Blockchain security solutions, video games and storytelling dominated the successful initiatives at the ETHDenver 2024 BUIDLathon, the biggest and oldest hackathon for Ethereum builders, which ended on Sunday evening.

At the discontinuance of the 9-day hackathon, BUIDLathon judges chosen 5 winners from over 200 competing initiatives at the seventh annual hackathon that allotted about $1,000,000 in sponsor bounties and prizes.

HoneyPause, an onchain security challenge; Egg Wars, a chicken-and-egg NFT game; Odin, a dapp security characteristic; BeFit, a competitive fitness social media game; and Sekai, an AI-interactive tale-building platform, had been topped the winners and awarded $1,000 in prize money as successfully as to incremental prizes and awards through the competitors. There possess been 5 tracks the initiatives competed in: Infrastructure + Scalability, Identity + Privateness + Safety, DeFi + NFTs + Gaming, DAOs + Communities, and Influence + Public Items. Each and every music had three finalists who earned $5,000 in money plus further prizes comparable to free tickets to next year’s ETHDenver valued at as much as $12,500.

ETHDenver 2024, as an organizer of the BUIDLathon, effect forward $142,500 as rewards for the head initiatives in every music, and the closing prize pool came from the 50 further partners that backed the hackathon, including Arbitrum, Solana, Wormhole, RISC Zero, Noxious, Linea, Chainlink, Hedera, Polkadot, Reach and Lukso.

The A hit Projects

The winners had been chosen by 5 hackathon judges, who themselves had been chosen by builders and diversified specialists in the Ethereum ecosystem from 2,900 functions. Judges had been nominated in step with how mighty they embodied the ethos of ETHDenver, “#BUIDL,” which is a thought combining the points of education and neighborhood. The judges, Nader Dabit, Casey Gardiner, Austin Griffith, Solange Gueiros and Min Kim, every chosen a winner.

Dabit is Eigen Labs’s director of developer family members and has a GitHub web page that dates support to 2012. Gardiner is a board member of Spork DAO as successfully because the lead protocol engineer at Concord. Griffith works for the Ethereum Foundation and makes a speciality of developer onboarding and tooling. Gueiros is a blockchain developer recommend at Chainlink Labs. Kim is the co-founder of originate firm Airfoil.

Dabit’s Favourite: HoneyPause

Dabit’s current became HoneyPause, a challenge in the Identity + Privateness + Safety music. The concern the HoneyPause group wished to address became how onchain initiatives operate at a “predominant security predicament” due essentially to the persevering with evolution of sophisticated risk actors. Certainly, the option of funds stolen from crypto platforms in 2023 amounted to $1.7 billion, in step with a Chainanalysis document published in January.

HoneyPause group contributors Justin Schuldt, Lawrence Forman and Jordan Cason settled on one plot to empower white hats.

Hackers who scan utility code to title possible vulnerabilities are identified by their metaphorical sad and white hats. Unlit hats, treasure infamous North Korean hacker neighborhood Lazarus, deliberately capitalize on identified weaknesses of a protocol’s code snide, actively exploiting vulnerabilities to loot crypto initiatives and rarely promote their discoveries to underground marketplaces.

White hats historically hiss protocol builders upon discovering a malicious program that requires patching. Some possess been identified to expend the malicious program to originate funds before a malicious actor can, but then return the funds support to the rightful owners. In return for disclosing bugs and returning funds, initiatives on the full reward white hats with a bounty of some kind, but no longer constantly.

“We no doubt desire more white hats and now we must empower and incentivize them to trustlessly stay your protocol in the occasion that they can present that you simply would also honest possess a severe exploit, and that’s where HoneyPause is accessible in, stated Forman, who is a blockchain security engineer at challenge fund Dragonfly Capital, through the group’s presentation.

HoneyPause is an onchain exploit bounty tied to a circuit breaker. White hats, in the occasion that they present a tidy contract exploit, can expend HoneyPause to stay the affected protocol and secure a bounty for it.

Griffith’s Opt: Egg Wars

Griffith picked Egg Wars as his current challenge for the BUIDLathon. Egg Wars is “a game where players compete to form the biggest military of chickens and manufacture the most $EGG,” the challenge stated on its DevFolio web page. It competed in the DeFi + NFTs + Gaming music.

The game, supposed to be every easy and stress-free, became impressed by three chickens named Coco, Froyo, and Snort, who belong to one of many group contributors.

Egg Wars is an onchain game consisting of two diversified sources, chicken NFTs and egg tokens. Gamers can expend eggs to feed their chickens to lengthen the chicken’s egg manufacturing “or you would also expend the egg to throw at an enemy chicken and scale again its level or you would also additionally are trying your probabilities to hatch an egg where you would also honest possess a 20% likelihood of birthing a complete new chicken,” stated one of many group contributors of Egg Wars on stage.

Egg Wars is presently deployed on the Sepholia take a look at network of layer 2 blockchain Noxious, which became incubated by crypto commerce Coinbase. Steve Klenbanoff, a elephantine stack engineer at PartyDAO; Jeremy Lack, elephantine stack engineer in Web3; John Palmer, a founder of PartyDAO, and Regular pOpps, who self-described because the founder of Regulars, had been the four group contributors.

“Right here is a marvelous hackathon challenge,” stated Griffith, the settle, after the presentation. “Right here is precisely what hackers accessible ought to mute are trying for. There’s some no doubt radiant mechanism originate going down here, with a no doubt silly dispute linked to it.”

Gardiner’s Winner: ODIN

Gardiner selected as his current ODIN, which helps decentralized functions stay their tidy contracts before “malicious transactions that damage protocol invariants (on the full hacks) are performed,” in step with the challenge’s DevFolio web page. Like HoneyPause, ODIN competed in the Identity + Privateness + Safety music.

Invariants are properties of a protocol’s plot that ought to constantly preserve ethical, and if it doesn’t preserve ethical for every block, the protocol has a colossal concern. One example of an invariant, equipped by the group, is how the sum of all lending transactions minus the sum of all borrowing transactions from a tidy contract ought to mute equal the tokens left in the contract.

ODIN no longer handiest permits a marketplace where decentralized functions pay block builders for pausing tidy contracts but additionally has block builders bonded on EigenLayer so they don’t maliciously stay. “It’s treasure a crypto financial stable the expend of the EigenLayer plot to throw a circuit breaker in the block builder, to earn out sooner than all americans,” stated Griffith after the group performed presenting.

Anup Swamy Veena, a senior blockchain security engineer at Coinbase, and Anto J., a fullstack Web3 developer, had been the 2 contributors of ODIN.

Gueiros’ Replacement: BeFit

BeFit, created by College of Waterloo students William Wang and Xavier DMello, became  Gueiros’ top option. The challenge is an iteration of photo-sharing platform BeReal, which permits customers to post one photo a day to masks their mates what they’re presently doing. Customers can handiest perceive their mates’ BeReal photo in the occasion that they post to the platform.

BeFit is “BeReal but with pushups,” as outlined by the challenge’s DevFolio web page. The utility rewards customers with NFTs for steadily doing pushups, performing as a proof-of-history for the user that contains a “collectible and competitive dispute to exercise.”

The challenge is below the Influence + Public Items Track and became rolled out on the Sepholia take a look at network of layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum, in step with Wang and DMello’s speech during their presentation. Wang did 10 pushups with DMello recording on a phone for the are living demonstration of their challenge.

“I settle BeFit, because of I’m an brisk particular person,” stated Gueiros in an interview with Unchained. Gueiros, who is additionally samba instructor, stated she loved how the group incorporated exercise and a social dispute into its originate.

When Unchained asked the group contributors what the predominant part became for successful hackathons, Wang stated, “Pleasing set aside one thing stress-free, set aside one thing ideally helpful, but in actuality largely stress-free, one thing inviting that’s no longer dreary.”

DMello, who is the chief technology officer of the Waterloo Blockchain Club, additionally suggested Unchained that challenge capital corporations possess approached the 2 students for his or her BeFit challenge. “We had treasure four race as much as us,” stated DMello. “One amongst them that invested in StepN, they must make investments in us… they stated they didn’t perceive the social facet in a majority of these fitness apps before and no doubt loved it,” added Wang.

StepN is a Solana-essentially based fully challenge where players can earn tokens thru walking, jogging, and running. The challenge became standard, namely through the COVID-19 timeframe.

Whereas Wang and DMello possess participated in diversified hackathons treasure ETHGlobal NYC, ETHDenver’s 2024 BUIDLathon became the biggest for them.

Min’s Preference: Sekai

Min chosen Sekai, an AI-driven interactive tale building platform. John Wi, Kaiser Kim and Tommy Rodriguez entertaining on the priority of how “the fresh media drag presently incentivizes passive consumption over emotional resonance … leaning to user relationships dominated by spectatorship over collaboration,” stated Kaiser Kim, one of many three contributors of the group.

Using Sekai, storytellers can set aside plotlines by generating textual drawl material, photography and audio thru AI tools whereas viewers can engage and affect the story route by contributing suggestions and co-creating drawl material. Per Kim, Sekai leverages the following technologies for his or her platform: Legend Protocol for IP licensing, a Friend.tech impressed social-fi modal, AI-generated drawl material and composable Web3 blocks treasure NFTs.

Min stated she became namely having a stare at the originate concerns of the many initiatives. “So obviously, the more or much less product I picked had the most polished user journey and [user interface],” Min stated to Unchained in an interview. Each and every group had a colossal thought, “all possess a colossal technology at the support of [them], but it no doubt’s a subject of how you keep in touch your technology to human beings …. There’s a colossal replacement for originate to play a job there, in dispute that became my consideration.”

A Noticeable Lack of Diversity

Whereas ETHDenver’s BUIDLathon is an occasion where builders possess the likelihood to advance the blockchain ecosystem,” all other folks in the 15 groups that presented on stage during this year’s hackathon regarded as if it will perhaps per chance well well be male, presenting a noticeable lack of gender range. Two of the 5 judges on the panel, then again, had been female.

Even if Unchained did not verify the gender or sex of every one that presented on stage, one of many judges additionally made the same commentary. “Positively, that became one thing I additionally seen,” stated Min.

“We surely need more range, no longer correct gender, but of us with diversified backgrounds. I center of attention on the Web3 and hacker neighborhood in long-established has some level of range in that folk with former linear profession paths are diversified, but as a neighborhood, it’s crucial to possess the attention,” Min added.

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