Introduction
I haven’t posted in a long time, because I was busy learning more about blockchain technology for my job. But I decided to add a blog entry today, because I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a web 3 hackathon event by Philippines Web3 Festival as a mentor. The details of the hackathon event can be found here
There’s still so much to learn about blockchain technology, because in my opinion it’s still at its infancy stage. I’m thankful for the opportunity I had to interact with students, co-mentors, and industry experts on this event.
My Experience
Pre-hackathon
This opportunity started when my current company collaborated with YGG, and XAVE Finance to make a hackathon event. I raised my interest to my current chapter lead in participating in the event as a mentor. This was somewhat new to me, because although I have experience in blockchain based projects, and have participated in some hackathons myself I’m unsure as to what level or exepertise the participants would have, and what kind of mentorship I can offer to them.
After being accepted as one of the mentors, and was raised to the main event organizers all I had to do next was to show up. Aside from that I had a last minute review on smart contract fundamentals, because that’s one of the things that I anticipate would add value to web3 based hackathon projects.
Hackathon - Day 1
Briefing
On the first day, I traveled to the hackathon venue. Luckily got there a little earlier than call time, because I got lost along the way finding the venue. On the event I listened to various speakers talking about web3, and gamefi projects. I got a high level overview of current web3 projects that currently exist in the Philippines, and neighboring Asian countries.
After the speakers are done with their presentations, the mentors had a quick briefing on what to do. We are first assigned a category to mentor in based on what the hackathon participants are planning to do.
The hackathon projects should revolve around three categories:
- [1] DeFi and Neobanks
- [2] NFTs
- [3] GameFi
Most mentors are assigned to what their company specializes in. For example YGG would be assigned to mentor participants that would develop a project under the GameFi category. XAVE Finance mentors would handle projects under Defi and Neobanks category. For our company, and mentors from Web3 Philippines, since our companies handle a broader scope with regards to blockchain and web3 technologies. We would act as the wildcard mentors, we were mostly assigned to groups that are undecided on what categories they would like to tackle, and those that have a little bit of each categories.
I was a assigned to mentor three groups of students that have varying ideas, from Defi, NFTs, and GameFi. It was a lot of fun to hear their ideas out, and help them polish their ideas by guiding them with my current knowledge. What’s great about mentoring these students, is that they are like sponges that gathers as much information as they can and tries to execute their ideas in a short time span.
Ideation
The first group I handled is undecided on what project they would be making. They would either develop a new type of trading card game or a defi platform for parents and children. After a few hours they have decided on developing the trading card game.
The second group I handled wanted to create a web3 literacy social platform that would help onboard people through practical examples like creating a wallet that would act as the user’s profile. This was an idea that I see being a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) oriented project with it being a web3 based social media platform.
The third group I handled wanted to create subscription based platform for sharing literature. Similar to Patreon, but using a new token they plan on developing. These are all interesting ideas in my perspective.
I also made an arrangement with my co-workers to rotate our mentees, so I get to mentor other groups as well. With this in mind, our mentees would get twice as much mentoring with varying perspectives. My chapter lead was one of the mentors, and he dropped a lot of hard hitting questions to our mentees. Given that most of our mentees are students with little knowledge of how blockchain is used in our industry, I assisted the different groups by clarifying the more techical or business related terms that were asked, and assisted them by giving out some leads on where they can start researching.
All the groups got a good jist of how they want to execute the ideas, and I personally think that those projects can be a great way for them to start learning about blockchain based technologies. Although they had some troubles pinpointing how to fully utilize blockchain technology to add value to these projects. These are some of the things you could only visualize when you get a good grasp of web3 and blockchain technologies. That’s where I assisted them, by explaining to them some topics such as where blockchain products gets its value from, and how there are different types of cryptocurrencies such as coins and tokens.
Roaming
While mentoring groups handled by our company, I got to check out on other projects as well. I get to see some industry experts as hackathon participants, and they have great ideas and technical prowess to create a nice MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in a short amount of time. Some notable projects are personalized AI generated NFTs, A Web2 to Web3 bridge for building NFT projects, also a secure anti scam on-ramp/ off-ramp crypto solutions.
Miscellaneous
In between mentoring the students, I had a great time mingling with co-mentors. I have learned about new technologies such as a web3 framework called thirdweb. I haven’t explored the framework in-depth, but I plan on adding it to my web3 development arsenal. The value of this framework is supposed to make deploying smart contracts quicker for developers. In exchange I shared some of my knowledge for DevOps best practices, since I come from a DevOps background. The URL to the website can be found here: ThirdWeb
Another thing I learned was digital signatures, I find this to be a great way to replace usernames and passwords in the near future. I was aware of this concept, but I haven’t tried implementing an off chain version for signing and verifying these. I will leave a link so I can come back to it in the future: Digital signature sign and verify.
Hackathon - Day 2
Developed
For day 2 of the hackathon, I went in early to check up on my mentees, and if they need any assistance. For the first group they have developed a front end, and minted a trading card NFT on OpenSea. For the second group they created a ReactJS front end version of their socialFi app, and had polished their pitch for the hackathon pitching. The third group unfortunately backed out due to one of them falling ill while the hackathon was ongoing. I also checked up on other projects, and most of them at least have a working front end, and are just polishing their pitch.
In my personal opinion these are already great progress, given that they managed to develop those projects in a short amount of time. I also assisted on using Git, since the source codes needs to be pushed to a repository for code review from industry expert developers. Lastly, I wished my mentees good luck, and left them so that they can polish their pitch, and to ready themselves.
Miscellaneous
On my free time, I got to mingle again with industry experts. I was fortunate enough to get to chat with some co-mentors, and discuss about what we do at work, and how we are applying blockchain to our products.
I also got to interact and have a conversation with the CEO for Adamant Mine GameFi project. His group joined as a participant, and is pitching a new type of crypto wallet with added features for socialization. Also, we got to discuss about the state of GameFi, and where it’s going. These are fun discussions for me as I have been an avid GameFi enthusiast before I started working in the blockchain industry.
I also got to interact with co-mentors, and the CEO of XAVE Finance. We had an initial topic concerning hackathon project’s security, my takeaway was some quick solutions using third party services such as AWS HSM. Also the I learned about a term vanity addresses where a crypto wallet would spell out a word to your liking, kind of like a customized car license plate. Lastly some conversations here and there about the state of my current company, and the projects I handle in the commpany.
Closing Remarks
Overall being part of an event revolving around the web3 space was a great experience. It was a tiring weekend, but I appreciate the opportunity I was given, and wish to learn more about the state of blockchain globally. Hopefully I will be able to join similar events in the near future.
Here are some pics of the event posted on LinkedIn:
Hackathon: Day 1 Pics
Hackathon: Day 2 Pics
Hackathon Finalists
Hackathon Winners