Hey Gitcoiners! After a quiet end to a successful 2019, we are back to inaugurate the new year with our first hackathon of 2020. This year is shaping up to be pivotal for both Ethereum and the blockchain industry in general, and we couldn’t be more excited for you to see what Gitcoin has in store. To kick things off, we have the Take Back The Web virtual hackathon in full swing, running from January 9th – January 23rd.
Hey Gitcoiners! After a quiet end to a successful 2019, we are back to inaugurate the new year with our first hackathon of 2020. This year is shaping up to be pivotal for both Ethereum and the blockchain industry in general, and we couldn’t be more excited for you to see what Gitcoin has in store. To kick things off, we have the Take Back The Web virtual hackathon in full swing, running from January 9th – January 23rd.
Take Back The Web is focused on building projects, tools, and initiatives that will give power back to the end-users on the internet. #Takebacktheweb is a movement larger than the hackathon, based on the idea that some basic web services should be open platforms that can’t be censored. We’re looking to jumpstart projects that will democratize all major web platforms and services. This hackathon is being led by Embark, with other sponsors including Infura, MetaMask, Sablier, Blockstack, Kickback, and WalletConnect posting bounties.
We couldn’t imagine a better partner to help the community #TakeBackTheWeb than Embark. Embark is the Ethereum development framework by Status. A fast, easy to use, and powerful developer environment to build and deploy decentralized applications. It integrates with Ethereum blockchains, decentralized storages like IPFS and Swarm, and decentralized communication platforms like Whisper. Embark’s goal is to make building decentralized applications as easy as possible, by providing all the tools needed and staying extensible at the same time.
Some of Embark’s features include:
Automatic Smart Contract deployment – Embark takes care of deploying your Smart Contracts as well as redeploying them as you make changes to your code.
Client development – Build your application with the framework of your choice right within Embark.
Testing – Test your applications and Smart Contracts through Web3 in JavaScript.
Decentralized app distribution – Embark integrates with decentralized storage like IPFS and helps you distribute your app in the network.
Peer-to-peer messaging – Send and receive messages via communication protocols like Whisper.
Cockpit – An companion application to make developing and debugging decentralized applications a breeze.
Another great feature of Embark is the integrated debugger which provides an easy way to debug contracts by displaying solidity source code lines where a transaction failed. With Embark you can also write a plugin for pretty much anything and extend the framework to your liking. You can view a long list of the available Embark Plugins here.
Embark has extensive documentation that provides all the information you’ll need to make the most from these tools. Status also provides a great Quick Start guide for those who want to dive right in. This will walk you through installing Embark, then creating, running, and deploying your first dapp. So if you haven’t tried out Embark yet, check it out and help us #TakeBackTheWeb together!
In this Hackathon, Embark’s goal is to gather feedback from developers that are currently working in the space in order to build a framework better suited for you, the user. The Embark feedback bounties can be viewed here, and two bonus bounties focused on Status bug fixes can be seen here.
The aim of the first bounty is to gather broad feedback from the developer audience. You will have to complete a survey answering some basic questions, but there’s one catch: you must have worked on a decentralized application before. The first 250 users will receive 10 DAI and the next 250 users will receive 5 DAI for completing the survey.
In the second bounty, Embark is collecting your product ideas on what you want to see built to help Web3 take off. You’ll need to describe the use case and provide an explanation of why the idea would be most suited for a decentralized project. Up to 200 users will win 5 DAI for their submissions.
The third Embark bounty aims to gather even more feedback from developers by setting you up with a live interview via Zoom. This is an opportunity to get in touch with the Embark team and one person randomly selected will win a prize of 250 DAI for participating!
Finally, there are two bug fix bounties for the Status application centered around wallet collectibles and double spends, for 90 and 100 DAI respectively. There are also many more open bounties on the prize explorer from other sponsors for you to win some crypto!
Want to learn more and engage with Status without committing to a bounty? Check out this Gitcoin Quest on the Status application and win a Kudo for your work. We hope you have a great time taking back the web with us, and hopefully, you give Embark a try when building your projects! If you have questions for Gitcoin or Embark, make sure to join the new in-app Gitcoin Chat system to get in touch. We look forward to seeing what you build!