Share this article
ETHDenver Hackathon Finalists Take Aim at Adoption Barriers
Privacy, real-world interactions and DAO infrastructure highlighted ETHDenver’s hackathon finalists.
Updated May 11, 2023, 4:47 p.m. Published Feb 21, 2022, 3:17 a.m.
At the closing ceremony for the ETHDenver conference on Sunday, 30 hackathon finalists pitched their projects to a crowd of hundreds at the Sports Castle venue – a range of submissions primarily focused on solving common pain points across the Ethereum ecosystem.
While the teams were competing for up to $5,000 for top prizes in various categories, even runners-up will likely receive significant attention from venture capital and angel investors – a popular trend from an investment space flushed with cash and hungry for “alpha.”
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
The second Solana hackathon has successfully concluded with interest from projects all over the world. Our chads @OmniscientAsian, @ttx0x and @cweihan took this opportunity to go through all the projects and drop some free alpha. Here are some interesting ones to monitor:
— Sino Global Capital (@SinoGlobalCap) June 14, 2021
In the decentralized finance (DeFi) category, submissions such as Dust Sweeper, which collects and swaps small amounts of tokens or “dust” that would be costly to consolidate into other currencies; and SlowSwap, an automated market maker (AMM) that prevents maximal extractable value (MEV) with delayed swaps, focused on addressing common user gripes. Additionally, Mimicry Protocol and Bunker.finance focused on lending and derivatives for non-fungible tokens (NFT), respectively.
Likewise, DAO-focused submissions centered on addressing popular pain points for the emergent organizations. Background Network pitched a decentralized autonomous organization that would outsource help desk and community management duties, while AcademyONE centered on providing rewards for creating and consuming educational content.
A pair of surprisingly visually appealing games stood out in the Metaverse and Gaming category: INDAO, a yield-producing Sci-Fi title, and MoonScape, a fantasy role-playing game utilizing NFTs for in-game items.
Perhaps the most exciting submissions, however, focused on privacy with the deployment of zero-knowledge proofs, as well as greater real-world integration.
ZKmaps would use zk-proofs to enable users to prove they were present at a specific geographic location at a specific time without revealing their exact location. ZkProof of Buffiness, meanwhile, proves that a user holds a NFT from a particular collection, without revealing which specific NFT is held.
IdentDeFi pitched privacy-preserving know-your-customer (KYC) architecture, while ExchangeIt! pitched a real-world goods swap platform that would use smart contract escrowing and DAO-mediated conflict resolution.
The full list of hackathon category winners will be posted in the coming days.
More For You
Microsoft Raises Alarm of Malware Targeting Coinbase, MetaMask Wallets
A new report from Microsoft researchers warned of malware that could steal and decrypt users’ information from 20 of some of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets.
What to know:
- Tech giant Microsoft shared a new report warning of malware that targets 20 of the most popular cryptocurrency wallets used with the Google Chrome extension.
- The malware, dubbed StilachiRAT, could deploy “sophisticated techniques to evade detection, persist in the target environment, and exfiltrate sensitive data."
- While the malware has not been distributed widely, Microsoft did share that it has not been able to identify what entity is behind the threat.
Top Stories
