Encode Hack Club: Polkadot Overview
After over 10 weeks, the Encode Hack Club has come to a close. We are pleased to say that it was our biggest university hackathon yet!
Over 1200 students, researchers and hackers took part from over 50 countries and 75 universities!
Polkadot were Gold sponsors of Encode Hack Club, and we would like to give them our thanks on behalf of the Encode team and all of the hackathon participants.
About Polkadot
Polkadot is a next-generation blockchain protocol connecting multiple specialized blockchains into one unified network. The network was founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder, and CTO of Ethereum. Designed as part of a broad vision for a web that returns control to individuals over internet monopolies, Polkadot builds on the revolutionary promise of previous blockchain networks while offering several fundamental advantages. Learn more at polkadot.network and join the Polkadot Discord.
Polkadot’s Challenges
Polkadot offered three categories of challenges with prizes totalling $36,000:
- Easy (Onboarding) — $6,000
- Intermediate (Build a DApp) — $20,000
- Hard (Build a Blockchain) — $10,000
1. Easy — Complete Onboarding Challenges: Complete up to 6 entry-level Substrate tutorials to begin learning how to build with Polkadot and Substrate.
$6,000 total: $25 USD per challenge (6 total). The first 40 submissions per challenge are eligible for the prize.
2. Intermediate — Build a DApp: With Polkadot, DApps are built parachains with smart contract functionality at the parachain layer, which in the very near future, will begin connecting to Polkadot’s Relay Chain. In this challenge, build a DApp on a Polkadot parachain candidate of your choice (Plasm, Phala, Moonbeam, or Acala).
1st place
Plasm: $3k
Phala: $3k
Moonbeam: $3k
Acala: $3k
2nd place
Plasm: $2k
Phala: $2k
Moonbeam: $2k
Acala: $2k
Hard — Build a Blockchain: Substrate is the framework used to build custom blockchains compatible with Polkadot. In this challenge, build a custom blockchain using Substrate that could eventually become a platform within the Polkadot ecosystem.
1st place: $6,000
2nd place: $4,000
Polkadot’s Workshops
During the hackathon, Polkadot gave four fantastic technical workshops to help students and hackers get to grips with Polkadot:
First Workshop:
Second Workshop:
Third Workshop: The third was a deep-dive into Acala and Moonbeam, which was led by Bryan and Alberto. You can see the video and slides here.
Fourth Workshop: The finalworkshop focused on Phala and Plasm, and was led by Hang Yin, Sota Watanabe and Hyungsuk Kang. You can see the video and slides here.
Encode would like to thank the workshop leaders for sharing their time and knowledge to allow the Hack Club hackers to build fantastic projects with Polkadot!
Polkadot Prize Winners
We had some fantastic entries from teams building on Polkadot, two of which finished in the top ten and pitched in the Hackathon Final! You can see their presentations during the Hackathon Final below:
Loot:
Subauction
During the Final event, Urban Osvald was present to announce the prize winners for the Polkadot challenges:
Prize Winners
Follow a tutorial on Polkadot challenge ($25 per tutorial, capped at 6)
Heartbleed TCG — $25
Ankit — $150
Rafat — $150
DiffieHellman — $150
FIEX — $50
University of Edinburgh — $75
Alejandro Adorjan — $125
Michael Repetný — $25
master-davidlee — $25
Martin L. Jensen — $100
FortEVE — $150
THE WEIRD BROTHER — $150
EncodeV — $150
Crypto23 — $125
XIMORE — $150
Open4G Labs — $150
Tom Bryne — $50
w3m — $25
ARTSTAKE — $50
Arlene Blackwell — $75
Best use of Phala: Monday Lord — $3k
Best use of Moonbeam: Alejandro Adorin — $1k
Build a blockchain:
1st: Loot ($6k )
2nd: Shared between Standard Protocol and SubAuctions ($2k each)
About Encode Club
The purpose of Encode is to educate, support and catalyse the emergence of new talent into the blockchain space. We work across 75 universities worldwide, running hackathons, accelerators, education series as well as investing and recruiting the best to join leading blockchain companies. Read more here.
Hackathons
This was our fourth hackathon to date!
Previous hackathons:
Future of Blockchain 1
Future of Blockchain 2
Spark Summer
How it worked
Students, hackers and researchers had 10 weeks to learn and answer challenges offered by our awesome sponsors!
Along the way, we had awesome workshops, including one with CZ of Binance and Emin of Avalanche!
Future Hackathons
If you would like to get involved in future hackathons with Encode Club, visit our website.
Questions
If you have any questions, please email: questions@encode.club
