Most of us know what hackathons are. These events host groups of engineers spending a weekend hacking’ and building a products in a competitive environment. There are typically prizes and job opportunities as the partner sponsors identify top projects and talent.
It’s like this scene from The Social Network but with more structure and less alcohol and cheering:
I’ve never been to a hackathon, nor would I be qualified to attend. I’m a lowly Growth guy on the hierarchy of technical expertise. However, I learned that ETH Global was coming to town to host their ETHSF event.
ETHGlobal is an organization that hosts hackathons and educational events to bring in more developers into the Ethereum ecosystem. They started in 2017 with ETHWaterloo and have been gaining steam ever since.
This past weekend, over 1250 hackers came to participate in ETHSF. I wish I could’ve plugged into the collective brainpower at the Palace of Fine Arts, maybe I could finally learn how to code lol.
I want to give a shoutout to Luke from ETHGlobal, as he understood the importance for ‘small town reporters’ like me to share the hackathon experience from the eyes of a non-technical individual.
Hackathons are for builders (especially engineers), but sharing the experience and takeaways of a hackathon are important for everyone regardless of skillset. Building is the lifeblood of Web3 and ETHGlobal is a contributor to that process by bringing in those that are curious about building in Web3 or providing more opportunities to repeat participants.
In terms of covering the event, I decided that following 3 teams and their weekend journey would be the best way to do so. I appreciate the willingness for these teams to let me bug them and document their journey throughout the weekend. This experience ultimately had me leaving the event with deep conviction about the broader Web3 space along with the Ethereum ecosyste.
Before we get into it, here are the 3 teams I covered (will be sharing all their info at the end):
Portifi
Landing Party
onTrack
Going into the event, I wasn’t sure how I’d identify the teams to write about, I just knew I wanted to cover a few teams over the weekend. As fate would have it, I met these teams and followed their journey as they hacked, presented, and shared their experiences. They incorporated different approaches, have diverse stories, and hacked products that gave me a great perspective of the event.
So let’s get to it, what happened at ETHSF?
Friday 3pm
In the days leading up to the hackathon, I was a little anxious. I didn’t know what to expect as I was covering the event. I wasn’t looking for a team, I wasn’t a partner that participants would flock to with questions, nor was I mentor to assist teams that were stuck.
Fortunately, everyone was friendly and open to chatting with me when I shared my mission to document the event.
The energy was palpable. The space echoed with the chatter of hundreds of simultaneous conversations. The registration line grew as everyone prepared for the first evening of hacking.
Gegistration line
One of my first stops was the Polygon booth, since I was more familiar with them. I struck up conversation with Steph, who’s on the DevRel (developer relationship) team. Steph is a 7x Web3 hackathon winner and dev, so she helped to answer some of my basic questions. While chatting, she was greeted by Matt, one of the hackathon participants!
Matt!
Since the ecosystem is small, especially in the bear market, it’s common to run into old friends, similar to my experience at NFT SF.
I started chatting with Matt, and they were the first team that signed up for this written documentary experience.
I continued walking around the space and came across various activations like NounsDAO Amigos! Nouns Amigos has partnered with ETHGlobal to create an activation at every hackathon to promote Nouns. This is the third stop on their world tour, and they started with ETHMexico and ETHBogota.
Awesome @nounsdao activation with @nounsdaoAmigos and @ale_pjimenez!!
NounsAmigos ⌐◨-◨ @NounsDAOAmigos
While walking around, I bumped into Amy, Bryan, and Kathy from Landing Party! I used to work with Amy and Kathy back at Uber and they were kind enough to let me check in with them throughout the weekend.
2 teams down, 1 to go 😏
Alas, I had to leave to a different event so I had to dip out. I planned to come back once it was over to check on the teams and see how they were doing!
Saturday 1am
My conflict ran later than expected, but I was determined to see what the vibes were like late at night. I wasn’t disappointed.
The coffee bar snack booth were wrapping up and I fortunately grabbed a couple of churros in time as I was starving.
Time to hit up folks and check in.
No response lol. Despite that, I figured I would do a couple laps around the venue. If I were to sum up the late night vibes, it would be this picture:
Clearly I’m not a photographer, but the blurriness accurately reflects the blurriness of fatigue settling in, belongings laid on the ground, and hackers focused on the screens in front of them.
Need mentor help? Sorry 😭
Jk, they were probably taking a break somewhere
As I bumbled around in my late night brain fog, I recognized Matt’s jacket and the team cranking away. Time to say hi!
The team decided to create a Defi product called Portifi, making it easier for casual users to invest in different Defi strategies and funds.
The Portifi team worked together the first evening, and as the work was split up, they went back to the hotel to rest and resume working in their respective swim lanes.
I called an Uber and headed home around 2am.
Saturday 2pm
Time for Day 2! I took care of some personal chores and back to the Hackathon I went. In contrast to Saturday night, the hackathon was buzzing.
View of the lower floor taken from the upper floor
As I grabbed a late lunch, I caught up with the Landing Party team to learn more about what they were working on. The team decided to build a Web3 referral tool, creating more effective ways for Web3 products and communities grow their user base.
Kathy and Bryan explained their concept as I munched away on my salad and asked questions to better understand the product.
I stopped by the Polygon booth again because Steph told me she would help me find another team to cover, and she introduced me to onTrack, an all-female team (nice!!).
The onTrack team was creating a blockchain-enabled accountability platform to help groups to reach their goals, whether its saving up for a vacation or keeping politicians accountable with their initiatives.
I spent the rest of the evening meeting the partner sponsors, chatting with event volunteers, and doing some heads-down work. No greater motivator than seeing thousands of other people working, right? 😉
I headed back home around 11pm while the hackers were preparing for crunchtime before the 9am deadline.
Sunday 10am
Demo day! Teams wrapped up any last-minute work and submitted their projects to the ETHGlobal team at 9am. The venue was filled with adrenaline-filled excitement as it was time to demo the projects that were built in the last 36 hours.
There were two tiers of presentations:
ETHGlobal - The main event. Finalists would present their live demo to all attendees later in the afternoon.
Partners - If a project integrated the tech from a specific partner, they could present to them for additional prizes.
Unfortunately I was unable to catch Landing Party’s presentation, but I was able observe onTrack present to the ETHGlobal judges and Portifi present to 0x, a partner that they incorporated into their project.
onTrack
Portifi
As the presentations concluded, the teams either parted ways to take a well-deserved nap or hung around while judges made their final decisions.
All in all, there were 284 projects submitted from talented teams. I’m sure the judge made some difficult decisions.
Finalist showcase event
I left after the showcase to prepare for the new week and recollect my thoughts. It was quite the weekend even for a non-hacking participant like myself.
Themes
Energy
Similar to other events I’ve covered like Consensus and NFT NYC, the energy was through the roof. The energy manifested itself in different ways, whether it was the friendliness of meeting new people, the projects that being hacked together, or the ebbs and flows of working late into the night.
Most importantly with the theme of energy, this event is voluntary. Yes, there’s the financial incentive of $300k+ in prizes, but thousands of talented people decided to spend their weekend (some flying in from all over the world) to hack and build.
These individuals could’ve been partying, spending time with friends or family, or getting some sleep. Instead, they decided to go to the Hackathon and build because it was that important.
There was a sense of competition, but a larger prevailing sense of camaraderie. I couldn’t put a finger on it Friday night, but I could tell there was something special about this hackathon, and I imagine this feeling is similar with Web3 hackathons elsewhere.
You can’t beat this type of energy.
Team stories
The stories from all 3 teams I covered shed more light on the reality of what the future of work can and will look like.
Portifi: 3 of the 4 team members are current students at UCSD. Kunal and Punn founded the UCSD Blockchain Club while Prathik and Matt were early members.
Landing Party: The team has a live product and built the new referral feature that will be fine-tuned to add onto their offering. The hackathon doubled as an offsite as well, smart!
onTrack: The 5 team members met through a women focused DAO, awesome!
Overall, a majority of the participants were younger, with many participants being students or recent grads. I even heard there was a 14-year old participating! This adds to the theme of energy, but also where the future is headed. Top talent is headed to Web3. It’s more fun, what can I say 😎
Hackathons are the ultimate group project
We all know what the stereotypical group project looks like..
Hackathons don’t allow for these types of shenanigans. It’s time to get shit done and build. There is a level of trust and autonomy that the highest performing teams incorporate with a ~36 hour deadline. Sink or swim.
On top of that, the professional skills learned through these hackathons were abundantly clear as I followed these teams through the weekend:
Public speaking
Ruthless prioritization
Decision making
Wearing multiple hats
No matter where these participants end up, they’re building the skills to be successful entrepreneurs, builders, and professionals. It gets me excited about future generations and how they’ll impact our future for the better.
The Teams
Portifi
Team: Kunal, Matt, Prathik, Punn
Awards: 2nd place, Best use of 0x
Landing Party
Team: Amy, Bryan, Kathy, Tassi
Awards: None, but they’ll turn this into a real feature 💪
onTrack
Team: Azteca, Claudia, Jen, Lily, Xian
Awards: 3rd place, Best Contribution for ApeCoin + Best DeFi use case for Triangle
Other people I’ve met
Binji - We spent over an hour chatting about Optimism and shared our respective stories. I appreciated the time you took to educate and inform, and your enthusiasm is infectious! I’ll be sure to read Meditations on Moloch soon.
Kazuki - We met while I was at the registration booth Saturday evening. Thanks for sharing your story and I’m excited for you as you take the time during sabbatical to continue exploring Web3. Your journey has just started and I’m stoked!
Zahidul - Thanks for educating me about NEAR protocol. Fun fact, NEAR was a product of ETHSF way back in 2017!
Sam - It was great to connect with you at the 0x booth and hear more about your story and background. From PhD candidate to working in Web3, it seems that all paths lead here 😂
So there you have it! For those that haven’t been a hackathon before, I hope this provides more insight for what goes on at these events.
Shoutout one more time to Luke and the ETHGlobal team for letting me experience this event and share it with others 🤝
See you tomorrow!
