During the weekend of 19.-21.7. Paralelni Polis in Prague hosted its first hackathon. The 48-hour event fueled by free beer and Red Bull welcomed around 30 participants from around the world.
Hackatoshi’s Flying Circuit ran three tracks: privacy, decentralization, urban hacktivism. The prize money - supplied by Polynom - was $1k for the winning team in each track, plus a year-long license for JetBrains developer tools.
The urban hacktivism track had only one running team and what these guys did was really great but also probably illegal, so we cannot describe their public space hacks for now.
The privacy track had two running teams:
Hackatoshi’s Flying Circuit ran three tracks: privacy, decentralization, urban hacktivism. The prize money - supplied by Polynom - was $1k for the winning team in each track, plus a year-long license for JetBrains developer tools.
The urban hacktivism track had only one running team and what these guys did was really great but also probably illegal, so we cannot describe their public space hacks for now.
The privacy track had two running teams:
- Písk: a deployment of SecureDrop in Czech and Slovak environment. SecureDrop is a free software platform for secure communication between journalists and their sources, originally developed by late Aaron Swartz. Písk team did a really great job over the weekend, coming up with the idea, deploying the TOR site, designing the project logo and even contacting local corruption & transparency watchdog (oziveni.cz) to spread the word about the project. For their great work, Písk team won the first prize in the privacy track. Check them out at www.pisk.cz or check out their SecureDrop deployment at http://jrq5cwh34tz4cii7.onion/.
- Cheddar: project proposing to solve issues with zombie apps and users’ digital trails via storing the user data on IPFS and letting users decide whether to allow app developers to access the data. The project name is a word play on “shredder”. Team won the second prize in the privacy track. Project has no public website yet.
The decentralization track had the most teams running. Winning teams were:
- TinCubETH: team headed by seasoned hacker and Ethereum developer Ligi. Per the project’s github documentation, TinCubETH is the second best thing you can do for your privacy on Ethereum (the first is running your own node). The project aims to improve Ethereum users’ privacy and security by connecting the clients to nodes behind TOR and utilizing zero knowledge technology. Ligi is a creator of WallETH, so we will probably see this project deployed as a part of this Ethereum wallet soon. The team won the first prize in this track.
- Flying pension: one-man team proposed a smart contract logic for custom pension programs. It was refreshing to see a new DeFi use case in the sea of money market-centered Ethereum DeFi projects. Second prize in the track, no public website yet.
- Bleskomat: residential project of Paralelni Polis, aiming to bring purchases of balanced Lightning Channels to the local Bitcoin ATM. Project is still very early stage and trying to overcome the proprietary nature of some hardware producers. Still very early stage and looking for contributors - check their github if you are interested. Nice third place in the decentralization track.
As a part of the hackathon, I did several interviews with notable participants:
- @exiledsurfer about Bitcoin early years and reflections on 10 years in the industry. Exiledsurfer worked for the Bitcoin foundation in 2013-2015, currently contributes to Trustlines Network. - WATCH HERE
- @notecast about product design and user-centric approach as necessary stepping stones for wider adoption - WATCH HERE
- @extropyLaurence about enterprise blockchain adoption and putting an Ethereum node in a Porsche - WATCH HERE
- @piskcz about the SecureDrop implementation in CZ/SK environment - this interview is in Czech/Slovak only - WATCH HERE
You can also check a short teaser for the interviews here. Overall, the hackathon was a blast and we are all looking forward to the main Prague event this year - Hackers Congress: Opt-out.