teach. Individuals who are curious about becoming remote educators or who want to learn by example can sit in on classes and observe experienced educators at work. Observers have the option of upvoting the most effective mentors, improving their reputation and helping other mentors identify and learn from the best. Shadow is a web application that Brian built with the DFINITY Canister SDK, deploying the application to canisters for hosting the assets as well as performing computations.
The Shadow GitHub can be found here: https://github.com/BrianCottrell/Shadow
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This inspiring hackathon produced an environment that fostered creative application development while aiming to achieve social good — principles that are core components of the open internet community. Hacker Fund and its mentors continue to create pathways that provide students with greater access to K-12 S.T.E.M. education by developing curricula, hosting workshops, and running hackathon events that focus on assisting underserved communities. This showcase with the DFINITY Foundation is just one of many of the two organizations’ continued efforts to grow a developer community that is focused on building open internet services for good.
The approaching Genesis launch of the Internet Computer marks the beginning of its emergence as a global public computing resource, as well as a historic moment of opportunity for an emerging generation of creators, developers, and entrepreneurs who will build directly on the open network. Partnering with premier educational organizations like Hacker Fund to deliver hands-on instruction and mentorship will help ensure that they have all the support and guidance they need to realize their potential.
Join our developer community and start building at forum.dfinity.org.
