Last weekend in Berlin, over five hundred programmers in 10 tracks competed against each other in the Diffusion 2019 hackathon. 45 teams made it through the weekend and presented their projects to judges on Sunday afternoon. It took the DAC.digital team 36h to build an award-winning application!
Diffusion 2019 was a two-day event focusing on the practical application of open-source distributed ledger technology, smart contracts, machine learning, and programmable tokens, to create a new data layer. Alongside hacking, contestants participated in workshops, panels, and expert-led fireside chats on the latest trends in enterprise & blockchain, token economics, interoperability, deep learning & AI, and more.
Our CTO came to Berlin with a strong representation of four developers who worked hard throughout the weekend showing that there is no technical challenge that we can’t meet.
What is the project about?
Knowing the origin of a piece of information is becoming vitally important to our societies. We wanted to bring back trust in the data and give users the power to validate the source of the content they consume by bridging the gap between a fully decentralized web and the current centralized infrastructure of Web 2.0.
The goal was to create an intuitive, low-cost, non-intrusive MVP capable of efficiently tackling high velocity, high volume video and data stream and storage inefficiency of the Ethereum Network. And the team delivered!
Want to know more about the developed solution? Read the story about in on our Technology Blog on Medium.
Coding, fun and more coding
The Diffusion 2019 Hackathon took place in a spectacular venue – Factory Berlin – where the teams spend almost the entire weekend. The organizers made sure we had everything we needed to not want to leave the building even for a second. Food, drinks, snacks, beer, chillout lounges and loads of coffee are what hackers need. 😉
We had about 100 mentors available on-site and happy to share their knowledge and experience, supporting teams and giving precious advice. But most importantly we had a plan and talented team members who executed it the right way.
The team had to handle the complexity of the designed solution but the most challenging part was the time pressure. Coding non-stop on Saturday from 11am to midnight and Sunday from 8am to 3pm has been difficult but nothing is impossible for experienced and motivated coders 😉
Results?
Our team received prizes in two out of ten tracks during this hackathon
The main rule was that the entire project has to be built during the hackathon. Judges were checking how much of the code has been written on-site to exclude pre-baked solutions. Projects were evaluated according to the following criteria: diffusion of innovation: UX and DX, track fit, sustaining development, convergence stack mashup.
As a result of hard work our team won first prize in 2 tracks:
- Web 2.5: onboarding the rest of the world to decentralized technology,
- Sharing in Consortia Networks: permissioned, tokenized data sharing with T-Labs.
Bronze Runner-Up prize as a cherry on top
Winners of all 10 tracks were competing in the general classification and it wasn’t easy for judges to choose the three winning projects. All teams put a lot of effort and creativity into developed solutions. We were competing with 44 teams from all over Europe and it was a real gratification for us to reach the podium, even though we were already the winners 😉
Curious to see the happy team on stage receiving one prize after another? Here are links to the most important moments of Diffusion 2019 Award Ceremony 😉
1. https://youtu.be/W5QhdNgCkfM?t=35972
2. https://youtu.be/W5QhdNgCkfM?t=36305i
3. https://youtu.be/W5QhdNgCkfM?t=37055
Great organization and amazing experience
We would like to thank organizers, Outlier Ventures, and their team for the beautiful experience they’ve crafted for us. The event was professionally managed and we went through it without any single issue. The organizing team was very helpful and taking care of participants in a nice and friendly way. We would also like to express our admiration for Factory Berlin, especially their wonderful Playground area which was a remedy for our tired developers.
Thank you very much!
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