The DAPP Network Hackathon Was Epic. Here is Part 1 of Our Recap.
Talented Teams from Around the World Put the DAPP Network to Use, and the Results Were Incredible
The DAPP Network community consists of dedicated and innovative developers, entrepreneurs, marketers, and product specialists. So what better way for the ecosystem to showcase its creativity and innovative spirit than a global hackathon allowing developers from around the world to participate remotely?
44 Teams from all over the world were challenged to build a product on EOSIO under at least one of the following three themes:
- Decentralized Gaming
- Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
- New DAPP Network service
For the first two themes, projects had to utilize two LiquidApps services in order to qualify for the finals. The third theme gave teams an opportunity to extend the DAPP Network’s functionality by introducing novel services that could be offered by DSPs on a free-market basis. We saw a grand total of 20 teams submit their projects before the submission deadline!
The DAPP Network Hackathon exceeded expectations, and none of it would have been possible without our dedicated mentors. We were privileged to have top-quality developers and entrepreneurs serve alongside the LiquidApps tech team as mentors. Thank you! And congratulations to Michael Fletcher from EOS42 and Chintai, voted Best Mentor by the hackathon participants. Well done, Michael!
A special thank you to Crystal Rose, Ƀrock Pierce, Greg Lee, and Ran Neuner for forming an elite judging panel alongside our own Beni Hakak, and contributing their time and expertise towards taking the Hackathon to the highest level.
Also, a big congratulations to KY PRIMO from Team Block Invaders, as well, for taking home the Best Social Media Post prize. Ky documented Team Block Invaders’ hackathon experience in a quirky, informative vlog which you can find on her Twitter feed.
Our on-site event, held in Tel Aviv during the weekend of the hackathon, drew an enthusiastic group of hackers who got to experience the action live. The entire LiquidApps tech team and other amazing mentors were on hand to provide guidance and tech support as teams raced to complete their projects before the submission deadline.
The Finalists of the DAPP Network Hackathon
Out of the 20 teams that submitted a project, 10 were selected to progress to the final round and pitch their projects to the judges in a live closing ceremony. Each of the projects that made the finals displayed technical complexity, innovation, creativity, and elegant use of the DAPP Network.
These are the DAPP Hackathon Finalists:
Finalists:
- VIGorish
Decentralized risk management as a service, with Monte Carlo simulation - Tipit
Receipts service (vCeipts) enabling tokens to be used for everyday purchases - mEOS Team
Telegram crypto wallet and bot, enabling the creation of games such as trivia - Diadem.Network
Decentralized escrow service, enabling a range of contract applications such as insurance - FundEX
ETF creator and exchange platform
Winners (profiled in a separate article — stay tuned)
- First Place: Team Onessus
Global Economic Esports Community - Second Place: Blockstart
Resource lending from centralized exchanges - Third Place: BCS Germany
LiquidGalaxy, a space-based MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game)
In addition to the top three prizes, hackathon participants were given the opportunity to vote for their favorite project. When the votes were tallied, two teams each earned the same number of votes and so we decided to split the Crowd Favorite prize between them. The 2 teams sharing the Crowd Favorite are:
- Crowd Favorite: Malta Block
LiquidCrypto, cryptography-as-a-service - Crowd Favorite: Rekt.Land
Blockchain-based board game
DAPP Hackathon Finalist Profiles
VIGorish
According to the VIGorish team, “as the DeFi space looks to grow, it will require sophisticated financial risk management systems that are both high-performance and decentralized. However, quantifying risk is a computationally-intensive process that involves running multiple simulations on large datasets in order to extract key risk metrics that can be used in decision-making.” To that end, the team set out to create a new DAPP Network service that would provide metrics calculated with the most advanced risk and pricing engines, while being fully decentralized.
According to Rick from the VIGorish team, the service they built on the DAPP Network could function as a “more robust risk management system for the Vigor stablecoin,” among other applications.
Tipit
The Tipit team decided to participate under the DeFi theme by tackling the challenge of making tokens useful for daily life purchases.
vCeipts, a new service that they built, served as the basis to their solution by making it simple to generate a receipt object for every transaction and store it on the blockchain. Their demo included a successful integration of Stripe’s POS system and the blockchain whereby each transaction is recorded both on the blockchain and on the Stripe system. In addition, the vCeipts service also provides a solution for digital goods authors like musicians, video creators, photographers, writers of ebooks, meme creators, and many more to instantly sell and deliver digital content without middlemen.
Ben Althauser from the team says that Tipit “leveraged an existing POS system (Stripe), and found a way to create a Stripe invoice that stored blockchain information, and created a hybrid receipt which had information about both blockchain and the POS system as well as a proof-of-concept content delivery mechanism for the content authors demo.”
mEOS Team
Trivia games are universally popular, and trivia games with rewards even more so — as demonstrated by the success of apps like HQ Trivia and Majority Rules. By using LiquidAccounts, the mEOS team was able to create a Telegram trivia game that rewards winners with the mEOS token directly in-app, without them needing to open an EOS account at all.
mEOS, or mini-EOS, is a token created with LiquidAccounts and vRAM that can be exchanged for EOS at a rate of 10,000:1. The team specifically designed the token as such so that it could serve as a more intuitive unit of account, especially in countries with weak currencies, in addition to its use as a reward token. Shakhruz Ashirov from the mEOS team said, “My country-mates in Uzbekistan are used to operating with money in thousands. Our national currency is SUM, and 10,000 SUM = 1 USD. Making crypto a user-friendly unit of account is key for mass adoption.”
Diadem.Network
Escrow services seemed to be very popular amongst hackathon participants, as 2 escrow projects were submitted.
In order to implement a decentralized escrow service, Diadem.Network utilized both LiquidOracles and LiquidScheduler as a means of establishing proof that the conditions of the escrow arrangement had been met and executing the agreed-upon transaction immediately.
Such a service has wide-ranging utility in cases like insurance contracts, charitable organizations, and currency exchange.
FundEX
With FundEX, users can issue and trade funds based on a basket of crypto assets. Anyone can create an ETF token representing a basket of assets of their choice and list the ETF for others to trade. Furthermore, market makers can create trading pairs for the funds by integrating Bancor relay technology.
Their demo displays just how quickly and seamlessly new users can be onboarded with LiquidAccounts. By using the DAPP Network, FundEX was able to cut the costs of both user onboarding and saving portfolio data on RAM.
For the teams working on gaming and DeFi applications, building with the DAPP Network enabled them to go where they could not go before due to resource costs and network limitations. Furthermore, by giving teams an opportunity to create a new DAPP Network service, either as part of their dApp or as a standalone product, the DAPP Network Hackathon contributed to enhancing the functionality of the DAPP Network.
Stay tuned as we profile the winning projects in an upcoming post!
