Bluzelle is proud to announce our sponsorship of Hack.summit(blockchain) 2018, the world’s largest, entirely virtual, blockchain-focused event featuring tens of thousands of developers from all over the world. It will take place from July 6–8. We will be creating a Bluzelle Challenge that your team can participate in to learn how to use our technology and compete for our prize.

Proceeds will support non-profits Women who Code, Black Girls Code, freeCodeCamp, CoderDojo, Bridge Foundry, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

About Bluzelle

Bluzelle is a decentralized, on-demand, scalable database service. Bluzelle solves the current data storage problems by using blockchain technologies to offer a more secure and reliable solution. Bluzelle turns underused computer resources from around the world into storage providers for it’s network and compensates them with its own cryptocurrency. Bluzelle’s team is comprised of media and technology professionals who have worked with the biggest companies in the world, including Google, IBM, HSBC, Disney, Microsoft and more. Our engineering team is experienced in Machine Learning, AI, Cognitive Science, Blockchain, Fintech and Cybersecurity.

Announcing the Bluzelle Challenge

To build an instant messenger, powered by the Bluzelle database.

We are already familiar with WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Hangouts, WeChat, etc. These messengers have problems…

They are all centralized instant messengers owned and run by corporations. So your privacy is not guaranteed. In fact, there is no scientific way to be certain your data is secret.

Since they are run by corporations in a centralized way, they are vulnerable to censorship and sanctions. If you are based in a country that these messengers are banned from serving, you may not be able to use them, or might get kicked off them at some point. Cloud providers like AWS and Google are vulnerable to such sanctions. As a result, messengers like Signal have had to go to great lengths to remain operational.

Centralization is vulnerable to outages. Signal messenger had an outage this past month and for hours, it was down and inaccessible. The reason? Storms and floods in the eastern USA.

Scalability is always a challenge. As your business grows and becomes successful, you need to scale for that success. The worst thing that can happen is lack of scale bringing down an otherwise successful application. IM’s are incredibly pervasive in our society. It is important to be prepared for explosive growth. Bluzelle makes this possible.

Requirements

An instant messenger that allows users to send textual messages to other users.

Textual messages should be stored on the Bluzelle network, on a testnet swarm.

There should be a means to signup, either via email or via mobile phone. Bonus if there is authentication to confirm the person owns that email address or phone number

The instant messenger can be a web app or mobile app. Bonus for having a mobile app that runs easily on Android or iOS.

It is not required that the core logic for the instant messenger itself be decentralized, but it is a big bonus if you can demonstrate this (perhaps on a blockchain).

Prizes

We are offering a $5,000 USD cryptocurrency prize to the winner of the Bluzelle challenge. 60% of this prize will be awarded for meeting all the above criteria. 40% of the prize will be awarded for cooperation with the Bluzelle team by forking the code over to Bluzelle on Github, signing the Contributor Licensing Agreement, and basic code cleanup and presentation. Optionally, we welcome you to participate in future development of the project with Bluzelle.

Judging Criteria

The winner will be chosen from amongst the participant projects by a panel of judges at Bluzelle. The judges’ decisions are final, binding and incontestable. Judgment will be based on:

Utilization of the Bluzelle database to store messages, contact lists, and other data (40%)

Leveraging decentralized concepts for the application logic and processing and architecture (20%)

Presentation — design of the application including flow, usability, and user interface (20%)

Bonus intangibles — inclusion of support for voice, images, videos, email/phone authentication, mobile apps, notifications, ability to search for contacts, backups, groups, use of oracles and external decentralized services for identity, etc (20%)

Registration

We’d love to have you join us. Register here for the hackathon. (Use our code [bluzelle] to register for FREE!)

Bluzelle Resources

| Website| Video introduction | Github | Twitter | Blog | Reddit | Developer Slack |