We hope you all have been enjoying your spooky October season so far: in Gitcoin world, things are more exciting than ever. Devcon 5 has concluded, along with our virtual hackathon, The Road to Devcon. For those of you who weren’t able to attend Devcon, check out Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki’s talk discussing the future (history) of the open Internet, and how Ethereum and Gitcoin fit in it. If you were able to make the trip to Osaka, we hope you had a safe journey home…
We hope you all have been enjoying your spooky October season so far: in Gitcoin world, things are more exciting than ever. Devcon 5 has concluded, along with our virtual hackathon, The Road to Devcon. For those of you who weren’t able to attend Devcon, check out Gitcoin founder Kevin Owocki’s talk discussing the future (history) of the open Internet, and how Ethereum and Gitcoin fit in it. If you were able to make the trip to Osaka, we hope you had a safe journey home given the unicorn typhoon that hit Japan.
Since The Road to Devcon judging has concluded and payments have been made, we’re here to debrief you on the challenges, winning projects, and sponsors. At the end of that, we’ll share some more information on our next hackathon, Web3 World, which is live now. Gitcoin never stops 
We sure do love our sweet, sweet data. Below are the stats from the Road to Devcon hackathon.
Nice. We’re so proud of our community for showing up once again to this virtual hack and can’t wait for what’s next. Without further ado, let’s check out what was built this time around.
First up is our lead sponsor Algorand. Algorand uses proof-of-stake to efficiently verify blocks and enable a higher transaction throughput. For every block, a representative verification leader is selected to validate transactions; network participants with more stake in the network have a higher probability to lead. To participate in validation, users verify each block certificate instead of every individual transaction.
Algorand created three challenges for The Road to Devcon: build a Rust SDK, a React component, and a supply chain tracking application. Although many developers were new to Algorand, they jumped at the chance to work on these prompts. Below are the selected winners for the Algorand bounties.
Write an implementation of the Algorand API in Rust. The SDK must provide core functionality to interact with the Algorand blockchain using Rust.
Mraof took home the prize for Algorand’s Rust SDK challenge with his project rust-algorand-sdk. Thanks to his work, users can now create, sign, and send regular or multi-sig transactions on the Alogrand blockchain using the Rust API outlined in his code. Congrats on taking home this $2,000 prize.
Write React components that expose creating, signing and sending payment transaction using the API reference for the React component definition.
Algorand also sought out a hacker to build React components that build on top of their React API references. Mmitrasish, with their submission featuring a comprehensive application interacting with Algorand, took home the $1,000 prize. Going above and beyond with their submission, a wide range of features were built out in the React Component implementation: account creation, restoration, transactions, and more. Great work.
Create an application that tracks a specific item or items on the Algorand blockchain. Build a dashboard for consumers to view updates registered to the blockchain for tracked items.
Algorand’s third and final challenge featured two winning projects out of the four incredible submissions. Algorand couldn’t choose one winner, so like the first Hunger Games, there are two winners for this one both taking home the full $2,000 prize. Nanspro built a pharmaceutical supply chain tracking application on Algorand, including multi-sig features and IoT enabled components.
Man-jain built TrackAlgo, a more flexible generic platform where a person can track any material with the item details on the Algorand blockchain. Great work to you both — you deserve the recognition.
Consensys Grants
Our friends on the ConsenSys Grants team were a core sponsor for The Road to Devcon. ConsenSys Grants funds projects that meet the needs of a rapidly accelerating Ethereum ecosystem. Some key areas include core infrastructure, improved developer tooling and UX, security, and access to knowledge for both developers and users. They are equally focused on funding core components and technology that will enable far-reaching social impact projects. Throughout 2019 the team will give away $550,000 worth of grants dispersed in amounts of $10,000 and $25,000 via Gitcoin. For this hackathon, ConsenSys Grants gave out four prizes of 1,000 DAI to hackers. Below we’ll cover the challenges and winning submissions.
Continue to support the Ethereum developer ecosystem and enhanced user experiences by building a tool that will improve developer kits and create friendlier user experiences. Overall our goal is to find projects that continue to support the Ethereum developer ecosystem and enhance user experiences.
Bakaoh was the chosen one for their Usability and Dev Toolingsubmission. Creating Monkey D.App, a tool designed to make it easier to deploy decentralized applications, their aim is to lower the bar for developers to build on Web3 technology. The project allows developers to deploy applications on any Ethereum network, Ganache, or sidechain, and you can try it out today. Well done, Bakaoh, keep it up.
In order for Ethereum to be utilized by billions of people, critical infrastructure (i.e., scaling solutions) still needs to be built out. Come up with a solution that will help improve the scalability, privacy, or interoperability of Ethereum.
For this infrastructure challenge, Gitcoiner Michael Cohen put together a comprehensive proposal for equity curation. Focusing on the problem of internet disruption of media businesses, he surfaces the idea of balancing the relationship between platforms and publishers through equity ownership, new revenue models, and indirect governance. We hope to see more work in this vertical, and we applaud your phenomenal work and investigation into possible solutions. Congrats on your win.
Help improve the on-boarding experience of new and existing developers through tutorials or educational tools for developing with the Web3 Stack.
Even dogs can be distributed. Taking home the Education and Technical Knowledge Bounty, DistributedDoge assembled a grant proposal in the form of anthropological interviews to better understand the needs of developers and makers that might build on the Web3 ecosystem. DistributedDoge, through some form of animal-human communication, took notes while interviewing four individuals that are working to pave the future of the ecosystem. Dogs really are a man’s best friend.
Ethereum has the infrastructure built to tackle pressing social issues. Leveraging the power of Ethereum, create a solution that enables the betterment of society and/or democratizes public access to resources.
Finally, Merwane took home Consensys Grant’s final social impact prize. A self-hosted cryptocurrency wallet server, Bitez (pronounced bit-easy) allows for the easy creation of wallets in a simple to use web interface. Bitez provides a comprehensive API and builds on top of the `bit` library. Watch this one, folks. Congrats, Merwane!
Poke around their code, check out their projects, provide feedback. And most importantly congratulate the winners on their successes. Thanks again to Consensys Grants for participating!
ConsenSys Labs was a returning core sponsor, joining us once again for The Road to Devcon. Labs is the venture arm of ConsenSys, supporting entrepreneurs and developers around the world through tools, talent, and capital. They created new challenges around media, open finance, and more. Below are the winners of their prizes.
For this Road to Devcon hackathon, we’re introducing a new track: Decentralizing Research, in which we will reward up to 5 individuals or teams with 5 ETH (around $1000) to tell and show us how your unique problem or experience (or that of a friend or family member) is ripe for disruption by blockchain. That by bringing blockchain’s transparency, immutability, and decentralized power to bear on your current experience, you could make it 5x, 10x, or even 100x better for you and others in your similar situation.
ConsenSys Labs launched this research focused challenge which was a great change of pace for the Gitcoin community. Compiling a smorgasbord of research ranging from interviews to comprehensive reports, Labs selected four lucky teams to take home 5 ETH each. With a different offering than our traditional development prompts, non-technical Gitcoiners jumped at the sight of this one. The winners selected were OpenData, Shintsha, Decentralized Land Registry, and Monetary Charity Distributed on Blockchain. Take a look at their incredible work and congrats to the teams who took home the prizes.
In this challenge, we want you to rewrite the rules on how we experience media online. Content is being presented to us in new ways, faster than we understand the technology behind it, and we continue to not know how to navigate our own understanding of reputation and the accuracy of information… Web3 is uniquely positioned to create a healthier media landscape through transparency, incentives, identity, and reputation. We leave it to you to design the new conditions for trust in media.
We swear we try to only award a bounty out to one submission – but this was too close. Tied to the second decimal point (!), the top two submissions for Consensys Lab’s Media bounty necessitated some additional payments. Michaelcohen716 built Micronews, using his own Equity Curation Model we discussed earlier, a decentralized revenue and curation model for digital content. Micronews is the first sustainable, autonomous micro-content economy, and you can try it out here.
The second winner for this bounty was News Pie by djrosenbaum. News Pie intends to make it as easy as possible for people to come together and form new journalism teams. By capturing the traditional workflow of producing news, each member of the team owns their contribution and thus can earn their share of the pie. Using Ethereum smart contracts, information about the articles cannot be altered or censored, and ownership is undeniably certified.
Congrats to both our winners here, your work to pave the way to a sustainable media future is terrific.
Blockchain technology is uniquely positioned to create a more open, more equitable, and more effective banking and financial infrastructure as people, goods, and currency move throughout the world. We are looking for entrepreneurs and builders to design these new protocols and financial instruments for global financial activity. We leave it to you to design the new conditions for global financial activity.
Last but not least, Labs searched for contributions towards the cause for reinventing our financial system. With 35 ETH up for grabs, Gitcoiners from across the world worked to rethink and reframe how we should expect the financial system to work for us. Congrats to Brianspha for taking home 20 ETH for first place with his project Shintsha. Shintsha is an online decentralized marketplace for farmers to upload their goods, receive orders, deliver items and receive money. Consumers can order goods and services by choosing any product they like and farmers are notified via WhatsApp with details of the order. This allows remote organic farmers who have WhatsApp enabled mobiles to access the mainstream market by directly accessing consumers via WhatsApp and Web3. You can watch a recorded demo here.
Abhimanyu121 took home 10 ETH for second place with his project OpenWallet. OpenWallet is an open-source wallet aiming to bridge the gap between the cryptocurrency world and common masses by reducing the complications blockchain and providing a fiat-like environment in a highly secure way. Congrats to both our Open Finance winners!
Bancor was another repeat sponsor, returning again after their challenges in our last hack, Ethereal Blocks. They hit us with a challenge to build liquidity pools using their new stable token, USDB, a stable version of Bancor’s Network Token, BNT.
Bancor challenges developers to hack on one of the most exciting DeFi primitives – the decentralized liquidity pool. Liquidity pools are designed to perform non-custodial token-to-token conversions that also accrue value for liquidity providers who effectively act as passive market makers.
Serial hacker nionis won this bounty with his project Bancor Liquidity Transfer. He created an open-sourced dApp that allows liquidity providers to transfer their liquidity from an existing Bancor liquidity pool (using BNT) to a Bancor liquidity pool that utilizes USDB. A user can enter their token address, and there is a step by step process on how to transfer the liquidity through transactions. Temporary contracts that are not registered to the converter registry are saved in localstorage. In true Gitcoin fashion, nionis will continue to work on this project improving the UI for additional payments from Bancor, which we love to see. Looking forward to the final product!
Finally, the Gitcoin team and the Ethereum Foundation created a big “open-ended” prize. Inspired by Vitalik Buterin’s tweet thread in response to Elon Musk, we invited individuals to pick an idea he outlined and bring it to fruition.
Build a solution towards a problem listed on Vitalik’s tweetstorm response to Elon Musk a few months back. Whether your interest is in DAO’s, DeFi, curation registries, or otherwise, there’s so much which can be built!
We had a ton of great submissions for this one but ultimately the judges picked Jvluso as the winner. He ate up the challenge and brought an Ethereum OAuth application to life. Ethereum OAuth is the code for an OAuth 2 authorization server that authorizes Ethereum accounts. It is built to be able to be used with applications like Rocket Chat and Discourse. It also integrates with ENS, so users can use ens names with a reverse registry in applications. If you want to add it to an application you moderate, register your own key here. Congrats, Jvluso!
The Road to Devcon was a great success, and we can’t wait to see work on these projects continue. Congrats to all the winners, spend your prizes wisely.
Missing out on this hacking goodness? Well, you’re in luck. While Devcon is in the rearview mirror, Web3 World, our next two-week hackathon, is live now. Started on October 28th and running until November 11th, we have another awesome set of sponsors to fuel this virtual hackathon asking to push blockchain and Web3 to the next level. Check out the prizes and dive in!