Introducing the Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon

The largest-ever Cardano blockchain hackathon

Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon is the largest-ever Cardano blockchain hackathon organized by a Cardano founding entity and will offer up to $2 million in total prizes including grants and investments.

EMURGO’s venture investment arm, EMURGO Ventures, is organizing and hosting the hackathon in partnership with DoraHacks, the world’s most active multi-chain Web3 developer community. The Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon will be the first in a series of Cardano Web3 hackathons organized by EMURGO Ventures as part of its strategic alliance with DoraHacks. The hackathon and other future events aim to drive wider developer adoption of the Cardano blockchain for building decentralized applications in DeFi, NFTs, and others, that can bring value to Cardano ecosystem users.

Led by an experienced team with backgrounds in traditional finance and the emerging Web3 industry, EMURGO Ventures outlined a clear investment strategy to invest in companies and startups leveraging Web3 technologies that can deliver value to the Cardano blockchain ecosystem.

By forming an alliance with DoraHacks, EMURGO Ventures has partnered with a global leader in creating blockchain developer and hacker communities. Since its inception in 2014, DoraHacks has established itself by organizing 300,000 hackathons worldwide with more than 400 partners and has helped more than 4,000 projects secure over $30 million in grants and hackathon prizes.

The Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 hackathon will be completely virtual and open to all participants including developers, designers, and entrepreneurs interested in building dApps and other products on Cardano. The hackathon will be held for more than 2 months and will feature video workshops and Q&A mentoring sessions in the official hackathon Discord channel to help participants build their projects.

Judges will include senior representatives from EMURGO, Cardano Foundation, and IOG, in addition to officials from leading industry companies such as Wave Financial, Republic Crypto, and others. More judging information is below.

Find out more about the Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon

About Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon

The Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon will be an online event open to all. Participants can choose from 3 different developer tracks to build their submissions.

EMURGO will offer up to $2 million total in grants and investments as prizes.

Track 1 Derivatives

Derivatives are the backbone of any decentralized financial (DeFi) ecosystem. They help users manage risk, speculate on price movement, and expand potential use cases of a blockchain platform and the DeFi applications built on it. The Cardano EMURGO BUILD Hackathon judges will look for hackathon participants who can create products and services that help drive the growth and adaptation of the Cardano DeFi ecosystem. These can include a decentralized exchange (DEX), borrowing and lending services, and stablecoins, among many others. By focusing on the development of derivative-focused protocols, the aim is to accelerate the growth and potential of DeFi on Cardano.

Track 2 Aggregators

Aggregators help in bringing various DeFi and NFT platforms under one roof. DeFi aggregators help pull data from various platforms. At the same time, some even offer users the best price along with a user-friendly way to analyze and combine other trading strategies via a convenient drag-and-drop mechanism. The key is to ensure a simple UI/ UX that helps users save time, consolidate user experience, and navigate the DeFi space with ease.

As part of Track 2 of this hackathon, the Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon judges will be looking for aggregator solutions like Nansen and BitMetis, data/assets tracking, and for NFT marketplaces. NFT aggregators, in particular, have the potential to transform the way users interact with NFTs. The goal is to find disruptive projects across on-chain data tracking, GameFi, or NFT utilities that can change the way users access information with the capacity to gather and synthesize data from multiple sources.

Learn more about DeFi and NFT aggregators

Track 3 Zero-Knowledge

Businesses’ reputations and trustworthiness can be severely damaged by security breaches. While blockchain has often been regarded as a highly transparent and secure technology, privacy demands are increasing and offer a potential use case for integrating Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) such as Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) with decentralized blockchains. ZKPs can prove that transactions and data are authentic while preserving the privacy of these contents. This offers flexibility to users along with the option of how they wish to control and share their information.

An introduction to Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs)

Judges and hackathon schedule

Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 judges will feature representatives from all three Cardano ecosystem entities including EMURGO Founder and CEO, Ken Kodama. Other senior representatives are included from EMURGO Ventures, Wave Financial, Republic Crypto, and others. More judges’ info is available on the official website listed below.

The opening ceremony and first online Q&A session start May 1, 2023. Submissions open on May 29, 2023, and conclude on July 3, 2023.

For more a detailed schedule, visit the official Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon website here.

For questions and other inquiries, please join the official Discord channel here.

Join the official Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon Discord

To register, stay updated, and ask questions in real-time about the Cardano EMURGO BUILD Hackathon, join the official Cardano EMURGO BUILD 2023 Hackathon Discord channel here.

Also, please follow the official channels below for more EMURGO and Cardano announcements.

About EMURGO