The third round of the Autonomous Agents Developer Contest had deadline this Thursday and, though a bit late, it is now time to take a look at the entries for this round.

While the first round was obviously very experimental and entries were a bit shaky, the quality of entries increased significantly in the second round.

From smaller proof of concept entries to more thought-through and complete solutions with feasible real world application, the developers entering the contest seem to have picked up on the Oscript language. They are able to produce increasingly useful entries.

We are also starting to see more “full” products, where an Autonomous Agent either interacts with another Autonomous Agent or where the Autonomous Agent is quite obviously constructed in a way that makes it suitable for interaction from websites or chat bots.

And exactly this change in direction is one that the jury applauds. To see more full solutions is far more plausible than smaller proof of concepts, and to accommodate for that interesting turn in the developed Autonomous Agents, several improvements to the editor as well as the testnet wallet has been proposed and are being implemented during these days so a new testnet wallet version can be released.

Afterall, the goal of the Autonomous Agents Developer Contest is to get ideas on how to improve the Oscript language, eliminate potential bugs and to have a set of awesome and useful Autonomous Agents ready to deploy once the feature is released on the live main net.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at this round’s entries.

Autonomous Agent Entries For Round 3

The entries for this third round were really a mixed set of entries. Several Autonomous Agent developers had to fight crashes of the testnet as well as bugs rendering the testnet unavailable for periods while being restarted.

These crashes might have had an impact on otherwise releasable entries — that is not possible for the jury to know. The number of entries and the quality of them also tells the tale of a troubled and perhaps even a bit rushed round for all participants.

With very few entries making it in time for this round, the jury has decided to move this round’s entries to the next round. Not only will it allow developers to add more polish and create more complete entries, it might also prove to be more fair if someone relied on the features that caused the testnet to crash, to be able to enter their Autonomous Agent in this round. Another benefit will be the improvements and fixes that are likely going to be available for the testnet wallet in time for the deadline of the fourth round.

Crash And Burn — We Salute You!

With several developers managing to completely crash the testnet with their entries, the need for thorough testing on the testnet is very obvious. This is one of the main reasons that the Autonomous Agents Developer Contest was introduced as well as to have a set of really useful and interesting use cases ready when the feature goes live on mainnet.

Therefore, the jury agreed that a bounty for crashing the testnet will be paid to those successfully causing all the havoc and perhaps putting an effective end to some entries planned to be published this round.

To successfully discover a bug that floored the poor testnet nodes, the jury wants to acknowledge this great accomplishment by awarding 10 GB and 21.111 GBB to each of the following Autonomous Agent Developers:

Whoisterencelee — hey_monkey — barborico

Keep in mind, that all entries are of course still competing for prizes in the next round (now that the bugs have been fixed) but that you will have time to improve and further test your entries for the next round. Entries must be re-submitted to join the fourth round.

Guide And Tutorial Entries For Round 1

While both round 1 and 2 had several entries, this round only saw one participant entering. The jury discussed whether to cancel the Guide and Tutorial category for this round as well, but found that the one entry submitted, is of such great quality and covers one of the really important aspects to understand when working with Autonomous Agents. So therefore, the Guide and Tutorial entry of this round will not be moved to the next round.

Entry 1 — “Understanding Obyte AA Bounce Fee” by hey_monkey

With references to other guides covering topics needed to understand why bounce fees are important and when they become relevant, the guide is really well structured.

Initially, the concepts of bounce fees are illustrated and explained in terms allowing even non-coders to comprehend the article.

It then moves on to show examples on how bounce fees work when Autonomous Agents deal with custom assets and moves on to highlight how bounce fees are handled when two Autonomous Agents call each other — both rather complex topics that, without this tutorial, would likely be slightly confusing to even experienced developers.

While some words or phrasing looks a bit rushed, particularly towards the end, the guide is really well written and the overall structure helps guide the reader through all the different aspects with nice illustrations and screenshots from how it will appear in the Obyte wallet.

Winner of Best guide / Tutorial

I think it’s safe to say that the suspense probably isn’t killing anyone at this point. So with just one entry entered in this round, we likely won’t surprise anyone by announcing the winner.

Though, it is worth mentioning, that the rules for the contest states, that any round can be cancelled and the prize pool either moved to next round or returned to the Obyte Community Fund for distribution, at the full discretion of the jury members. Luckily, this wasn’t the case for this round’s Guide and Tutorial category, and we are thrilled to award the prize worth 55 GB and 116.05 GBB to:

hey_monkey — “Understanding Obyte AA Bounce Fee”

On behalf of the Obyte Core Team and the Jury, we congratulate the winners and look forward to even more entries for the fourth round. We highly encourage everyone to observe the new features in the testnet wallet and considering what improvements this makes possible to your entries.

It could be supporting websites or chat bots that will also be taken into consideration and not just the Autonomous Agents itself. Of course, the additional supporting infrastructure must improve the usability of the Autonomous Agents — the quality, complexity, usefulness and use case of the Autonomous Agent is still the cornerstone of the Autonomous Agent Developer Contest.

The deadline for entries is September 12th and the winners of round 4 will be announced on September 15th.