The Polkadot Hackathon Global Series North America Edition is the second in a series of hackathons that brings the cutting edge of blockchain to a global community. This event may be focused on North America, but is open to all. Whether you’re an experienced blockchain dev, want to learn more about building on Polkadot, or are new to the ecosystem, a range of activities and a more than US$270,000 prize pool are on offer for you.

Focusing on Substrate, Polkadot, and Kusama, this hackathon is open to both individuals and teams anywhere in the world. As well as blockchain building, participants can take advantage of mentoring hours and networking opportunities that can be invaluable for starting new projects or building teams.

What is Polkadot?

Polkadot is a layer-0 protocol and multichain network founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum. Polkadot provides security, scalability, and interoperability to a diverse network of layer-1 blockchains called parachains. Polkadot offers several advancements over legacy blockchain networks, from governance to customization, upgradeability, energy efficiency, and more.

What is Kusama?

Built on nearly the same codebase as Polkadot, Kusama is a layer-0 protocol and multichain network. Kusama provides security, scalability, and interoperability to a diverse network of layer-1 blockchains called parachains, and serves as Polkadot’s ‘canary net’. Designed for radical innovation and experimentation, Kusama is used both as a live, value-bearing proving ground for Polkadot technology and as a deployment environment for early-stage startups and experimental blockchain use cases.

What is Substrate?

Substrate is a blockchain development framework for building and customizing parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem, as well as standalone or ‘solo’ chains. It features a completely generic state transition function and modular building blocks for common blockchain components like consensus, networking, and asset creation. By building with Substrate, development teams can significantly speed up production, reduce the cost of building a blockchain, and get much more power and flexibility than building on a smart contract platform.

 

Categories

Interfaces & Experiences

This track is dedicated to building your understanding of UI and UX fundamentals, including best practices specifically for blockchain development. Gain experience in building a wide variety of interfaces and user experiences that chains can adopt.

DAO & Governance

Discover the breadth of DAO functionality and governance mechanisms in this track. Get the opportunity to explore ideas, including the creation of new DAOs and the necessary tooling involved in this development process, as well as new governance mechanisms and pallets.

Web3 & Tooling

A diverse track focused on all kinds of tooling and applications that can be used to expand Web3. Those interested in building a better web can explore the use cases for open-source technologies for a society run on peer-to-peer networks.

DeFi

Builders can make use of this track for the multitude of DeFi-related solutions, including DEXs, AMMs, and stablecoins. Learn how to not only develop new financial primitives, but also work towards the integration of existing ones, such as breaking the barriers of assets between blockchains. This all contributes to helping build wider adoption of DeFi.

NFT

This track for developers interested in the use cases for NFTs will explore the scope for their creation across multiple industries, including gaming, art, real estate, logistics, and general collectibles. The scope includes exploring the importance of optimizing for complex NFT use cases, and blockchain-agnostic NFT platforms that enable cross-chain functionality.

Participants' Guide

We have compiled a complete guide for you, where you can find a lot of information about our hackathon. The guide also details what ecosystem challenges we have for you, and you can find all the relevants resources as well.

Make sure you check out the FAQ and Code of Conduct, go through the list of resources that will get you started, read about how you can get into team formation, who are our awesome mentors to take you through challenging tasks and last, but absolutely not least who will be your fellow judges when the hacking period is ended.

Don't forget to take a look around on Polkadot Pathways as well and climb the leaderboard!

Ecosystem Challenges

Both in our Participants' Guide and in the Resources section of this page we are listing all the information you need to know about the ecosystem teams' challenges, bounties, along with the available documentation. Make sure you take a look!

 

Requirements

Simplified Submission Requirements for Teams for each category

A. Project Description x1

This is a detailed description of your team's project which should contain the following:

  • Name and summary of the project
  • Names/pseudonyms of team members and contact information (e.g. GitHub handle, email address, etc)
  • The actual challenge statement you are submitting for and an overview of what problem is being addressed
  • How the project uses Substrate
B. 5 minute Pitch Video x1

This is a recorded pitch of your team introducing your project and solution. The pitch video should cover at least the following:

  • Name of your project
  • Overview of design, novelty/originality, technical complexity, daily/mass usability and impact of project (these are the judging criteria!)
C. GitHub Repo Link x1

Each team to appoint 1 (one) person to create the team's GitHub repo and share the access with the team to collaborate on. During submission, the team needs to submit the link to this GitHub Repo which can be accessible to the judges.

D. List of Tech Stack Used x1

This is a list of tech stack used by the team to build your project

E. Project Demo Link

This is the URL to the live working environment of the solution you have developed

Important! General Submission Requirements & Rules

If you are submitting a Substrate chain, the submission must be one of the following formats:

  • a live running site or running chain and provide an endpoint, if you are running a substrate chain (highly recommended)
  • a Docker image (highly recommended)
  • a Linux executable (discouraged)
  • code with detailed build instructions (strongly discouraged)

If you are using Substrate, use the latest version.

If you are submitting for an ecosystem team (hackathon sponsor) challenge, clearly state which challenge you are building for.

Include in your submission’s readme file:

  • Project title
  • Project description (minimum 150 words)

Provide a way to access the project for judging and testing by including a link to a repo hosting the application’s code and any other deployment files and testing instructions.

Must have an open source licence (GPL, MIT, Apache, and Unlicense are accepted, others may be considered on a case by case basis).

Must use or be made for the Polkadot/Kusama/Substrate ecosystem.

Ecosystem challenge requirements

Some of the ecosystem challenges have specific requirements for submission and consideration. Please consult our Participants Guide's relevant pages for each team's requirements. 

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$362,080 in prizes

Grand Prize - $30,000

Interfaces & Experiences - 1st place - $20,000

Interfaces & Experiences - 2nd place - $15,000

Interfaces & Experiences - 3rd place - $10,000

Web3 & Tooling - 1st place - $20,000

Web3 & Tooling - 2nd place - $15,000

Web3 & Tooling - 3rd place - $10,000

DAO & Governance - 1st place - $20,000

DAO & Governance - 2nd place - $15,000

DAO & Governance - 3rd - $10,000

DeFi - 1st place - $20,000

DeFi - 2nd place - $15,000

DeFi - 3rd place - $10,000

NFT - 1st place - $20,000

NFT - 2nd place - $15,000

NFT - 3rd place - $10,000

Community Choice - Top three projects - $5,000 each (3)

Acala Challenges - EVM+ DApp for aUSD yield - First Place - $10,000

Acala Challenges - EVM+ DApp for aUSD yield - Second Place - $5,000

Acala Challenges - EVM+ DApp for aUSD yield - Third Place - $2,000

Astar Network - NFT dApps Staking Micro-Rewards - Honorable Mention Award - $4,830

Astar Network - NFT dApps Staking Micro-Rewards - Honorable Mention Award - $375

Astar Network - Front-end, tools, or utility service - Honorable Mention Award - $375

Crust Network - Best use of Crust - Honorable Mention Award - $2,000

ICE Network Challenge - $2,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a Bridge Aggregator - Winner - $5,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a Cross-Chain Bridge Transaction Explorer - Winner - $5,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a XCM related Tool for Moonbeam - First Place - $5,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a XCM related Tool for Moonbeam - Second Place - $2,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a DeFi Tool for Moonbeam - First Place - $3,000

Moonbeam Challenge - Build a DeFi Tool for Moonbeam - Second Place - $1,000

RMRK Challenges - First Place

non monetary prize

RMRK Challenges - Second Place

non monetary prize

Subsocial Bounties - Winner - $3,000

also non monetary prize

Subsocial Bounties - Award For Effort - $1,000 (2)

also non monetary prize

SubQuery, Moonbeam, Acala, and HydraDX MegaChallenge - Honorable Mention Award - $5,000

Subsquid Bounty - Build a block explorer from a Subsquid Archive - $5,000

Subsquid Bounty - Build a block explorer from a Subsquid Archive - Honorable Mention Award - $2,500

Subsquid Bounty - Build a Moonsama NFT data explorer - Honorable Mention Award - $4,000

Unique Network Challenge - Nested NFT - First Place - $10,000

Unique Network Challenge - Nested NFT - Second Place - $6,000

Unique Network Challenge - Nested NFT - Third Place - $2,000

Zeitgeist Challenge - Integrate Zeitgeist as a governance solution for another project/app/dao - Honorable Mention Award - $5,000

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Alex Siman

Alex Siman
Fonder, Architect / Subsocial

Benjamin Weiß

Benjamin Weiß
Director of Ecosystem Success / Parity Technologies

Bette Chen

Bette Chen
Co-founder / Acala

Bill Laboon

Bill Laboon
Director of Technical Education, Support and Community / Web3 Foundation

Bob Liu

Bob Liu
Substrate Runtime Developer / Bitfrost

Bruno Škvorc

Bruno Škvorc
Founder / RMRK

Christian Dirk

Christian Dirk
Research Specialist / OAK Network

Dan Brehmer

Dan Brehmer
Founding Team Member / ICE Network

David Finkelstein

David Finkelstein
Head of Growth / OAK Network

Dimitri Zhelezov

Dimitri Zhelezov
Co-founder / Subsquid

Dominik Harz

Dominik Harz
CTO / Interlay

Dudley Needham

Dudley Needham
Developer Relations / KILT Protocol

Emre Surmeli

Emre Surmeli
Technical Educator / Web3 Foundation

Galen Danziger

Galen Danziger
Core Contributor / ICE Network

Gautam Dhameja

Gautam Dhameja
Director of Solution & Services Delivery / Parity Technologies

Greg Zaitsev

Greg Zaitsev
CTO / Unique Network

Hoon Kim

Hoon Kim
CTO / Astar Network

James Bayly

James Bayly
Head of Business Development / OnFinality & SubQuery Network

Lyona Carter

Lyona Carter
Founder / L. Carter Consulting, LLC

Karel Kubat

Karel Kubat
CTO / Composable Finance

Kevin Neilson

Kevin Neilson
Developer Relations Engineer / Moonbeam

Lauren Serota

Lauren Serota
Co-Founder, CRADL

Logan Saether

Logan Saether
Founder / Zeitgeist

Luke Fan

Luke Fan
CTO / Crust Network

Maarten Henskens
Head of Business Development / Astar Network

Peter Sergeev

Peter Sergeev
Senior Project Manager / Equilibrium

Radha Dasari

Radha Dasari
Technical Educator / Web3 Foundation

Ricardo Rius

Ricardo Rius
Senior Solutions Engineer / Parity Technologies

Santiago Balaguer

Santiago Balaguer
Substrate Builders Success Lead / Parity Technologies

Sebastian Müller

Sebastian Müller
Technical Grants Evaluator / W3F

Steve Degosserie

Steve Degosserie
Senior Solutions Engineer / Parity Technologies

Shelven Zhou

Shelven Zhou
Lead Researcher / Phala Network

Shumo Chu

Shumo Chu
Co-founder / Manta Network

Tadej Vengust

Tadej Vengust
CTO / Authtrail

Tricia Wang

Tricia Wang
Co-founder and Director / CRADL (Crypto Research and Design Lab)

Vadim Manaenko

Vadim Manaenko
CTO / Robonomics Network

Judging Criteria

  • Ecosystem Impact and Usefulness
    How impactful and useful is the submission in the Polkadot/Kusama/Substrate ecosystem?
  • Web3 Contribution and Advancement
    How does the submission contribute to and advance Web 3.0 as a whole?
  • Originality, Creativity and Innovation
    How new and novel the submission is versus existing technologies?
  • Technical Difficulty
    What is the level of skill or knowledge required to build the submission?
  • Mass Usability
    How feasible is the idea? How adaptable is it across other integrations? How sound is the business model?
  • Ecosystem challenges criteria
    Each challenge has its own judging criteria. Please consult the participants guide to gather information about the challenge you are submitting your project to. You can find this information in the Judging criteria section.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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