As you might have already noticed, Charles and Rudy went to Cambridge to represent Ark at the HackCambridge hackathon. We joined Kristjan and Alex (both developers at Ark) to spread the word about Ark’s vision and to help the hackers build awesome stuff on Ark’s blockchain.

From left to right: Alex, Charles, Kristjan and Rudy

We started the day fresh, setting up the booth, providing the hackers with the necessary stickers and official Ark IOT t-shirts (as can be seen on the photo). We did not know what level of blockchain expertise we could expect. However, after a short time the Ark booth was swarming with people asking questions about what Ark does and how Ark could help them build applications and services on the blockchain. In general, the hackers’ reaction to one of Ark’s goals of making blockchain development easier by providing a ready-to-use-blockchain was received with enthousiasm.

300 Hackers in a hall

After the collection of swag, there were two teams interested in building their application on Ark’s technology. We’re very proud to say they could start coding immediately, since Ark just released their Ark deployer. One team (the winner for the Ark sponsor competition) was implementing IPFS for a medical blockchain where docters could place the immutable, permanent IPFS links into a blockchain transaction. More about their project can be read here: https://devpost.com/software/medicalblockchain.

The second team was combining facial recognition with blockchain to open smartlocks and therefore creating a two factor authentication. More about it can be read here: https://devpost.com/software/hack-cambridge-2018. We told them that if they would have any questions, they could always join the official Slack channel where the best community in crypto was keen to help them (they confirmed this after the hackathon).

Both teams mentioned they liked working with Ark tech and were eager to continue their projects after a well deserved rest. So make sure to give them a warm welcome when you see them around!

Last but not least, we want to thank the Ark team and especially Kristjan and Alex for their trust in us representing Ark and for the fun we had in Cambridge.

In other news, we would like to give another shoutout to the meetup in Utrecht on the 10th of February which we are organizing together with TheFoundry. Everyone is welcome to join us, so make sure to invite your friends. We will release more information in our next blog.

Best regards,

~Dutchdelegate

#Mail: dutchdelegate@gmail.com

#Slack: @rudy, @charles, @rhmral

#Reddit: dutchdelegate

More impressions of the hackathon: