KU HackFest: Learning how to SCORE on ICON — ICONOsphere

About the Event

KU HackFest 2021 is a 48-hour long international digital hackathon organized by the Kathmandu University Computer Club (KUCC) on 19–21 February 2021, in which over 300 students took part in a virtual meetup environment. KU HackFest 2021 is Nepal’s First Digital Major League Hacking (MLH) Member Event and will join the Official 2021 Hackathon Season to make this hackathon grander and inclusive for any tech enthusiast to participate.

The event is targeted to bring together innovative minds and tech enthusiasts from Nepal & all around the world where participants will not only compete but also get to learn together. It is an excellent opportunity to gain skills and expertise through collaborative engagement, and brainstorming innovative solutions.

As part of a pre-event, ICONOsphere partnered with KUHackFest to organize a localhost workshop event “Localhost: Blockchain Casino- Learning How To Score On ICON”. on February 16, where participants were taught how to build and deploy a slot machine using ICON technology, ICX, and SCORE and deploy it in the ICON network. The event was open to all the participants from all educational backgrounds. The workshop was hosted live by two lead speakers from ICONOsphere: Er. Abhinayak Swar and Er. Sagar Duwal over Zoom and was able to maintain the active participation of around 45 attendees. The goal of the workshop was to help the participants get familiar with the concepts surrounding Blockchain technology by building a SCORE for the Blockchain Casino game on ICON.

The workshop included:

• Introduction to the Blockchain technology and ICON
• How to create a Blockchain wallet to send & receive transactions
• How to deploy an application to the ICON network using Morpheus Labs

In a 2 hour long workshop, Abhinayak Swar, Director of Engineering, ICONOsphere, gave a brief introduction of blockchain, its history, and use-cases. A swift breakdown of the fundamentals surrounding Blockchain Technology was delivered to the participants. It started with the conceptual breakdown of how the Blockchain works, what its applications are, and its favorability over the centralized system. Similarly, he gave an introduction to ICON, ICX, SMART contracts, and T-Bears (ICON’s suite of command-line development tools).

(Image: Abhinayak Swar from ICONOsphere introducing Blockchain Technology)

Then Sagar Duwal, Software Architect from ICONOsphere, guided participants through launching slot machine applications, setting up ICX wallet, creating Morpheus Lab workspace, and then finally deploying the SMART contract (SCORE) on the ICON testnet.

(Image: Sagar Duwal from ICONOsphere creating Morpheus Lab workspace)

At the end of the workshop, the participants were relayed a set of 4 questions at the end of the workshop. ICONOsphere had sponsored the workshop and had introduced various rewards schemes for the participants.

All the responses were judged by the hosts of the workshop. 4 winners were selected corresponding to each quiz question while one participant was chosen at random to be the recipient of the rewards.

This workshop hosted more than 45 attendees in the zoom meet itself and more joining from KUHackfest’s live broadcast of the event on their Facebook and Youtube pages. Nepalese participants dominated the event attendance while a decent amount of International participants were also present. It was spectacular witnessing the enthusiasm of the younger generation in Blockchain. The workshop created an excellent opportunity to gain considerable skills and expertise on Blockchain with proficient mentors from ICONOsphere to supervise the learners and direct them.

The main focus of all these events that ICONOsphere is taking part in, is making the participants familiar with the blockchain technology as it is bound to be the future of the web also known as WEB3.0. Also, IONOsphere is hoping to find some enthusiastic developers who are willing to come aboard with ICONOsphere in developing the ICON community and actively working with it ICONOsphere.

For more details:

KU Hackfest Website: https://www.kuhackfest.com/

Facebook Live of Workshop: https://www.facebook.com/kuhackfest/videos/473580580666781

Workshop Speakers:

Abhinayak Swar

Sagar Duwal