Yesterday, Chainlink announced its annual Fall Hackathon will take place October 22 through November 28, 2021. The five-week event is open to developers, creators and artists in two event tracks – a “Main Track” for experienced smart contract developers and a new “Welcome Track” for those who are new to blockchain and smart contracts.
Participants will compete across dozens of categories – including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and Social Impact – offering a collective $300,000 in prizes and winners will have the opportunity to pitch their submissions in front of top VCs. The hackathon will also offer educational resources and inspiration for both new and veteran developers.
Patrick Collins, a software engineer and developer advocate at Chainlink Labs, told Chainlink Today that this year’s Fall Hackathon advances Chainlink Labs’ larger mission to change the world with smart contracts by incentivizing new engineers with premium educational content.
“We understand that education is essential to new developers and sometimes blockchain can be daunting. We’ve put a ton of time into making world-class tutorials and working with world-class educators,” he said.
Collins expects an impressive set of submissions, especially after this year’s Spring Hackathon, which gave rise to a number of exciting projects like dynamic NFT game CryptOrchids and synthetic index token-minting platform Catalyst. Spring DeFi Prize winner Vulcan, a commission-free, blockchain-powered weather derivatives marketplace, has since brought on Mark Cuban as a strategic advisor.
“DeFi is absolutely massive and Chainlink enables the most powerful DeFi applications out there,” Collins said.
He anticipates Fall Hackathon NFT projects will show how much the space has grown since just last spring. “NFT games are exploding in popularity recently, and some of the most innovative ones use Chainlink and off-chain data or computation in some way. Engineers have become smarter; we’ve put out more educational content; and the NFT space hasn’t slowed down with demand.”
Collins is particularly looking forward to submissions for the new DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) Prize. “I’m going to try to tease the minds of willing engineers to push the boundaries of the space and think about governance in new ways,” he said.
Also new to the Fall Hackathon is the Chainlink Services Prize. “I’m incredibly excited to see people build new Chainlink features and services,” Collins said. “Who can build the next Chainlink VRF or Chainlink Keepers?”
Chainlink Keepers, a decentralized service for automating vital smart contract functions, went live on mainnet during last month’s SmartCon, where a panel of prominent DeFi founders discussed Keepers’ role in building the next generation of hybrid smart contracts. “Chainlink Keepers unlock a new world of decentralized applications and we are going to be doing some workshops that utilize them and showcase how powerful they can be,” Collins said.
“I’m expecting every feature Chainlink offers will get used in many projects. Engineers’ creativity never ceases to amaze me, and I’m sure we will, again, see projects and ideas we’ve never thought of.”
Learn more about how you can participate in the Chainlink Fall 2021 Hackathon here.