63 teams. 600+ developers, designers, architects, product and business people from 22 countries. DutchChain organized the largest Blockchain Hackathon ever in Groningen, Netherlands last week. This was sort of the Olympics of Blockchain, and I was there to learn a few things.
We can’t talk about blockchain all the time. We have to talk about what it is doing. And we have to think through how this is actually changing our society for the better. — Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands
The hackathon was huge. A lot of cool stuff got built and everyone learned a lot. Everything was perfect, and the only flaw I could find was that a hackathon can’t just run out of RedBull 12 hours before deadline.
Not all use cases are science fiction (far from it, actually)
The first example to that is my team. During the hackathon we developed a system that encapsulates access control and audit trails on confidential files (eg: healthcare or legal records), in a way that individuals retain complete control and visibility on their personal data. This is not far fetched at all. We see confidential data being leaked every now and then, causing loss of privacy for individuals worldwide and huge fines for the businesses who leaked it. This is something that most businesses should start implementing right now to protect their clients’ and users’ data.
There were teams doing all sorts of tracking, from medicine to weed. Data protection in scenarios where it can easily be plugged into existing workflows. Solutions for scenarios that desperately need someone to think about them, such as catastrophe recovery or tracking basic needs in underdeveloped areas. These products serve as a statement to say that the tech is there, now it’s a matter of making it available to the ones who need it.
Large corporations and governments are hunting for ideas
The hackathon was sponsored by big name companies in financial services, energy, healthcare, sports, etc, and also by representatives from the Dutch government, hospitals, police and legal institutions. Big consultancies participated with their own teams. And a lot of teams brought some of their clients for the weekend, to participate in this collaborative brainstorm. Even the Prince of the Netherlands was there, giving his support to everyone.
As the blockchain space explodes and new ideas bloom, everyone gets sucked in to the brainstorm. But since everyone seems to have been around for just a few months, there’s still a lot of figuring out. I saw some partners, C-levels and VPs from large companies walking around, talking to people and collecting ideas and business cards. It feels that blockchain is in the agenda of every major company, there are budgets being allocated, but the decision makers don’t necessarily know what to do with them.
Everyone is on the hunt for Blockchain talent
There is a massive shortage of talent in the space. There are way more ideas being drafted in canvases and whiteboards than people to actually bring them to life. Everyone constantly asked people on the other teams for help, and the sense of community is incredible. I got pulled to help another team, who treated me as an expert (which I’m not, but they were much less experienced than me), and others did the same. There were companies trying to hire people on the spot and the overall liquidity of opportunities in the space is very interesting to see. The market might label it as growth pains, but for the builders in the space it’s just optionality. Everyone gets to pick the projects they like the most, and the onus of the project proponents to make their propositions more attractive for team members to join. And no, it’s not just about the money.
Blockchain talent doesn’t mean just Developers
Certainly developers of any sort of blockchain stack are in increasingly high demand. But it’s not just developers. Blockchain unlocks possibilities that are beyond what used to be possible just a few years ago, so Mechanism Design and User Experience play a very important role, so that Designers and Product Managers who understand blockchain need to be key contributors. As blockchain use cases tend to gravitate around trust, and secrecy vs visibility, it frequently taps into the legal turfs, so lawyers who understand these ins and outs are also highly welcomed to the space too. Token structures unveil complex models with multiple moving parts, for which business people, economists and controllers who understand it are also valuable and in high demand too.
There are Blockchain stacks beyond Ethereum
I personally love Ethereum, and believe it’s the undisputed leading platform to use in most use cases. It has the core architecture, the mechanisms, the community, the development tools, and I feel it’s a few steps ahead of the rest in most domains. But, despite that, I can see that not only Ethereum has some legit competitors, but also some other platforms are better suited for specific use cases. At least I saw stacks built in BigChainDB, Hyperledger, Stellar, and IOTA being built during the Hackathon. Arguably, some of these should be labeled as DLT (Distributed Ledger Technologies, rather than Blockchain, but in the end they all fit into a Blockchain Hackathon.
Blockchain is much more than just a technology layer
As a Developer, CTO and Tech Consultant, my perspective tends to be somewhat biased towards tech development. I might just say that tech is everything that matters, but that wouldn’t be true. Blockchain creates possibilities that never existed in the past, and certainly we need a lot of tech development capacity to bring them to life. But in parallel, we need to figure out the new business models it unveils, the legal constraints that are raised for every other blockchain use case, the design of better mechanisms for game theory in the machine-to-machine economy.
Blockchain is a once-in-a-lifetime disruptive technology, and we, as a community, need to make sense of the possibilities, step up and build a better future on top of it.
This article was originally published here.