Proffer announces Blockchain Hackathon, with Govt of India, Coinbase, Microsoft, IBM
Nov 10–13, $17K+ in prizes, participate from anywhere
TL;DR
Proffer is teaming up with the Government of India, IBM, Microsoft, Accel Partners, and Coinbase to bring you a first-of-its kind blockchain summit and hackathon from Nov 10–13, dedicated to envisioning and building use-cases of blockchain for social good — beyond bitcoin, beyond currency.
$17K+ in prizes for your Dapps and smart contracts addressing corruption and inefficiencies in real estate, supply chain, finance, information exchange, national identity, or other sectors of your choosing.
Open to participants from anywhere in the world, with optional in-person workshops and hacking sessions taking place at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD).
Registration is open, sign up here:
https://proffer.network/hackathon
Allowed Platforms: What can I code dApps and smart contracts on?
1. Toshi (by Coinbase) for Mobile Apps built on Ethereum
Toshi, formerly called Token, is a chat-based Ethereum browser built and maintained by Coinbase. Think of it as a messaging app like Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp but with deep integration with the Ethereum blockchain that provides every Toshi user with an Ethereum account and allows users to easily transfer ETH to apps and to other users.
Toshi makes it easy for developers to build 3rd party apps on top of Ethereum with conversational interfaces using JavaScript. For example, here’s a crowdsourced Job-Search app that recommends eligible candidates to companies with job openings using wisdom of the crowds, created by Proffer and published on the Toshi app store:
Docs: https://developers.toshi.org/docs
Sample code: https://github.com/toshiapp/toshi-app-js
Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUtehI7dKns
2. Proffer, for use cases that need search using expert networks
Proffer is a blockchain protocol for search with expert networks. dApps and smart contracts can invoke Proffer smart contracts to find answers to questions that require human expertise, e.g for use cases like job recruiting, monetized peer-to-peer tutoring, Yelp/Zomato, crowdsourced matchmaking, and more.
Whitepaper / Detailed technical overview: Read here.
Conceptual Overview:
Sample Use Cases / dApps
3. Truffle, for Smart Contracts built on Ethereum
Truffle is a development framework that makes the coding, compilation, and publishing of Ethereum smart contracts to a private testnet or public net a whole lot easier. Get started with the links below.
Docs: http://truffleframework.com/docs/
Sample Code: https://github.com/joshpierro/ethereum-voting-dapp
Tutorials: http://truffleframework.com/tutorials/
Note: To build a full-stack dApp (decentralized app) on top of your Ethereum smart contracts, you need a front-end layer capable of calling functions on your smart contracts from a user interface on a mobile app or a web app. That’s where web3.js comes in. The following 3 tutorials walk through end-to-end dApp development using Truffle for the contracts layer and web3 for interface to the front-end:
4. Fabric SDK, for Smart Contracts and dApps built on Hyperledger Fabric
Hyperledger Fabric is a framework for distributed ledger solutions on permissioned networks (different from the public / unpermissioned blockchains of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and ideal for enterprise use cases where all participating entities are known and trusted), hosted by the Linux Foundation, and contributed to by IBM and a number of other firms.
QuickStart Guide: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/cloud/library/cl-ibm-blockchain-101-quick-start-guide-for-developers-bluemix-trs/index.html
Writing Smart Contracts / chaincode:
- Docs: http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/chaincode4ade.html
- Sample Code: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-samples/tree/master/chaincode
Writing Client apps that invoke chaincode:
- Docs: http://hyperledger-fabric.readthedocs.io/en/latest/write_first_app.html
- Sample Code 1: https://github.com/IBM-Blockchain/marbles
- Sample Code 2: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-samples/tree/release/fabcar
Prizes
Note: The Toshi/Coinbase prize is restricted to a team or individual that makes use of Toshi for the dApp front-end. The IBM prize (blockchain internship) is restricted to a team or individual that makes use of Hyperledger, and is contingent on a successful interview process. The Microsoft, Accel, and AWS prizes are open to all participants.
Judges
We are lucky to have a panel of judges that are experts in their field and approach blockchain from a diversity of perspectives— research, investor, corporate, and government:
Professor Karim Lakhani: Professor, Harvard Business School
Expert on crowdsourced innovation, distributed contests, and role of blockchain architectures for economic and societal transformation, covers blockchain on Harvard Business Review, e.g. The Truth About Blockchain
Mr. Amitabh Kant: CEO of NITI Aayog, Government of India
IAS Officer, former Secretary of DIPP, and a key driver for the Startup India movement. Now runs the government thinktank NITI Aayog, applying cutting edge tech (e.g. blockchain) to catalysing economic development in India.
Adam Draper: Founder and Managing Director, BoostVC
2x entrepreneur turned VC. Prolific investor in crypto companies e.g. Coinbase, Polychain Capital and new blockchain protocols e.g. Tezos, and IPFS/FileCoin.
Dr. Sriram Rajamani: Managing Director, Microsoft Research India
Leads Microsoft’s research lab in India, ACM Fellow, personal research interests include cryptography, security, privacy, next-generation cloud.
Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu: PM building Toshi at Coinbase.
Mohan Dhawan and Mudit Verma from the Hyperledger team at IBM Research.
Challenge Problems: What can I build?
Below, Proffer and its hackathon partners have defined three problem areas that we believe are significant and conducive to the use of blockchain technology: Finance, Information exchange, and Enterprise/Government infrastructure. Within each area, we have listed sample ideas for what you can build.
This is not a complete list, and you should feel free to work on an idea or problem area not mentioned here.
Problem Area 1: Finance
- Remittances
- Peer to Peer Lending
- Crowd-lending / microfinance
- Credit Scoring
- Crowdfunding public goods
Problem Area 2: Crowdsourced Information and Recommendations
For each of these, build either an anonymous app OR one which simulates identity (e.g. with Aadhar, the world’s largest biometric identity database, mapping each Indian resident to an Aadhar number). We will be publishing a template with simulated Aadhar identity soon.
- Monetized Q&A
- Polling
- Prediction Markets
- Matchmaking
- Job Search
- Legal Advice
- Health Advice
- Zomato or Yelp
- Voting for Government Elections
- Others!
Problem Area 3: Enterprise and National Infrastructure
Imagine an entire nation’s infrastructure verified on blockchain. with a unique ID for each user (Aadhar, in the case of India).
- Real Estate: contracts for smart property. Read paper here.
- Energy: contracts for managing smart grid access. Read paper here.
- Employer and University Certificates on the blockchain. Read more here.
- Health Records: Read paper here.
- Supply Chain, tracking movement of goods: Read more here.
- IndiaStack (Aadhar, eKYC, DigiLocker, eSign) on the blockchain, a.k.a “IndiaChain”. Read about IndiaStack here.
When and where?
Hacking Period starts on Nov 10 at 9pm IST (8:30am PT) and ends on Nov 13 at 11:59pm IST (11:29am PST).
You can participate remotely from anywhere in the world. Just start coding at the above specified time (honor code), and submit before the deadline using the online submission form.
You can also participate in-person: We’ll have lots of Ethereum / Hyperledger development workshops, expert talks and panels, and free food and drinks taking place in and around the Lecture Hall Complex at the Indian Institute of Delhi (IIT Delhi) college campus starting at 5:30pm IST on Nov 10. See map location here.
Join Slack for real-time updates, hackathon Q&A, and expert advice
We’ll be monitoring Slack closely before and during the hackathon so feel free to post your questions or answer other community members’ questions.
We’ll also have experts from Coinbase and IBM available on Slack during the hackathon to answer questions you might have about Toshi and Hyperledger respectively.
This is a community invite link, you can click and join without us having to individually invite you.
Why we’re organizing this hackathon and why we’re focusing on “social good”:
1. Blockchain ≠ Bitcoin, Blockchain ≠ cryptocurrency
Outside of a small group of crypto-savvy investors and developers, the blockchain is often synonymous with cryptocurrency, and erroneously so. Our goal with this hackathon is to give developers (with or without past blockchain experience) a chance to envision how the same distributed ledger technology that powers Bitcoin might be able to improve transparency, efficiency, and honesty in enterprise and government processes, particularly in regions of the world suffering from high corruption.
It is for this reason that Proffer is partnering with a national government — that of India — and leading minds in the space across large tech (IBM, Microsoft), crypto-pioneers (Coinbase), and venture capital (Accel) to explore use cases for Proffer and concepts like IndiaChain — a blockchain infrastructure for a Digital India, building on existing initiatives like Aadhar, the world’s largest biometric identity project with unique 12-digit IDs for 1.2 billion Indian residents.
2. Drive developer and consumer adoption of blockchain protocols and apps
For the past six months, the Proffer team has been working on an Ethereum protocol for search using expert networks that crawls and indexes offline information and expertise of its users as they respond to incoming queries (read draft whitepaper). We see Proffer being particularly useful for emerging markets with large informal sectors / and unstructured, offline knowledge banks where the ability to share knowledge and expertise without revealing identity might allow for more accurate measurement of popular opinion without jeapordizing the safety of minority groups. We believe that mass adoption of blockchain protocols among developers and dApps among end-users will significantly influence the success of projects like Proffer, and so a secondary objective of this hackathon is to make the challenging topic of smart contract / dApp development more accessible to the masses through free online/offline coding workshops, expert talks on what blockchain is and is not, curated Challenge Problems, and financial incentives to reward creativity and effort.
Want to get involved?
If you want to sponsor, cover the hackathon for your tech blog/newspaper, be a judge, etc., feel free to message us on Slack or Gitter (links above), leave a comment on this post, or email us at team@proffer.network.
