Ethereal Blocks Hackathon Summary
Exactly 1 month ago, I posted an article here expressing our excitement about sponsoring the Ethereal Blocks Hackathon, and revealing the bounty challenges we would be setting for our community.
Over the last few weeks, we at Status have had the pleasure and privilege of sponsoring, and setting challenges for, the Ethereal Blocks Hackathon. Being a virtual hackathon hosted by (and using) Gitcoin; community members from around the world were able to participate and post some extremely impressive solutions to the challenges posed. Not just for the bounties posted by Status, but solutions to ALL of the bounties posted.
The event itself saw the following figures:
- 10 sponsors
- 20 challenges
- $50k+ in prizes
- 67 submissions
- 20 winners
It was a great success, a great learning experience, and a great chance for us here at Status to engage with the community we support, and challenge them to show off their skills, whilst earning real cash prizes to do so.
Without further ado; let's dive on into the results of the Status Bounties!
Challenge Title: Build a Status Optimised Web DApp with our Javascript API using Embark
Winner: Brianspha
App: HangCrypt
For our first Hackathon bounty, we challenged our community to build a Status DApp using our Embark Javascipt API.. The challenge invited hackers to create with the native features of Status; building a fully decentralised, Status-optimised DApp using our JavaScript API.
To be optimised for Status, the DApp must be responsive and work well on mobile. It should also work with EIP1102 (e.g. browser privacy mode enabled), and reflect Status as the host.
The bounty challenge was taken on by 6 of our community members: wslyvh, brianspha, elegant651, dcd018, mul1sh, and krisc.
We'd like to thank all of our community members who submitted solutions to this challenge, every submission was impressive!
The challenge solutions were submitted to judging - with plenty of internal debate going on within our Status channels. After much deliberation, and solution comparison, we decided on brianspha, with his app: HangCrypt.
HangCrypt is an Embark DApp, built with a Vue.js front-end. It is a hangman-based game that rewards crypto cash for guessing words through multiple levels.
Congratulations Brianspha on winning the prize of 1500DAI!
Challenge Title: Proof of concept for integration of Keycard within mobile or desktop apps
Winner: Ligi
App: Sign eip191 via nfc
For the second Hackthon bounty, we challenged our community members to build a proof of concept integration of Keycard within mobile or desktop apps (e.g. wallets, web3 browsers) for security, DApps interaction, or payment purposes.
The challenge was taken on by 2 of our community members: ligi and mul1sh.
Once again, we'd like to take this opportunity to thank both entrants for their super-impressive hacks. After judging was complete, a verdict was decided on ligi being the challenge winner, with his entry: Sign eip191 via nfc.
The app allows users to pre-sign transactions using Keycard and the WallETH Android Ethereum wallet.
Congratulations, Ligi on taking home the 2000DAI prize!
Challenge Title: Create a new SDK or development tool facilitating integration of Keycard
Winner: Bakaoh
App: Keycard Simulator
Our third, and final challenge tasked our community members with building an SDK or Toolset facilitating the integration of Keycard for developers.
The challenge was entered by 3 of our community members: bakaoh, iikirilov, and igetgames.
Thank you to all 3 of our entrants. Being a tough challenge, in the end only bakaoh managed to submit a solution for judging, but the solution submitted was absolutely mind-blowing, and 100% deserves to take home the win!
Congratulations, Bakaoh on claiming the 1500DAI prize!
Keycard simulator makes testing and debugging status-keycard even easier, without the need of a real card or card reader. He put together a great blog post illustrating why a Keycard simulator is helpful and even included a video demo of it in action, as seen below. You can also find the project on GitHub here.
Being a virtual hackathon, the distribution of entrants from around the world was both a fantastic, but also slightly more daunting experience. I personally have attended as a Developer Evangelist, and sponsored hundreds of hackathons over the last few years - and distributed hackathons often have many teething problems. I have to say, that Ethereal Blocks was very well organised, and went without a hitch!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers of the hackathon, the other sponsors of the hackathon, but most of all; the amazing community members who took on our Status bounty challenges and submitted the incredibly impressive solutions we received.
If you're a hackathon organiser, and would like to get Status involved, please feel free to reach out to me at robin@status or on @rbin.
See you all next year!
