From all over the world Nerds have travelled to Bogota, Colombia to participate in the EthBogota hackathon and DevCon. The hackathon has come to an end with over 900 hackers participating and over 200 projects made over a single weekend. It is the biggest hackathon ever in LatAm.
The main goal of these events is to connect Ethereans together and strenghen the community around creating cool stuff. I'd like to share my experience so that buidlers who are on the fence about participating in these events can get a sense of how cool it is to get together and buidl with buidlers in the same buidling.
Once you decide to go to a Hackathon you should start brainstorming about what you would like to buidl. It can literally be anything but I personally like to think about a specific problem i'd like to solve. At first it may feel like a pretty daunting task. But the most important thing about these events is that you're not alone. If you cant come up with anything its time to talk to other people and see what theyre trying to build and join the team that you find the most interesting. Although you can hack solo, you have way better chances if you join up with others that can complent your skillset and bring new ideas into the project.
EthGlobal.com runs the hackathon events like a well oiled machine. You have plenty of avenues to reach out and connect to other people and there are several mentors available alongisde with the teams that sponsor the event in order to get more people to use their stack. I met my team members through the discord chat and after a team building event early on. At the event itself you have infinite coffee and plenty of food to keep you going throughout the weekend. ALthough the internet does get shoddy at times with all the npm installs going on.
Let the Hack Begin!
Once your team has been formed and the hackathon officially begins. Its off to the races. Every team has a different strategy, but there are some important things to consider. The goal of the event is to showcase an idea, not necesarily a production stage. You want to get to the proof of concept as soon as possible and then build extra functionalities on top. You can stay at the venue 24/7 and a big percentage of people do, but it is also important to pace youself so that you can do good presentations at the end.
An important thing to keep in mind is that you dont necesarly need to be a super coder to participate in these events. There is a lot of work to be done in any project around documentation, graphic design, product ideation and narrative that really makes a difference to make your project stand out.
The judging process for the hacks is very brief and you dont really get too much time to go over small details, so its important to get straight to the point and try to have a long lasting impression. At the end of the day the Hackathon is not about winning but rather sharing ideas and connecting to people. I hope more Nerds will start participating in these events soon. Here is our submission to the hackathon. If you find it interesting and would like to help out with this idea feel free to reach out at the NerdQuarters.
Allyu.xyz
A community-based protocol to issue crypto-backed money
Objectives:
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- To create a system that communities can leverage to issue their own trustless paper money backed entirely by crypto deposits.
- Onboard community leaders into crypto and enable them to lead by example in the adoption of web3.
- To increase the transactability of Ethereum based products by introducing them into the heart of the Latin American community: the corner store. allowing recipients to purchase food and other vital supplies with crypto money
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Introduction
In order to gain mass adoption, Web3 protocols need to start with the simplest use cases in order to address the needs of a majority of the world's population. The singular most impactful use case for blockchains is to serve as money. Money has three main characteristics: it serves as a store of value, as a medium of exchange, and as a unit of account. These three characteristics are not independent of each other since once any kind of money has value it can be used to fulfill those three functions. However, we can argue that there are some forms of money that are better than others at one of these aspects while lacking in others.
Crypto vs Fiat as a Medium of Echange
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Verifiable | Costlier |
| Uncensorable | Slower |
| Fungible | Requires Onboarding |
Ranking of the online banking penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean by Country 2020
Smartphone penetration in Latin America
How to leapfrog LatAm over Online Banking into Web3?
Do what Online Banking couldn't:
Replace fiat paper.
With Crypto Paper
Pitfalls ToDO & future work
1) Protect claims from frontrunning when supplying private & public key
- Future hash commit the withdraw transaction (a la ENS)
- ZK proof of ownership of secret pair for withrdrawal
2) Decentralize further by giving trusted community leaders the ability to issue new papers themselves
- PolygonId based reputation enables issuing allowance
- MPC to create a split secret that allows printing bills on regular printer at home
How to scale: Decentralize the printer
→ Corner stores are at the heart of Latin American communities
→ Store owners already provide several financial services: Cash in checks, pay for utilities, mobile phone plans
→ A reputation system can be implemented to represent existing trust on-chain
→ Trusted store owners can print papers as a service for customers who then add their balance
Github: https://github.com/allyu-xyz
Join the Nerds: https://y.at/%F0%9F%A4%93%E2%9C%89%EF%B8%8F%F0%9F%A4%93