Hackathon #1 - Pioneers
12th - 26th February 2024
TL;DR - Up to $50’000 $70’000 in ALPH tokens, sponsored by Alephium, the Blockflow Alliance DAO, Cetacean Capital and Dappnode and Bitmain.It will reward teams building across 3 main categories (dApps, tooling & interoperability) as well as offering bounties for solo hackers!
When & where?
The hackathon will happen exclusively online, from February 12th to 26th. Main communication hub for the hackathon will be our Discord and you can join the hackathon channels already!
Hackathon-Lounge - This is where you can find a team, share tips & brainstorm! All of our updates will be shared here, leave your notifications on for this one!
Hackathon-Projects - This is where teams will regroup around their projects, document progress & interact in their own forum-like post. The channel is open, but you can’t post in there yet, only when the hackathon starts!
What are the prizes?
The main prizes are tiered to recognize the top five submissions:
Main prizes
- First prize is 15’000$ in ALPH
- Second prize is 8’000$ in ALPH
- 3rd, 4th and 5th are 4’000$ in ALPH each
- 6th, 7th, 8th & 9th are 1’000$ in ALPH each
In addition to the main prizes, special partner prizes add an extra chance to get recognized & rewarded:
Special partner prizes
- Bitmain’s choice will receive 2’500$ in ALPH
- Cetacean’s choice will receive 2’500$ in ALPH
- Blockflow’s choice will receive 2’500$ in ALPH
- Dappnode’s choice will receive a home node i532-4N model
The hackathon also features bounties and honors to encourage a wide range of contributions:
Bounties
Up to 15’000$ in ALPH are reserved for the bounties
Honors
Up to 8’500$ in ALPH is reserved for special honors at the jury’s discretion.
Notes:
What can I build?
Participants can engage in one of two primary participation methods: embarking on the main quests or tackling side quests called bounties.
The main quests
Participants can participate either as teams or as solo hackers and complete projects in the following categories:
- 🪄 dApps Development: challenge your skills in decentralized application development.
- 🛠️ Tooling: Innovate with new tools to enhance blockchain functionality.
- 🔀 Interoperability: Explore the connection of Alephium with other blockchain systems.
Can I join with an existing project? Those who wish to start with a pre-existing project can do so, but only the progress made during the hackathon will be considered for evaluation and judging. Clear objectives will need to be set at the beginning of the hackathon to facilitate this assessment.
Bounties
Everyone can participate as a team or hack solo (but bounties are not eligible for the main prizes). These are specific/smaller tasks or challenges that participants can complete for rewards. If you are a solo hacker and want to participate in the hackathon, this is the way (teams can also do bounties!).
The general goal of bounties is to provide improvements to the user/developer experience. Bounties are divided into 4 focus areas:
Documentation
Enhancing/creating developer documentation. (Create a PR in the relevant repo)
- 1 - improve the SDK doc
- 2 - improve the dApp recipes doc
- 3 - improve the Ralph language doc
Coding PoC
Creating proof-of-concepts / code examples that help to explain Alephium. (Create a PR in
this repo)- 4 - Merkle tree proof for allowlist
- 5 - Crowdfund platform
- 6 - Simple price Oracle
- 7 - Simple DAO
- 8 - Airdrop contract
Front-End Task
Developing a front-end feature.
- 9 - Payment request flow feature
- 10 - Register the Alephium chain in the WalletConnect Cloud
- 11 - Any pending issue marked with the community tag.
Community Dashboards & Calculators
Designing a dashboard & calculators for useful information.
- 12 - Dune analytics board for the wALPH Uniswap pool
- 13 - ETH wALPH stats
- 14 - dApps stats dashboard
- 15 - Mining reward calculator
- 16 - Burned tokens calculator
Your own idea
If you have an idea for a bounty, propose it to us in the general chat of the hackathon!
For submission, the process is the same as for main quests. Once you have chosen a bounty, please create a post in the Hackathon-Projects channel with the name of the bounty as a title. You can document your progress there or ask us for help or advice in the post. At the end of the hackathon, you will provide a link to your work in the submission form, to be evaluated by the jury!
What is the schedule?
January 19th
Announcement and team enrollment - Opening of applications
January 31st
Opening of the special Discord Channel for team finding and general chat.
February 16th & 20th
Open Office Hours & Live Support: These one-hour sessions will allow participants to engage with the core contributors and seek assistance or clarification on their projects.
February 26th
Submission deadline: All projects must be submitted by 11:59 PM CET.
First half of March
Winners Announcement
How can I participate?
First, you need to apply! Join by completing the form here!
For the duration of the hackathon, the main communication Hub will be the hackathon’s general channel. Ping us there if you didn’t get the special discord role!
Additionally, each team will have access to a dedicated Discord sub-channel in a dedicated forum channel for discussion, progress reporting, and collaboration.
At the end of the hackathon, the teams & individuals will need to submit their work through this form (not yet open, check back after the 20th of February).
Who’s in the Jury?
We’ve assembled a knowledgeable, exigent but amicable & engaged jury composed of core contributors. This jury will distribute the main prizes, bounties rewards & honorable mentions:
Partners will have their own juries & will choose the partner prizes independently:
Partner jury — Bitmain
Partner jury — Blockflow DAO
Partner jury — Cetacean Capital DAO
Partner jury — Dappnode
What will be the jury’s criteria?
Participants are encouraged to be creative and propose projects that resonate with their interests, as long as they align with Alephium’s framework and fit into one of the proposed categories. Here is how the jury will evaluate your project:
Implementation
Does the interaction with Alephium demonstrate quality software development?
From idea to finish
Does the idea/intention announced at the beginning match with the output at the end?
UX/Design
Is the user experience and design of the project well thought out?
Potential Impact
How big of an impact could the project have on the Alephium ecosystem?
Quality of the Idea
How creative and unique is the project?
What are the rules?
- Age and Legal Requirements: Participants must be at least 18 years old, or have reached the age of majority in their jurisdiction, whichever is greater. Compliance with the terms and conditions outlined here is mandatory.
- Adherence to Themes: Projects should align with the hackathon’s themes and categories. Creativity is encouraged, but relevance to Alephium’s ecosystem is essential.
- Progress and Development: Projects can build upon existing work, but only advancements made during the hackathon will be considered for judging.
- Where will the teams submit their projects: The submissions must include links to code repositories. You can also include text, video, or audio with relevant graphics and links to webapps you may find relevant.
What happens after the hackathon?
Participating projects can subsequently apply to Alephium’s grant program.
Cetacean Capital is also interested to support participating projects as the DAO “is dedicated to supporting standout projects that align with their criteria in the upcoming Hackathon, providing investment/seed funding ranging from $50.000 to $1.000.000”.
The Blockflow DAO also expressed interest in helping quality projects develop further after the hackathon.
Hackathon Partners
Fill out the form to apply and start your project!
- Developer onboarding thread
- The full documentation
- Getting started with RALPH Alephium’s programming language
- RALPH Documentation & Tokens Documentation
- dApps Proof of concepts (PoC) (DEX, NFT marketplace, bridge)
- Workshop #1 with h0ngchao How to Build a Faucet — video
- Workshop #2 with h0ngchao How to implement friend.tech on Alephium, part 1, and part 2 — video 1, video 2
To know more about Alephium in general, start here and in our docs! And read more there! Our bible of content is here, and our medium is here. We can’t wait to be there!