The evolution of Hackathon: from offline to online, promoting global cutting-edge technological innovation
Throughout the history of open source technology development, Hackathon has always been a key way to promote technological innovation and incubate emerging projects. Over the past decade, DoraHacks has been committed to promoting the Hacker Movement and the open source movement. In the process, it has not only witnessed the rapid growth and evolution of the Hackathon community, but has also become the worlds leading Hackathon platform:
Hackathon goes online: Before 2020, most Hackathons were still held offline, and the online model was almost unimaginable. However, the launch of DoraHacks.io has completely changed this situation. Hackers are no longer restricted by geography. Developers in Africa can participate in Hackathons organized by American companies online, win prizes and funding, and start their own entrepreneurial projects. Today, 95% of Hackathons around the world are held online.
Improvement of Hackathon tools: In order to improve the organizational efficiency of Hackathon and the developer experience, DoraHacks continues to optimize its core products, including the new BUIDL display page, a complete Hackathon organizer management system, MACI protocol that supports large-scale community privacy governance, Grant DAO, etc. DoraHacks platform has become a platform for hackers and early projects to obtain long-term funding and growth.
Hackathon promotes the development of open source platform technology: DoraHacks has become an important promoter of Web3 and other open platform technologies. From Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, to the recent Aptos, Cosmos, Injective, TON, Sonic and other ecosystems, DoraHacks has helped these platforms launch flagship developer incentive programs. Since 2023, cutting-edge technology hackathons such as quantum computing and commercial space have also been held on DoraHacks .
Continuous and uninterrupted Hackathon and Build are the trend
Builds happen at any time. If Hackathon is only a short-term event once or twice a year, it will be difficult to continue to attract outstanding hackers and high-quality projects to join the ecosystem and promote the development of innovation. Hackathon should be continuous and uninterrupted, and become a long-term driving force in the developer ecosystem.
In the past, due to high organizational costs and large resource input, most emerging ecosystems could not afford the operating costs of high-frequency hackathons, so hackathons were usually the only event of the year, and even became a luxury option for some projects. This model limits the opportunities for developers to participate and affects the ecosystems ability to continuously innovate. Lets imagine what would happen if the ecosystem held 12 or even more hackathons every year?
Developers have clear “BUIDL expectations”: they know that this ecosystem will continue to support and fund outstanding developers and projects, so they are willing to invest in the long term and continue to contribute.
Missing out is no longer a problem: Even if you cant attend a Hackathon, there will be another one soon, and developers will be more willing to participate.
Accelerated ecological innovation: High-frequency hackathons allow developers to constantly challenge new directions, greatly increasing the growth rate of the technology ecosystem.
In the past, high-frequency hackathons were almost unthinkable due to the cost and difficulty of organization. Only well-funded ecosystems like Google and Amazon could continuously organize hackathons. But now, with the upcoming BUIDL AI platform tool from DoraHacks , organizing 12 hackathons a year becomes a feasible strategy. It can even go a step further and hold multiple themed hackathons at the same time, helping emerging ecosystems to efficiently motivate developers, expand technology influence, and increase outstanding BUIDL (projects).
The vast majority of builds occur continuously and at any time, and should be encouraged and discovered in a timely manner, rather than waiting for the only hackathon in a year.
There is a saying: Whoever wins the developers wins the world. In the fiercely competitive Web3 ecosystem, Hackathon is an effective way to win developers, and continuous Hackathon is the best solution. If the ecosystem wants to stay ahead of the competition, it must always give developers the opportunity to participate and create.
Hackathon Challenges in the AI Era
The rise of AI has brought new opportunities for Hackathon:
1. Everyone is a Hacker: The popularity of AI tools has automated repetitive work and greatly unleashed the innovative capabilities of individuals and teams.
2. Increased development efficiency: AI empowers developers to significantly increase the speed of product exploration and development. The potential value of Hackathon is far greater than ever before.
However, there are still many limitations to Hackathon organization:
Many organizers don’t know how to run a Hackathon effectively.
Organizers understand the value of Hackathon, but lack sufficient energy and resources.
Ecosystems with resources can usually only organize one Hackathon a year.
The result is:
The Hackathon organization process is cumbersome, which restricts the development speed of the ecosystem.
The growth of the ecosystem is limited by the organizational capabilities of the Developer Relations (DevRel) team.
Many ecosystems fail to fully utilize Hackathons and maximize their value.
The low frequency of Hackathons leads to developers’ creativity being idle and the motivation for innovation being not fully stimulated.
BUIDL AI: Unlocking the infinite possibilities of Hackathon
To address the above challenges, DoraHacks launched BUIDL AI, an AI Hackathon Co-Pilot that helps Hackathon organizers automate the management and release of Hackathons, making Hackathon organizations in the open source ecosystem more free and efficient.
BUIDL AI Core Features
1. Edit and Launch: One-click release of Hackathon
On the DoraHacks platform, organizers only need to fill in basic information (such as prize money, theme, workshop schedule, judges, etc.) to quickly publish a Hackathon without tedious manual configuration.
2. BUIDL Review: Automatic review, 10 times faster efficiency
Traditional Hackathons often receive hundreds of BUIDL submissions, which is extremely arduous and requires organizers to spend hundreds of hours screening. BUIDL AI can intelligently evaluate projects, scoring them based on completeness, originality, and theme fit, and automatically filter out low-quality submissions, increasing the efficiency of Hackathon organization by more than 10 times.
3. Automated Marketing: Automatically generate hackathon summaries
After the Hackathon is over, AI can automatically generate a summary report that showcases competition highlights, a list of winners, and project results, helping the Hackathon to better spread its influence.
4. Organizer interaction: improving team collaboration efficiency
BUIDL AI can send notifications to Hackathon organizers in real time, reminding them to review new BUIDL submissions, handle contestants issues, etc., to optimize the Hackathon management process.
5. Multi-Hackathon Management: Organizing multiple Hackathons at the same time
In the past, it was almost impossible for an organization to manage multiple Hackathons at the same time. The launch of BUIDL AI allows organizers to efficiently operate multiple Hackathons and multi-themed Hackathons, greatly increasing the innovation frequency of the ecosystem.
The full beta version of BUIDL AI will be released on April 15th. Currently, several free features of BUIDL AI are available on DoraHacks.io .
BUIDL AI: Promoting the Age of Exploration in Global Open Source Technology and Hackathon Communities
Hackathon is not only an arena for developers, but also an incubator for open source technologies and innovative projects. The launch of BUIDL AI means that Hackathon will enter an unprecedented stage of automation and intelligence, allowing more hackers, developers and open source organizations around the world to easily initiate and participate in Hackathon.
DoraHacks has always believed that the future of open innovation belongs to every hacker, and BUIDL AI will become the engine driving this future.
BUIDL AI will help the next big explosion of the Hacker Movement.
