ETHBishkek 2025: Central Asia’s First Ethereum Hackathon and its Gasless Innovation
From October 24 to 26, ETHBishkek 2025, Central Asia’s first Ethereum-focused hackathon, was held at the Technopark in the heart of Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Celebrating Ethereum’s 10th anniversary and serving as a crucial first step in activating the regional web3 developer ecosystem, let’s dive into the vibrant atmosphere, diverse participants, and winning projects from the Status Network track.
ETHBishkek was more than just a hackathon; it was a community-driven initiative designed to establish Web3 and Ethereum development culture in Central Asia. This 3-day event was well programmed with pre-hackathon workshops, 48 hours of intensive building, on-going mentorship during those hours, and post-event support to enable participants to pursue sustainable development beyond a one-time experience. With a prize pool of $22,000 including multiple partner bounties and a 2-week training program at Silicon Valley, participants were given substantial growth opportunities. The venue, Technopark, is Bishkek’s largest IT hub, featuring modern interior and spacious areas that accommodated approximately 180 builders. The open collaboration spaces with round tables, office desks, and chairs, along with stylish circular ceiling lights and wall branding, provided participants with a comfortable yet focused environment.
This hackathon brought together builders from not only Kyrgyzstan but also across Central Asia and beyond. The participant pool ranged from university students to experienced startup operators and blockchain newcomers to Ethereum ecosystem veterans. Since judging criteria evaluated not only code implementation but also business viability and creativity, even participants with non-technical backgrounds could contribute and learn. Participants actively sought feedback from mentors and sponsors until project submission, with many teams working through the night. Coffee and snacks were continuously provided, and meals included diverse options including meat, fish, and vegetarian dishes to maintain energy during long hacking sessions. Volunteers and security personnel were stationed around the venue 24/7 to maintain a safe and comfortable atmosphere.
With such reliable support, 17 teams applied to the Status Network track. Status Network is a Linea-based zkEVM L2 that provides gasless infrastructure, enabling users to conduct on-chain activities without gas fees. By removing transaction fees, which is one of biggest barriers to Web3, Status Network significantly enhances practical usability. All Status Network track winners effectively leveraged this gasless feature to deliver results that greatly improved user experience in their respective domains.
Workbench goes beyond traditional blockchain games that merely offer NFT ownership, creating a foundation for a new game economy system where players can craft, combine, and trade items entirely on-chain in a gasless manner. Players purchase basic resources, acquire items through crafting, and freely trade with other players. All resources, items, crafting recipes, and transaction histories are transparently recorded on-chain, and thanks to Status Network’s gasless infrastructure, every crafting and trading action proceeds without having to worrying about fees. For game developers, smart contracts enable easy implementation of complex crafting and trading logic without separate backend servers, while players are guaranteed full ownership and transaction history for items they create. Workbench combines ERC-1155 standards with Status Network’s gasless UX, metadata, and real-time indexing to present a starting point for games to transition into true play-to-own economies. Without a gasless environment, players would have to pay fees every time they acquire resources, craft or trade an item, significantly undermining game immersion and enjoyment. Workbench was evaluated as a protocol that completely removes this barrier, delivering real value to both users and developers.
Live Demo: https://workbench-rouge.vercel.app
The Whisp team created a social protocol for online communities that require privacy, trust, and free expression. Unlike existing platforms where users cannot have both anonymity and credibility, Whisp leverages Semaphore anonymity technology and Status Network’s gasless environment to enable private communication while keeping one’s identity hidden yet transparently proving authenticity on-chain. Users can join a group and then leave signals (votes, opinions, feedback, reports, etc.) on-chain while keeping their identity hidden. Zero-knowledge proofs verify their group membership, and one signal per identity is allowed, fundamentally preventing duplicates or Sybil attacks. Most importantly, since no gas fees occur during proof and message transmission, actual users can send signals without burden, and projects or organizations can open censorship resistant discussion forums without cost barriers. Whisp establishes a foundation for expansion into more diverse community applications like anonymous whistleblowing or transparent yet anonymous voting. Whisp was given 2nd place as a project that aligns with Status’ philosophy of privacy and free communication.
Live Demo: https://whisp-mu.vercel.app
StatusGrow is a quest platform that revolutionizes Web3 user onboarding and reward experiences through gasless functionality. Users can complete quests without complex procedures or cost burdens and receive tangible rewards such as tokens, NFTs, Soulbound Tokens, and getting on whitelists. Since all processes are handled through Status Network gas-free, actual users can easily participate in activities. Moreover, by using Status Network, StatusGrow naturally leverages the built-in RLN (Rate Limiting Nullifier) technology which fundamentally blocks bots and farming, ensuring only real users receive rewards. For projects providing quest rewards on StatusGrow, Status Network’s gasless infrastructure enables affordable and efficient campaign expansion with quick reward distribution and easy access to bot-free real statistics. Additionally, since quest participation and experience accumulation occur on a “real user” basis, an organic growth cycle is created within the Status Network ecosystem. StatusGrow was evaluated as both a starting point for substantially lowering Web3 onboarding barriers and a project confirming gasless technology’s high practicality.
Live Demo: https://status-grow-eth-bishkek-2025-nextjs.vercel.app
Pitch Video: https://youtu.be/fj7XvoDfAik
This ETHBishkek hackathon vividly demonstrated how Status Network’s gasless technology can contribute to the practical usability and ecosystem expansion of diverse projects. Participants coded day and night for 48 hours, discussed, solved problems together with mentors, and completed functional product prototypes. The winning teams are now preparing to enter the actual market through follow-up mentorship support and partnerships, and Status Network will continue to support such innovative projects, leading the way toward genuine mass adoption of Web3.
Announcement link: https://x.com/StatusL2/status/1988913900213911967?s=20