NEWSLETTER
The ETHGlobal Tokyo hackathon came to a close on Sunday, when builders from around the world competed for $375,000 in prizes. The event kicked off with the first ETHGlobal “Pragma” Summit, sponsored by Verse, among others. Bitcoin.com engineers and representatives also participated in the summit and hackathon, sharing their thoughts on the event and its importance for crypto and economic freedom now and in the near future.
A pragmatic start: from summit to hackathon
The first “Pragma” summit was held on April 13 in Tokyo, Japan, as the kickoff of the broader ETHGlobal Tokyo hackathon, sponsored in part by Verse. Speakers like Aya Miyaguchi from the Ethereum Foundation and author Balaji Srinivasan spoke at the event. The hackathon ended on Sunday and was attended by engineers and representatives from Bitcoin.com.
Bitcoin.com engineering director Andrei Terentiev, who oversees the company’s strong team of 30-plus engineers, noted that he was “very excited about the ETH This global hackathon, especially since Japan has been closed to outside visitors for the last three years, is a great opportunity to learn more about the global cryptocurrency community and share new ideas that will boost the cryptocurrency ecosystem as a whole.” Terentiev continued:
In general, I believe that most of the participants in the event are striving to achieve the same mission of cryptocurrencies, which is to create more economic freedom for the world. So being able to meet in person helps spread those ideas and flourish around the world.
Bitcoin.com data engineer Bolun Zhang said of the event: “Being a tech guy, I’m always interested in keeping up with the latest trends in the industry and exploring cool projects my peers are doing.” .
$375,000 in awards they were available on countless industry players and platforms like the 1inch Network, Gnosis Chain, Metamask, and more.
Web3, reverse lotteries and prediction markets
“At the event, we will build what we call a decentralized lottery,” Alun Stern, Bitcoin.com growth marketing specialist, told Bitcoin.com News just before the hackathon. The first part of the application is “sort of like a reverse lottery…in a traditional lottery, one person wins and everyone else loses. In this system, everyone will win and one person will lose. The loser’s funds will be distributed among the winning participants.
Stern explained that the team would design the lottery in such a way that the loser would get a rare NFT. The second part of the app works similar to prediction markets, he said, noting:
Someone will be able to propose an event, assign a referee and assign multiple choice options… The interesting thing about this is that these prediction markets are not only used for people to bet on future outcomes, but can also be used to influence the future and basically change the future.
Stern explained that someone willing to pay enough money could bet that a social media influencer would not promote a project, incentivizing said influencer to do just that.
Ahead of the event, a software engineer from the Bitcoin.com web team, Julie, emphasized that the hackathon would bring many benefits, including making people more familiar with the burgeoning world of Web3. She commented:
(The hackathon) will give us the opportunity to share ideas and work with different people on new and interesting products that can help users to enter the world of cryptocurrencies, as well as help developers hone their skills and dive into Web3 if they had no experience with it before. It will be great to see what everyone comes up with!
The Bitcoin.com team concluded the event with a Bitcoin Implementation Award. Commutea “zkEVM-based zkRollup on Ethereum that enables native support for existing Ethereum apps and tools.”
What do you think about the ETHGlobal Tokyo hackathon? Have you ever participated in a hackathon? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below.
image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, ETHGlobal, Graham Smith
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