For a four-week period during November this year coders from around the world will engage in what might be an epic battle for one of the biggest prizes in the blockchain hackathon space.
Uniquely, the entire event will take part fully online and streamed live with more than 200 fans already registered. They’ll be able to follow all teams and their progress in implementing their project as well as vote on the best team with a prize of 200 ETH up for grabs for the most “beloved idea.”
More than 172 ideas have already been submitted. They range from automobile and land registration, decentralized peer to peer insurance, to more ambitious projects such as a global water ledger, energy trading, and even a DAO Political Party.
One team, for example, wants to free academic knowledge by implementing a token and blockchain-based publishing system to replace academic journals:
A distributed publication platform build on Ethereum and IPFS could incentivize post-publication peer review, reduce the lag between work written and read, and save the taxpayer billions by reducing library subscription fees.
Although most of the ideas seem to be based on Ethereum’s blockchain, some are based on Bitcoin. Roman Mandeleil, Founder of Ether Camp, rejecting any tribalism, stated to CCN that everyone was welcomed: “Bitcoiners, Ethereumers, and all Entrepreneurs are invited.”
Mandeleil stated that the goal of Ether Camp is “to be a virtual accelerator for real companies.” Similar to Y Combinator and other likewise accelerators, promising teams may receive offers or funding to turn their prototype or idea into a full product and potentially successful business.
Although the sponsors have not yet been announced, Mandeleil stated the Camp has gold level sponsorship for enterprise businesses and silver for medium to small companies, and at least ten companies are currently on board. Further prizes will also be announced in the coming weeks.
This is one of many hackathons taking place in the digital currency space as developers, businesses, academia, and the public sector move from realizing the blockchain’s potential to focusing on implementing its many applications.
Thomson Reuters, joined by Barclays, Innovate UK, and others, is to hold a hackETHon in September which seems to be focused on data-driven smart contracts bringing data analytics and processing to the blockchain. Just a few weeks later, the International Blockchain Week will hold a demo day where some fascinating projects are expected to be revealed.
This is the latest sign the public blockchain space, primarily because of Ethereum’s invention of smart contracts, has now moved from its first digital currency application towards prototyping and implementing more innovative products, such as energy trading, water management, more efficient financial instruments and the industrial internet of things.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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