Moledao’s Web 3.0 Hackathon received many fantastic submissions from teams all over the world and our judges faced the difficult task of narrowing the list down to nine teams for the finals.
We had an exciting weekend where the finalists pitched their projects to our judges, and an interesting lineup including a VC panel, speeches by our partners — Mask Network, Polygon, Bybit and Alchemy Pay, and the winners' announcement of the hackathon.
Let’s take a look at a summary of what went on during the finale!
Opening Ceremony — Speeches by Polygon & Mask Network
1. Cora, Head of China at Polygon
Polygon — A layer 2 full-stack scaling aggregator
Cora talked about how it is hard to find a public chain with all three features of scalability, security, and essential decentralization altogether. Some public chains really focus on scalability and decentralization, while Ethereum focuses on security and decentralization.
Good infrastructure can provide developers with a huge immense imagination. This is where Polygon comes in as a layer 2 full-stack scaling aggregator and it is focusing on the development of those apps developing on Ethereum that can be easily moved to Polygon. Having a hundred percent compatibility with Ethereum and extremely low transaction fees, Polygon’s vision is to be an experienced internet of blockchain. As compared to other public chains, Polygon is really friendly to Ethereum developers with strong EVM compatibility. Polygon SDK aims to turn Ethereum into a full-fledged multi-chain system by introducing structure to this organic ecosystem and providing a framework for a multi-chain Ethereum to grow further and faster. As such, Polygon Miden is an upcoming STARK-based, EVM-compatible rollup. It is like a law app that can help to solve some problems of transaction speed, gas fees, and data of chain transaction ability.
Moledao is proud to be a partner of Polygon and we have some Polygon bounties that all the projects on the polygon chain can join. We will be releasing more details over the next 2 weeks, and we are planning to have joint bounties and projects together in the near future.
2. Suji, Founder & CEO of Mask Network
A Migration to the Web 3.0 World:
Entering the Decentralized New Internet with Mask Network
In cyberspace, we are mostly controlled by the feeders and web 2 platform owners like Facebook, with Zuckerberg who is the king and it is a kingdom. Web 3 is trying to break that in different ways: from decentralized finance to the cultural revolution and even the art revolution like NFTs.
When we think about the decentralized social network, or social network in general which most of us use every day in the web 2 and even web 1, it is going to be a very difficult problem to migrate due to the high costs of transferring all your social connections to a new platform. Additionally, hardcore servers are very hard to use and despised by the mainstream. Mask Network provides the general layer of connection between web 2 and web 3 that is completely open-source and serverless. Suji believes that in the next few years, any developer can create a decentralized application right on top of the web tool platform connections connected through Mask website today.
Different platforms and protocols are building socials for web 3 and Mask Network is going about it in a very interesting way by integrating extensively with Twitter as well as other social media platforms like Instagram.
Project Demo — Metaverse Track
1.Homespace.is (🥇 Winner: 1st Prize)
Imagine The Sims with realistic architecture and AI instead of NPC, connected with Facebook Elements and Opensea financial model.
An open world farming NFT game project inspired by Animal Crossing, where players can create their own world by themselves to cultivate land and crops, raise livestock, take care of pets, rent shops, decorate houses, explore and exploit in-game resources for rent or convert them into official currencies.
3. Titan Analytics (🥈 Winner: 2nd Prize)
The platform generates a set of insights that serve three, commercially-oriented participants in the metaverse: game players, guild operators and metaverse entrepreneurs. It offers a modern analytics platform with the insights needed to maximize their success.
Project Demo — Multichain Track
- CHFRY Finance (🥉 Winner: 3rd Prize)
A new DeFi lending protocol with self-repaying loans, zero liquidation risk, flash loans,and future-yield-backed assets, soon-to-be a DeFi margin trading platform as well. It powers the automated repayment of debt through diversified high yield strategies and supports a decentralized, low-fee, and secure margin trading environment through the underlying flash loan powered infrastructure.
Flux Protocol, empowered by Conflux Network, provides a lending mechanism to adjust the interest rates of crypto assets in an automatic and decentralized fashion, incentivizing liquidity in the cryptocurrency market.
Multi-chain payment infrastructure with easy API integration like Stripe that could cover all your needs with multi-chain payments. Instant cheap cross-chain swaps with custom checkout page and API access for token and NFT sales.
Project Demo — DAO Track
A production DAO for the products in Metaverse with the philosophy to ensure everyone in their community can have opportunities to showcase their creativity.
A simple but beautiful proof-of-concept of a decentralized music owning platform built with Polygon, aiming to reimagine how musicians earn a living and how fans are discovering new ways to connect with the music and each other.
A fun and friendly learning and development platform designed for decentralized communities to tap into the full awesomeness of their membership.
VC Panel
Panelists: Hugh (YBB), Jonathan Allen (BitDAO), Jeff (Foresight), Hill Tan (7x), Tony Gu (NGC)
Moderator: Alvin (Moledao)
Some interesting points of discussion:
- DAOs can create a more kind of equitable investment atmosphere for VCs in general as well as the projects. Oftentimes, DAOs are more willing to invest into super early stage and personal founders, which can make the market more efficient as talents get discovered more easily and efficiently.
- VCs are going to have to kind of evolve in a certain sense to value add and be more active in some niche focused DAO communities or higher partners.
- Most DAOs have more distribution of tokens to the community to incentivise people to use the platform, and that can be a powerful tool. If this token distribution can help projects do well because they have large communities happen faster, VCs would be extremely supportive of it.
- There are arguments right now especially in the solana ecosystem that many tokens built on top of solana have large VC allocations and as the unlocks happen the tokens just dump. Everything is transparent now on chain and by dumping, people will notice and it can give a certain impact to your reputation.
- It is true to some extent that web3 is merely a buzzword coined by VCs which leads to the same centralized model as web2 as majority of the tokens are owned by VCs or early investors on Solana. But on the other hand there are other metrics of decentralization with a lot of alternatives and new projects on Solana which do not have VC funding.
- Decentralization is a spectrum and what we are trying to figure out now is where on that spectrum is acceptable, or do we think is the optimal place between efficiency and getting things done and kind of that censorship resistance or maximalist view.
- VCs do not necessarily have to be opposed to decentralization themselves as they can see freedom of speech or outside of the control of a particular centralized agency as a good on its own.
Closing Ceremony — Speeches by Bybit and Alchemy Pay
- Ben Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Bybit
Day 1 Closing Speech
Bybit is one of the biggest contributors for Moledao, and we had the honour to have Ben, Co-Founder and CEO of Bybit, do a closing speech on the first day of the finale on behalf of Moledao. He gave an overview of what Moledao does and what we are trying to achieve.
To put it simply, Moledao is a social platform that allows all the blockchain developers or enthusiasts to learn about the latest blockchain information or contribute ways or yourself into a blockchain tag, especially in the developers sector. We aim to keep blockchain enthusiasm up to date with the latest innovation through hackathons and education with the help of experienced blockchain pioneers and innovators.
Moledao will provide a more systematic quality content as well as educational scheduled courses to incubate developers learning from zero to one. Web 3 and blockchain can be quite difficult and that is what Moledao is really targeted for. As long as you are interested in the space, we have a course for you and design and also more of the human interactions regarding the web 3 projects.
2. Robert McCracken, Ecosystem Lead (Europe) at Alchemy Pay
Day 2 Closing Speech
Robert talked about the importance of creating not only a highly sort of decentralized metaverse but also the idea of a highly accessible metaverse. Oftentimes, blockchain ideas and innovation come before user experience and accessibility. However we see big tech corporations like Meta entering into the scene who are going to be very much focused on mainstream accessibility to the masses and we have to bear in mind that as well. Society is moving deeper into cyberspace where the idea of socializing in a remote way has become mainstream. A web 3 concept of the metaverse gives more freedom and exciting possibilities for users with the shift in power into the hands of small independent creators. It allows more creativity as you do not have to go for permission from big organizations.
The Blockchain Infrastructure Alliance (BIA) was founded by Alchemy Pay last year, where it brings together lots of leading industry leaders and entities in blockchain, bringing about communication, collaboration and cooperation between these different blockchains. It is going to help create a more cohesive and coherent blockchain industry which is able to provide strong service to users. BIA is providing funding to new projects and are always on the lookout for new promising projects.
Conclusion
Thank you for making Moledao’s first hackathon a success. We appreciate all the support from our partners, judges, speakers, our community and all the participants for web 3 hackathon. Stay tuned for our upcoming events.
To watch the full replay,
Day 1: https://bit.ly/3qJ7SbD
Day 2: https://bit.ly/3FV3wEy
For more information, visit http://moledao.io or follow @moledao_io on Twitter.
Signing off,
Moledao Team
