The Harmony blockchain has opened registration for a hackathon starting next month with more than $1 million in seed funding and prizes for participants. In a Thursday announcement on Twitter, Harmony said the hackathon would be focused on bringing in more people from traditional finance for challenges bridging their fields and decentralized finance. The protocol said there would be four challenges in each category of social wallets and keyless security, cross-chain and trustless bridges, and cross-border with fintech integration. “In blockchain, finance is where we are seeing product market fit,” said Harmony. “But most of DeFi was created by people …

More than 1,100 registrations, nine hours of content, 450 slides and thousands of viewers — this two-day blockchain event may have been held virtually because of COVID-19, but it was jam-packed with content nonetheless. Lisk.js is a developer-focused event that was full of announcements. Not only was a cutting-edge interoperability solution presented to the audience, but tantalizing details were given about an ambitious new hackathon and a grants program. The conference began with a rousing speech from Lisk’s CEO and co-founder Max Kordek, who reflected on how far the project has come over the past two years. As you’d expect, …

A platform that allows blockchain applications to be built using JavaScript has invited developers and entrepreneurs with bright ideas to take place in an online hackathon. HackOnLisk aims to support innovation on the Lisk network as it moves to the Sapphire phase of its roadmap — marking the moment where different blockchains within its ecosystem can communicate with each other for the very first time. In order to enter, participants need to build a blockchain application using Lisk SDK 5.1.0, the latest release, and provide a URL to an open-source repository. Last but by no means least, a 10-minute video …

Happy Wednesday fellow DeFi degens! I was expecting to spend a large portion of this edition of Finance Redefined analyzing Aave's liquidity mining program. There was some anxiety from investors that the emission of 2,200 $AAVE per day (which would translate to roughly 5% of the ecosystem reserve fund of 2.8 million AAVE per year) might end up dragging down the token's price as farmers earn and dump. I would feel very uncomfortable holding an asset if the governance token of a very important protocol ends up in the hands of people who only think about short term gains. — …

Amid a bull market for decentralized finance that has teams developing new products at a breakneck pace, the demand for smart contract developers couldn’t be higher — but unfortunately, the amount of available talent couldn’t be lower. Team members from multiple projects have taken to Twitter in recent weeks to gripe about the shallow hiring pool, including representatives from high-profile mainstays like Yearn.finance and SushiSwap. The complaints come despite hefty incentive packages that include token allocations and generous salaries. But regardless of the carrots projects offer, there simply aren't enough developers to go around. Fuck, we've hit the "developer crunch" …

Solana and Serum announced the winners of a recent two-week hackathon focusing on building decentralized finance projects on the Solana blockchain. A total of nine projects were eligible for the hackathon’s official prize pool, with an additional project winning a community prize. The winning projects are primarily new DeFi protocols, though some infrastructure and tooling solutions also made the cut. The two first-place winners, Mango Markets and PsyOptions, won $50,000 in USDC-SPL, or USD Coin (USDC) based on Solana. Both projects focus on creating new trading platforms on the Solana blockchain, with Mango Markets building a margin trading and derivatives …

Solana has announced an upcoming DeFi hackathon offering $200,000 in seed funding from the Solana Foundation. The hackathon, which is scheduled to take place from Feb. 15 through March 1st, will be hosted in partnership with Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX’s Project Serum. Bankman-Fried will also offer mentorship to hackathon participants alongside Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko. Bankman-Fried stated: “A lot of an ecosystem's success depends on how much the community builds on it. I've been really happy with the growth of Solana so far building out the world's fastest, most scalable on-chain ecosystem; I'm excited to see some projects come to …

On Friday, blockchain projects Cosmos and Blockstack both announced winners of their respective HackAtom V and HackDeFi hackathons, each offering a glimpse into the coming wave of DeFi development — a vision including marked advances in tooling, interoperability, and composability. While the overwhelming majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) development remains concentrated on Ethereum, where over $16 billion in digital assets are currently locked by various DeFi Protocols, Cosmos and STX are currently the #25 and #59 ranked projects by marketcap and look to be fast risers eager to take a slice of Ethereum’s DeFi pie. On the Cosmos side, the …

Five innovative blockchain-based solutions for tackling the coronavirus pandemic have shared a prize pool worth 15,000 euros ($17,640) after being chosen as the winners of a technology company’s first-ever hackathon. As reported by Cointelegraph last month, Maxonrow had set a series of challenges for talented developers with bright ideas to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The company’s aim was to deliver new use cases and solutions for MedsLOCK, a control and communication system that provides real-time insights related to the outbreak. The winner of the Physical Distancing category was “Move-Safe,” which created an algorithm that creates a live map …

A technology company is inviting blockchain developers and enthusiasts to take part in its first-ever hackathon. Maxonrow’s event is going to take place from Sept. 5 to Oct. 3. According to the team, there are going to be five challenges overall, with a total prize of 15,000 euros ($17,771) up for grabs. Known as the MAXathon, Maxonrow is particularly keen to hear from experts who can join its quest to tackle COVID-19, as well as future pandemics. It has created a control and communication system called MedsLOCK that provides real-time insights related to the coronavirus. The five challenges Each of …

Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance is conducting a hackathon in India focused on decentralized finance (DeFi) that will be followed by an accelerator program. Dubbed “Build for Bharat,” the company claimed that this is the first-ever DeFi-focused hackathon and acceleration program being conducted in India. In a blog on Aug. 24, the company said that through the hackathon, they intend to bridge the gap between blockchain and mass adoption in India. Binance plans to shortlist 100 teams for the main event after assessing application forms submitted before Sep. 11. “We’re interested in DeFi products around mini-tokens, micro-financing applications, blockchain datasets, blockchain-AI …

Online events are becoming more common as coronavirus cases continue to surge. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the blockchain community has seen an uptake in virtual hackathons this year, a concept which is actually proving to be beneficial. For example, hackathon management platform TAIKAI works with organizations to facilitate a virtual open network for innovators looking to solve different challenges. TAIKAI CEO, Mário Ribeiro Alves, told Cointelegraph that lately the platform has been drawing attention from blockchain companies interested in launching virtual hackathons. According to Alves, virtual hackathons will play an important role in developing the blockchain …