Borderless Block Party: The Month-Long College Hackathon

The College Cryptocurrency Network (CCN) is having a month-long hackathon, starting November 1st, which is sure to be a coding fiesta for students. Participants in the hackathon will be encouraged to use their creativity and technical skills to help build the “next generation of solutions utilizing both bitcoin and blockchain technologies.” The Borderless Block Party — maintained online — will allow any high school or college student around the world to test APIs from featured companies.

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The students involved with the Borderless Block Party (BBP) will have access to some of the hottest crypto-companies’ products, open source toolkits, and guidance from many innovators in the industry. Applicants for the hackathon can sign up at hackcollegecrypto.com now, and the contest will end with final projects submitted by November 30th. The contest will be judged by veterans in the crypto-environment following the last submissions for BBP’s prizes. First prize is $1,000 and a six-day trip to Ibiza, an island in the Mediterranean Sea.

New executive director, Dean Masley and other CCN students want to provide guidance in the crypto-environment, industry connections, and academic research to create a network of students ready for unique careers in financial technology. The network has grown to well over 100 chapters across the globe, from middle school to Ph.D. programs. Bitcoin.com chatted with the organizer of the Block Party, Dean Masley of CCN, and got some insight to what’s happening with the event.

Bitcoin.com (BC): What gave you the idea to start the Hackathon?

Dean Masley (DM): CCN has desired to support hackathons for quite awhile. Last school year, we supported five student clubs who wanted to host a blockchain hackathon on their campus (under their brand, not “CCN Hackathons”, we give support and assistance but the student’s club takes credit for hosting and organizing the event). This year we were reaching out to students who were planning this years hackathon only to realize a lot of students wanted to participate but wouldn’t be able to travel. Thus, we wanted to try and create a model that allowed all CCN students to participate and get their talents recognized and make relationships with the industry. That’s why we are creating a global monthlong hackathon model with many resources to help overcome not being physical (we offer communication & submission platforms, advisors to help you code during the event, free access to certain premium API services, and fun prizes.)

BC: How are people able to access features from Ethereum, Augur and so on?

DM: Students are free to use Ethereum, Augur, and any other platform in the blockchain industry. If certain companies want to incentivize students to use their platform, we allow companies to join if they offer normally paid services for free to participants who wish to use the platform.

BC: Who’s judging the competition?

DM: Vitalik Buterin, Paul Puey, Piotr Piasecki, and a few more in discussions.

BC: What’s the overall goal with the Hackathon?

DM:

Make a repeatable digital model that encourages blockchain innovation.

Network students when they are finding a team to join (if they came into the competition alone) and potentially meet future business partners.

Allow students from across the network to be recognized for their skills, learn things directly from blockchain gurus while working on their project, and create long-term beneficial relationships with between the blockchain industry and ambitious developers building on their platforms.

Allow students to view how other students use blockchain technology to solve problems. All projects are published open source and thus can be forked by anyone, creating an archive of projects for anyone to learn from or improve.

Thank you, Dean, for speaking with us about the event — it sounds exciting. Student readers can head over to hackcollegecrypto.com to enter for the hackathon. The startups Ethereum, Rise, Blockchain, Bitcoin Wednesday, Clef, Tally Capital, Chloregy, Augur, and Consensys will all be sponsoring the event. Bitcoin.com readers will be kept up to date with any upcoming developments and when the official prizes are won.

What do you think about Hackathons? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of CCN, Shutterstock and Redmemes