Hack with UMA and earn prizes at Scaling Ethereum

Published in

UMA Project

4 min readFeb 28, 2023

tl;dr: Hack on UMA during Scaling Ethereum, a virtual hackathon that takes place March 10–29. The ETHGlobal event is focused on building critical Ethereum infrastructure with $125,000 in total hacker prizes available, including $10,000 from UMA. Don’t forget to apply to hack, and join us for an introductory workshop on Wed. March 8 focused on building with UMA’s optimistic oracle.

UMA focused on building and innovating in 2023

The team at UMA and our sister project Across Protocol have been busy in 2023.

So far this year, UMA has co-launched oSnap, a tool for executing on-chain transactions based on off-chain voting decisions. It’s a product co-developed with Snapshot that empowers communities and strengthens DAO decentralization.

Meanwhile, we’re in the process of launching UMA 2.0, a package of sweeping upgrades to the UMA ecosystem. UMA 2.0 introduces staking and transforms UMA’s optimistic oracle so that it is more robust, has a stronger voter base, and a more flexible security model that allows for securing more value.

UMA 2.0 will help to support the next generation of real-world applications.

2023 hackathon series provides a boost to the ecosystem

We’re excited about the 2023 hackathon series, and have found the hacker and event ecosystem to be a valuable incubator for bright ideas, iterations and project dev that uses UMA’s optimistic oracle. Regardless of market conditions, these hackathons are where cool, useful stuff gets built. UMA’s community of developers is growing, and strengthening — and we want you to be part of that.

One of the best opportunities to connect with UMA is at the upcoming Scaling Ethereum virtual hackathon, which takes place March 10–29.

The online event brings together a collective of more than 1,000 hackers who will compete for $125,000 in prizes. It’s the perfect space to meet new people, connect with mentors and find your next crypto job to push the ecosystem forward.

Don’t miss this chance to build and develop your own bright idea, or one of ours using UMA’s optimistic oracle and/or our sister project, Across — an optimistic cross-chain bridge that is empowered and secured by the OO.

Core members of UMA will be available to support and guide hackers through the competition that will include USD$10,000 in prizes from UMA for the best use cases with UMA’s optimistic oracle, or Across.

The prizes from UMA will break down like this:

First prize of $5,000
Second prize of $2,500
Pool prize of $2,500 for all other submissions on UMA during the hackathon.

The event will also feature a 30-minute introductory workshop focused on building with UMA’s optimistic oracle, hosted by UMA smart contract engineer, John Shutt. This video workshop takes place Wednesday, March 8 at 9am PST (noon EST). Find the full event schedule here.

Why you should build using UMA and its tools

UMA is an optimistic oracle that can provide and verify any arbitrary data on-chain. Web3 is increasingly going to rely on optimistic data verification and DAO tooling, and that’s exactly what the OO is bringing to the table.

Data from UMA secures markets and smart contracts across web3, expanding the developer design space. The OO tells smart contracts “things about the world” so those contracts can enforce real-world settlements.

UMA’s OO provides super flexible data dispute resolution between smart contracts. Rewards can be earned by proposing answers to a data request, and that’s the lifeblood of the protocol. Proposed data will not be scrutinized unless it is disputed, and disputes are rare. That’s what makes UMA’s oracle optimistic.

The Across bridge, Sherlock insurance protocol and Polymarket prediction markets are a few of the many great use cases for the OO.

Recently-launched Decentra-List represents an integration with the OO that emerged as a project during an ETHGlobal hackathon last year. Decentra-List is a tool that allows devs and protocols to create decentralized on-chain address lists with an incentivized updating and dispute system that relies on the OO for verification.

The opportunities for the OO are limitless, but here are a few ideas that hackers can develop for Scaling Ethereum, or at any point. Please take a look at our Hacking at UMA page for key resources and additional hacker ideas to get started.

A few ideas to that you can build with UMA at Scaling Ethereum

An oSnap-powered DAO for approving and funding Ethereum scalability projects.
UMA contract deployments to zkEVM chains like Scroll, zkSync, or Taiko, where the UMA oracle on the zk chain is controlled by UMA voting on Ethereum mainnet.
Using data from FVM or Polybase to prove assertions to UMA’s optimistic oracle.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to register for the hackathon. Reach out with any questions and tell us more about what you want to build via Twitter, or join us on Discord and keep an eye on UMA’s channels for more details throughout Scaling Ethereum.