Hedera21 Hackathon - Challenges Explained
Jan 17, 2021
by Cooper Kunz
Developer Evangelist

At the Hedera21: Hello Tokenization Hackathon we have a variety of challenges from Hedera and leading 3rd party sponsors. Let’s talk about these challenges, why they’re exciting, and hopefully, give you some inspiration for what to build throughout the 4 weeks of the hackathon.

Don’t forget - you can submit your project to multiple challenge categories!

Main challenge

Using HTS allows you to easily issue, administer, and ensure compliance. Whether you’re interested in building micropayment rails, stablecoins, collectibles, securities, or any other type of cryptocurrencies, HTS provides scalable and cost-effective infrastructure.

Description:

Create an application, protocol, or developer tool that uses the Hedera Token Service (HTS) which promotes active Hedera account creation and tokenization of digital or physical assets.

Prizes:

1st place - $20,000 USD in HBAR

2nd place - $10,000 USD in HBAR

3rd place - $5,000 USD in HBAR

Community choice - $2,000 USD in HBAR

Judges:

  • Dr. Leemon Baird - CTO & Co-Founder - Hedera

  • Helen Disney - CEO - Unblocked

  • Spencer Dinwiddie - Founder & CEO - Calaxy

  • Jonathan Padilla - Blockchain Strategy - PayPal

  • Aritona Bogo - Sales Engineer - Google Cloud

  • Samuel Byungsun Park - Blockchain Business Task Leader - LG Electronics

View all of the hackathon judges at Hedera21.com

Browser Extension Challenge - Sponsored by eftpos Australia

Key management and 3rd party application integrations are key to building a robust ecosystem on Hedera and ensuring that apps have a high-quality user experience. By building a browser extension/wallet solution, developers also help make it so that new projects don’t have to reinvent the wheel and can leverage existing community standards, by just connecting their website to a wallet that users already have, rather than having to build their own.

The browser extension can also be developed and submitted alongside a website, app, or developer tool, that is attempting to win other challenges.

Description:

The best HTS supported browser extension.

Prizes:

  • $5,000 USD in HBAR

  • Business and technical mentorship by members of the eftpos team.

Judges:

  • Rob Allen - Entrepreneur in Residence - eftpos

BitGo Open Source Challenge - Sponsored by BitGo

As a leader in digital asset financial services, BitGo is aiming to foster its open source community and extend its integrations with Hedera to support HTS. If you’re trying to break into the industry or find open source projects to contribute to, this is an exciting opportunity.

Description:

BitGo will be awarding the top 3 teams that have either: the best usage of BitGo’s open-source account library, projects that are able to extend BitGo’s open-source account library to support HTS tokens and transactions using HCS (Hedera Consensus Algorithm), and or the best contributions to BitGo’s open-source account library documentation on GitHub.

Prizes:

  • 1st place -BitGo swag, $2500 USD worth of hbar and a virtual lunch with Mike Belshe (BitGo Co-founder and CEO) and Chen Fang (BitGo, Chief Product Officer)

  • 2nd place: BitGo swag, $500, and a virtual lunch Mike Belshe and Chen Fang

  • 3rd place: BitGo swag, and a virtual lunch with Mike Belshe and Chen Fang

Judges:

  • Chen Fang - Chief Product Officer - BitGo

Social Good Challenge - Sponsored by the Chopra Foundation

Cryptoeconomics can help align the incentives of businesses, platforms, and users. Through the usage of tokenization for social good, developers can help increase transparency in charity, donations, or giving marketplaces. It can also help ensure content creators are getting compensated fairly, or open new opportunities to help each other. Through their own Love in Action Token, the Chopra Foundation is aiming to help increase mental health awareness and support. Similarly, they’re excited to see what types of tokenization for social good can be built throughout Hedera21.

Description:

The best project demonstrating a practical implementation of a token for social good.

Prizes:

  • $5,000 USD in HBAR

  • Private Q&A session with Deepak Chopra

  • Support and endorsement of your application by the Chopra Foundation

Judges:

  • Gabriella Wright - Co-founder - The Never Alone Initiative

  • Poonacha Machaiah - CEO - The Chopra Foundation

Tokenization Protocol Challenge - Sponsored by UCL

Blockchains and distributed ledgers provide the foundational infrastructure for tokenization. Whether those tokens represent physical or digital assets, tokens provide a unique opportunity to alter the way we understand value flow, ownership, and community. Through UCL’s challenge, we’re excited to see what innovative methods and standards are created to issue various types of tokens and making it easy to move into the exciting future they enable.

Description:

UCL is looking for the best tokenization protocol which enables asset-agnostic tokens to be created, customized, and standardized – accommodating non-standard physical (ex: real estate, fine art, etc.) and digital assets (ex: IP, data, etc.).

Prizes:

  • 5,000 USD worth of hbar

  • Lifetime membership to the UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies Industry program

  • Support and help for further development of the application

  • The chance to present their idea at premier blockchain conferences

  • Introduction to VC's to fund their venture via UCL capital partners

  • 3 Vouchers to attend the UCL CBT Executive Programmes

  • 3 Vouchers to attend the P2P Financial Systems International Workshop

  • UCL swag

Judges:

  • Paolo Tasca - Founder and Executive Director of the Centre for Blockchain Technologies - UCL

Wrapped Token & Interoperability Challenge - Sponsored by Armanino LLP

Wrapping creates value across networks! Interoperability between different public networks, like Hedera and Ethereum, can enable currently siloed ecosystems to work together and leverage the advantages of each unique offering. By building “bridges” and “wrapping” tokens between networks, it opens entirely new opportunities - like micropayments on fundamentally slow chains, or access cross-chain liquidity for newer projects, ensuring markets and solutions are established for ambitious use cases.

Description:

To share in $3,000 worth of prizes, demonstrate how a wrapped token protocol on the Hedera Token Service/Main Net can be used to “port” assets from other public chains across Hedera, unlocking the capability for Hedera users to transact in leading stablecoins or proxy assets such as (wETH).

Prizes:

  • $3,000 USD in gift cards and other prizes

Judges:

  • Noah Buxton - Director, Blockchain - Armanino LLP

Enhancing Tokenization Functionality Challenge - Sponsored by DLA Piper and BCW Group

Real-world assets including art, real estate, collectibles, and many more can be represented digitally with tokens, providing more portability and ease of authentication. This new world of tokenizing physical assets is just beginning, and there are numerous ways to enhance the currently understood feature set - whether that is improving customer onboarding, listing, liquidity, or more.

Description:

DLA Piper and BCW Group are looking for innovative teams that can digitize real-world assets by leveraging HTS to unlock the creative features that allow enterprise companies to tokenized their clients' future businesses.

Prizes:

  • $5,000 USD in HBAR

  • Opportunity to join a development team building an HTS enterprise use case

Judges:

  • Scott Thiel - Partner - DLA Piper

  • Kyle Baron - Managing Partner - BCW Group

  • Jeff Tchui - Head of Consulting - BCW Group

Financial Services Reimagined Challenge - Sponsored by Google Cloud

The financial services industry is currently going through a paradigm shift, upgrading the industry’s technology infrastructure to finally be digitally native with new levels of transparency and resiliency. Google Cloud and its wide array of services can work side-by-side with the Hedera public network to make new opportunities possible, from providing liquidity to lending.

Description:

Google Cloud is looking for the best project demonstrating a financial services scenario leveraging the HTS (Hedera Token Service) and a broad range of existing Google Cloud products and/or solutions.

Prizes:

  • $5,000 USD in HBAR

Judges:

  • Artiona Bogo - Sales Engineer - Google Cloud

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Learn more & sign up for the Hedera21 hackathon here.

Do you have any questions? Ask us on Discord.