Thursday marked an exciting step forward for Kin’s developer relations efforts. Although we’ve already done numerous Blockchain Academy events, last week marked our first hackathon with developers from the Tel Aviv tech community.

During the two-day, overnight hackathon, we worked hand-in-hand with small teams of developers as they designed and built Kin experiences. Our objectives were to:

Create real use cases for Kin inside working applications Receive feedback on our Core Blockchain SDK and documentation Gain firsthand insight into the challenges and opportunities developers encounter as they explore integrating Kin

This first hackathon was a dry run for larger scale initiatives we plan to launch in coming months as part of an enhanced focus on developer engagement.(Collaborating with developer communities around the globe will be crucial to making Kin the world’s most used cryptocurrency; hackathons are one way we plan to forge strong working relationships.)

We selected four teams to participate and provided all the resources they needed to “hack” their way to success, including:

full development documentation of the Core Blockchain SDK;

a sample app they could pull code from;

office hours with our talented designers and product managers; and

a dedicated Kin developer per team, who acted as ‘SideKik’ to answer any questions and help with the integration.

We also held an information session about blockchain by Oded Noam (our blockchain architect) and kept the mood active and energized throughout the event — with tons of food and snacks, lively music, and even a ping pong tournament.

Following an intense 26 hours(!) of hacking, each team had ten minutes to present a live demo of a real product integration of Kin. Our judges assessed their performance across four criteria: execution, viability, technical innovation, and creativity.

Learn more about each team and watch the live demos below!

1st Place: Vlogr

Vlogr plans to be the go-to platform for content creators and vloggers by 1.) putting the creation process upfront, and 2.) giving fans and viewers better ways to stay updated with their favorite creators.

During the hackathon, Vlogr introduced new, fun, and engaging monetization possibilities to their platform — such as attaching value to the users’ social actions (e.g. ‘liking’ someone’s post), creating enriched award-based engagement activities, and launching incentive models to grow users’ in-app engagement.

Vlogr

2nd Place: ClanPlay

ClanPlay is currently the world’s highest rated app for gamers. The app is a chat-driven community, but is soon launching the first global marketplace for in-game actions.

During the hackathon, ClanPlay created user-generated rewards for players based on in-game actions with Kin. Thanks to the usability of the SDK, the ClanPlay team managed to make these rewards functional in just a single day!

Clan Play

3rd place : Impact Value

Impact Value wanted to use Kin to reward and validate volunteers in the supply chain for charitable organizations. They wanted to allow the impact of a charitable organization to be measured and verified in a decentralized manner, using the Kin blockchain.

Their solution — focused on hunger and poverty — was a Kin-enabled app that allowed users in need to request a meal from a volunteer. The volunteer would earn Kin by completing a ‘mission’ (such as delivering the meal). The client could earn Kin by referring new volunteers.

Impact Value

Honorable Mention: AiWorks

The AiWorks team built a prediction market platform centered around a decentralized voting mechanism, with real life connectivity to Kin. The system designed during the hackathon could leverage AI technology to enable users to win Kin based on their engagement.

AiWorks

Thank you to all the participating teams and everyone at Kin who helped make the Hackathon happen. Huge congrats to the winning team, Vlogr, as well!

We were thrilled at how this first event went and look forward to making our hackathons bigger and better over time. It’s all part of learning from (and growing with) the developer community.

As we move forward, we’ll be launching new programs to help us create new developer relationships; acquire and synthesize feedback; and improve the experience we offer to developers.

More Blockchain Academy events, new AMAs, more hackathons, and even some exciting challenges are coming. Stay tuned and watch out for updates as we welcome more developers into the Kin community!