Exploring Gitcoin Hackathons

What if you could build something amazing in 15 days and get rewarded for it?

What is Gitcoin?

Probably if you are in the blockchain space you might have heard of Gitcoin, if you haven’t yet, you should check it out!

Gitcoin is a double-sided marketplace that matches employers with talent. Using Gitcoin, employers can find talented individuals to work on their problems and incentivize them to help grow their projects with bounties.

Gitcoin is a multipurpose platform focusing on Ethical ads, Kudos, Bounties, Hackathons, Grants and they recently launched Quests to spread more about Web3.

Some stats about these events

Check these stats in real-time at https://gitcoin.co/results

The first Hackathon appeared on Gitcoin in April 2019 and it featured some prominent sponsors such as Microsoft, Quorum and Consensys Labs, needless saying that it was a success for being the first Hackathon hosted by Gitcoin. As seen in the image above, Gitcoin facilitated more than $206k in value transfer to hackers while funders were able to get amazing submissions and access to top talent.

The Hackathons had some of the most prominent blockchain players as funders such as Consensys Labs, Microsoft, Portis, AAVE, Status and many interesting ones. I hope to see in the future, sponsors that are not currently in the blockchain space or that don’t have anything to do with it.

My experience as a developer joining Gitcoin Hackathons

I have previously participated to numerous local hackathons which lasted 24–48 hours, so as you might imagine, I was very thrilled in trying a virtual Hackathon, as it can leave you enough time to develop the idea, design the concept deeply and also the most important thing is the fact that you have more time to form a team that might be willingly working on the project after the event ends.

These virtual Hackathons are a lot more relaxed than traditional ones. Instead of people sleeping under tables and making questionable dietary choices in the wee hours of the night, you can return the following day with a fresh perspective and creative workarounds.

This is me during local hackathons( sleep-deprivation sucks though ):

While trying to form a team to work on a bounty posted by Consensys Labs Relay during Beyond Blockchain, I’ve found my teammate with whom I’ve continued to work even when the event ended. The overall experience was good as I could ask feedback to the Labs team and getting advice on how to advance further. Unfortunately, we didn’t win that time, but we both learned about the subject and we are still exploring the concept as of now.

I have participated in 3 Hackathons( Beyond Blockchain, Road To Devcon and also Web3 World ) where I did finally manage to win the first prize for AAVE with my team dislocated all over the world( the benefit of the internet, you know ? ). Check it out here.

Hopefully we are going to develop it further and we will bring it to production with a whole set of features.

Some of the projects are really building after the Hackathon.

Usually, in normal Hackathons, there is a low possibility or even none that the participants will pursue the project. With a Hackathon lasting more than 2 weeks, you get to know your partner better and also you have more time to build something beautiful and really needed by the market. Some of these projects I saw that are continuing with their journey are Enable, Affogato, Idle and Komodo-Finance.

I’m not technical, so how do I participate in a Gitcoin Hackathon?

This is a question I get asked a lot of times when I talk about these events. Following my experience with these Hackathons, I saw that some of the bounties such as those from Consensys Labs were also targeted to non-technical people. Not saying that it’s simple though, you need to do appropriate brainstorming, customer interviews for validation, gather data, prototyping and find SME as advisors. Take it as an early stage for building a startup, you want to test your idea multiple times until you find what works and you want to take the advice from an expert in the space you’re working on.

My advice: do form a team, best if anyone has different skills. This has been a philosophy I decided to pursue and it’s working well for now.

Plenty of non-technical people are needed at these events and even people who want to code but only know HTML or CSS can help on a team.

You may think of Hackathons as events where coders get together to put together really amazing prototypes that may turn into software down the line. Over the years, communities and companies have found that the real benefits of Hackathons extend beyond just shipping code. Sparking creative ideas, conducting user interviews, and doing market research are some other ways people can get involved. Sometimes the Hackathon may just be one giant brainstorming session with the goal of allowing people to break away from their day-to-day to turn on their innovation muscles.

What should I do after the Hackathon?

That’s up to you, if you can’t do anything else than thinking about the project you’re making then I think you should work towards it otherwise you can take a rest till the next Hackathon.

If you are a winner of a Gitcoin Hackathon there is a possibility that you might receive micro-grants in the future by Labs or you can apply for a Binance X fellowship and continue working on your project.

Brace yourself…

Another Hackathon is coming and will be the last one of 2019, it’s gonna be amazing, don’t miss it. Looking forward to seeing you in the Gitcoin Discord!

Register here and I hope you’ll have some fun.

I would like to talk more about this subject but I feel like I should put you a little suspense till the next one comes 😉. Don’t worry another post is coming and will be more interesting.

Thoughts? Questions? Please drop a comment below or feel free to tweet me.