Ether Camp Online Hackathon Attracts 500 Programmers

This October Ether Camp is holding its 2nd hackathon with over 500 programmers competing for $50,000 in Ether. The four-week contest hosted online has invoked hundreds of ideas from hackers looking to win the prize money, and the entire event will be streamed live for the public’s viewing.

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Winning Camp Will Receive 50K in Ether

Cryptocurrency developers working with blockchain protocol are signing up to participate in the Ether Camp Hackathon in hopes to win a 50K Ether prize by submitting their ideas. So far there are 569 registrants that will face a group of 13 judges with backgrounds in the cryptocurrency industry.

Judges include the Ether Camp founder Roman Mandeleil, Augur founder Jack Peterson, Coinality’s Dan Roseman, ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin, Co-Founder and CTO of RSK Sergio Demián Lerner, and more industry leaders.

Ether Camp’s website reveals the hackathon’s mission:

The event is four weeks long. You’ll be part of a team, building a real product while the entire crypto community watches and casts their vote on what captures their imagination. Tell the story behind your innovative idea, turn it into a working product, get other members to join and build some magic that’ll make people happy.

Many ideas involving smart contracts or concepts that may provide better efficiency for certain markets have been entered into the contest. Currently, there are 184 ideas such as open cryptocurrency mechanics, a journalism trust system, music licensing reform, climate-linked insurance, automobile registration, decentralized video streaming and recording, among many other proof-of-concepts.

Ether Camp registrants describe their ideas on the web page, and others can join the project if they feel they can help with the development of that specific concept.

Maximalist Programmers Not Invited

The last Ether Camp Hackathon gave a prize of 5,000 Ether for coders “crazy coding” together for three days. People outside of development were able to watch the camps of programmers build projects, join the slack and give kudos to team projects they liked. The first place winner of the last event was the Iudex camp that is building a platform that scrapes reputation off of the web.

Other notable camps that made it to the top winners placement included projects such as a pay-and-go platform, quadratic voting, and a job motivation application. The previous Ether Camp contest had over 43 camps with 100 coders facing 14 judges and founder Roman Mandeleil said the event was a great success.

Ether Camp looks forward to this October’s four-week hackathon and is inviting anyone to set up a camp, gather a productive team, and code for the $50,000 Ether prize. Not all camps are working with just the Ethereum protocol either as Bitcoin projects, color coins, and other blockchain technology platforms are encouraged to join as well. The hope is the prototypes that form from the camps concepts will bring efficiency to the finance industry, as well as non-financial applications, and improvements to the blockchain ecosystem in general.

What do you think about Ether Camp’s $50,000 hackathon contest? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of mit.edu, and Ether Camp Websites