Top 5 Blockchain Hackathons

6 min readDec 3, 2021

The blockchain industry continues to advance through technological improvements. New decentralized applications are emerging every day focused on improving existing use cases inside and outside the ecosystem.

To achieve this progress, hundreds of developers come together virtually or in person to learn about the latest advances in technology on the main blockchain platforms. They cooperate globally to find a solution to specific problems or concerns that bring concepts to life across sectors: DeFi, NFT, Gaming, Supply Chain, Metaverses, Identity, among others.

One of the best spaces to improve ideas about a particular project is through hackathons. In addition to serving as natural spaces to encode, interact and learn about new technological trends, hackathons have become a space for individual and group achievement.

Let’s review the best five Hackathons at the end of the year, 2021!

1 — Polkadot Hackathon: APAC Edition

Since October 22, the Polkadot Hackathon Global series of the Asia Pacific region (APAC) has been underway.

The event is focused on Substrate, Polkadot and Kusama and open to both individuals and teams anywhere in the world, with an emphasis on the APAC region.

This hackathon is the first in a series of similar global events that will take place across all regions of the world with the aim of reaching all developers around the world.

The event is open for presentations until December 12, 2021 and has a total of 30,000 USD to be distributed in three categories: building a blockchain, open hack and Docathon.

Given the importance of the Polkadot ecosystem for the industry, the event focuses on ideas related to the development of DeFi utilities, NFTs, wallets, games, and more, based on the Substrate framework, the modular core of this blockchain ecosystem.

You can join the event by clicking here.

2 — ParaState Hackathon

ParaState has been carrying out a two-month hackathon since October 16, 2021, which is expected to culminate on December 15, 2021.

The event is co-organized with DoraHacks and has a prize of 100,000 USD to be distributed among the winning proposals focused on using the SewUp library based on the Rust language to develop blockchains and decentralized applications on its Plato test platform.

Known as Ethereum on steroids, ParaState is a multi-chain smart contract platform that extends the Ethereum frontier using the Substrate framework.

In this way, ParaState provides developers with a next-generation smart contract virtual machine to make any Substrate-based blockchain compatible with Ethereum while leveraging the modern WebAssembly ecosystem.

ParaState is the only platform available in the industry that has a pallet compatible with EVM and Ewasm, allowing any dApp built on any blockchain network to have compatibility with Ethereum and the Polkadot ecosystem.

The organization of the hackathon is developed with online workshops that are streamed live 2–3 times on DoraHacks, Bilibili.com and Youtube.

The hackathon award will be awarded in three categories: Jury Bonus Pool, Quadratic Voting Bonus Pool, and Rewards for Correcting Errors for Project SewUp and XYZ, among others.

The hackathon will focus on applications developed in Rust with the State SewUp library including NFT contracts, block explorers, DEXes, wallets, and any other innovative applications.

If you are interested in participating in this event, you can do so from this link.

3 — Gitcoin Virtual Hackathon — Game on! Tezos

Until next December 18, you have the opportunity to join the Tezos Hackathon Discord organized by the Gitcoin community and sponsored by the Tezos blockchain platform.

The virtual event takes place over 30 days of exploring human nature through play using Tezos blockchain technology, inviting us to build games that delight, entertain and help pave the way for this technology to become part of our daily lives.

A total of 200,000 USD in XTZ tokens from the Tezos network will be distributed to the first three places that manage to present working prototypes implemented in the Tezos test network under open source licenses (MIT).

According to the official information, the virtual hackathon will have evaluation criteria focused on potential impact, novelty, technology and UX design.

As the name of the hackathon says, the only requirement is to be able to generate prototypes focused on blockchain gaming on the Tezos network.

If you want to join this event, you can do so by clicking here.

4 — Bitcoin Bankathon

Programmers from 23 countries will compete to create the best Bitcoin-based banking product for Banco Hipotecario, a private commercial banking entity established in El Salvador.

The Bitcoin Bankathon is the bet of this entity to develop products that adapt to the new economic, financial and banking reality of the country since the declaration of bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender in El Salvador.

The entity will distribute a total of 150,000 USD among developers from around the world, who will use the tools and applications provided by various companies specialized in cryptocurrency and financial technologies.

The hackathon will run from November 19 to December 8. During the first two weeks, from November 19 to 30, the competition will be virtual.

In the first week of December, the developers will travel to the Central American country to present their proposals.

The challenges of the hackathon will be to build a bitcoin-enabled bank; redesign and implement a Bitcoin system for sending and receiving remittances; tackle climate change from a banking perspective; financially empower women through cryptocurrencies; and empower merchants through smart contracts.

You can join through this link if you want to participate.

5 — Cosmos HackAtom VI

With over a million dollars in prizes in the ATOM token, HackAtom VI is the largest hackathon in Cosmos’ history.

HackAtom VI lasts for an entire month online and is accompanied by in-person events in major world cities, including Lisbon and Berlin. This year’s competition is spread out over six exciting themes: Ethereum on Cosmos, Starport, Interoperability, DeFi, End-User apps, Gaming, and Earth Sustainability.

The event was held in a live opening ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal on November 11. The deadline for submissions is December 8, 2021.

The announcement of the winners is expected on December 16, divided into six main categories: Ethereum projects in Cosmos SDK, Blockchains built with Starport, IBC use cases, DeFi (Cosmos SDK loan or insurance module), Games in Cosmos SDK and End-user applications such as wallets.

If you want to join this event, you can do so from this link.

About ParaState

Known as Ethereum on steroids, ParaState is a multi-chain smart contract platform bridging the application and developer ecosystem between Polkadot, Substrate and Ethereum, as well as other chains wanting to provide Ethereum compatibility. While supporting the EVM pallet to provide seamless compatibility with all existing Ethereum applications, ParaState also provides developers with a next-gen smart contract implementation environment, Ethereum-flavored WebAssembly. These two infrastructures are ensured to talk to each other and share the same account system on ParaState.

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