Hello hackers and builders! Today we are super excited to soft launch Hack the Rainbow in collaboration with Gitcoin! Hack the Rainbowis NEAR’s first MOOH! (Massive Open Online Hackathon) and is primarily focused on building bridges between NEAR and the Ethereum ecosystems.

There’s plenty of opportunities for everyone to participate and help grow the Open Web by building bridges. Read on to discover how you can get involved!

TL;DR

• Hack the Rainbow will take place online from 15th to 30th of Sep
• Teams and individuals can sign-up on Gitcoin starting today!
• $50K+ main prize pool (in NEAR & DAI) and additional bounties from Hackathon partners
• 20% referral bonus for NEAR Guilds and hacker clubs/dev groups who refer participants
• Exclusive access to Hopin for team building, workshops, and mentorship sessions

Why Hack the Rainbow?

rainbow

/ˈreɪnbəʊ/

noun: rainbow; plural noun: rainbows – a wide range of related and typically colourful things.

We believe the future of the Open Web is collaborative and building the Open Web means building bridges.

Since we already live in a vastly interconnected world, building the new web should also be all about interoperability. The concept of a new, accessible Open Web is aimed at making everything interoperable and building a permanent, ownerless, and borderless foundation for the connected global community of which we are all a part.

Hack the Rainbow will be a creative, collaborative, cross chain hackathon focused on building the bridges needed to make web3 an accessible reality for everyone. Our aim is to work with our Ethereum partners and bring together the best tools for that build.

This is our collective chance to explore and create that “wide range of related and colourful things” that can bring Ethereum and NEAR together. We see it as a chance to deliver community education and broaden opportunity for everyone wanting to explore the power of interoperability and interconnectedness.

The Rainbow Bridge

The Rainbow Bridge allows developers to utilize Ethereum assets and smart contracts on NEAR—a fast, scalable, and low-cost environment. The Bridge has the power to accelerate community development as it allows ETH users immediate access to apps built on NEAR.

This is the first trustless bridge of its kind. It supports ERC20, ERC721, and remains fully decentralized and adaptable to any future protocol changes on either side. You can already check out the Github repoand read the launch blog to find out more about the bridge.

What to expect:

Our two week hackathon starts September 15 but will be preceded by two weeks of educational content so that all participants can get up to speed with NEAR, the bridge and all the possibilities. All workshops will be recorded on Crowdcast and available publicly for you to watch at any time! You can watch some of the previous workshops here on Crowdcast and make sure to follow us to get the latest updates.

Before the hackathon

• If you’re solo and looking to join a team, we help you identify and connect with other hackers.
• LEARN: there will be two weeks of educational sessions in the run-up to the hackathon so make sure you tune in and learn the ins and outs.
• Come up with ideas! There will be plenty of bounties to work on but we’d love for you to get creative and come up with an exciting new project!

During the hackathon (15 days)

• You work on your hack!
• 2x virtual immersive events during the weekends on Hopin where each team gets their own dedicated room and support/mentorship for their projects.
• We will have regular office hours so that you can ask all your questions and feel supported throughout.
• Access to on-call core team members on Discord.

At the end of 15 days, we begin the judging process.

• You finalize and submit your hack and make your bounty submissions.
• You’ll get to present your project in front of our expert judges.
• Win awesome bounties & prizes.
• Every valid submission gets a small thank you gift from NEAR Collective.

Calls to Action

• If you’re a builder, hacker, designer, … you can already sign-up on Gitcoin. You can also watch previous NEAR 101 workshops like this oneto get started with BUIDLing on NEAR!

• If you run a local hackathon or builder community you can earn 10% of the bounty prize of winning teams referred by you. And to make it even better, those teams also get a 10% bonus if they join using your referral code! Contact us community+rainbow@near.org to get you setup and ready to go.

• If you would like to partner with us for this hackathon contact us community+rainbow@near.org to discuss collab opportunities.

See you on the other side of the Rainbow

The NEAR Collective