Hey Hackers 👋
This year, ETHGlobal celebrated 5 years of running HackFS hackathons! For the 5th anniversary we were joined by 460 builders from 59 countries joined us for three weeks of focused building. The result: 157 remarkable project submissions winning a collective $150,000 in prizes!
Ever wondered what the ‘FS’ stands for? What do IPFS, Filecoin, Libp2p, FVM… all have in common?
They’re all about making better File Systems… in one way or another!
✂️ The tl;dr of HackFS 2024
- 🙋♂️ Hackers: 460
- 🌎 Countries Represented: 59
- ⏰ Timezones: 23
- 👯 Ecosystem Partners: 117
- 👨🏫 Technical Mentors: 15
- 🚀 Projects Submitted: 157
- 🏆 Finalists: 7
- 💸 Prizes: > $150,000 USD
Major themes of HackFS 2024 📈
As projects continue to move to a decentralized stack, decentralized storage couldn’t be a more relevant topic. Data privacy has become paramount as users seek greater control and security over their information.
As AI continues to dominate headlines, it’s no surprise that it emerged as a key trend in projects. The hackathon showed many proof of concepts for what open-source intelligence could look like.
Finally, we saw builders creating fully autonomous systems and networks. These systems operated on data products to solve important problems in a fully decentralized way.
We will dive deeper into some of the finalist projects and how they hit one of these themes below.
HackFS 2024 Kick-off & Summit at a glance 🚀
The fifth edition of HackFS kicked off live on ethglobal.tv with Kartik Talwar leading the ceremony. Thrilled to be kicking off 5 years of HackFS, after logistics, we dove right into our Summit talks.
Summits are unique. They are opportunities for hackers to learn about Filecoin and related tech and they also cover the growing ecosystem. We invited the builders and leaders in the space to break down the topics of decentralized data, storage, privacy & compute.
Here’s a breakdown of the talks and speakers:
- 5 Years of HackFS — 🎤 Speaker: Juan Benet
- Everything You Can Use to Build — 🎤 Speaker: Molly Mackinlay
- PL Infra + Cuddle01 — 🎤 Speaker: James Tunningley
- Hack the Tracks — 🎤 Speaker: Sarah Thiam
- How to Build a Startup — 🎤 Speaker: Juan Benet
- Fully Decentralized Infrastructure — 🎤 Speakers: Manolis Nikiforakis, Ayush Ranjan, Andrew Hill
- Incentivized Compute and Data Economies — 🎤 Speakers: Tom Trowbridge, Harry Grieve, Bidhan Roy
- Cryptographically Secured Privacy — 🎤 Speakers: Rand Hindi, Juan Leni
💡 For an extra boost of inspiration, we shared some stories on our Twitter. These companies started as HackFS projects and went on to make a mark on the ecosystem!
Week 1: All About Workshops 🤓
Week 1 started off with team formation and focused entirely on workshops designed to assist hackers in exploring, brainstorming, and igniting their project ideas. These workshops provided valuable one-on-one time with mentors, offering support as hackers delved into their projects.
Some highlighted workshops were:
- What can you create with low fees and built-in Account Abstraction? — hosted by Starknet Foundation
- Building onchain with FVM & IPC — hosted by Filecoin
- Tokenization of Latent Computing Power — hosted by CoopHive
- How to build on-chain AI agents — hosted by Galadriel
- Build an AI Dataset Marketplace — hosted by Filecoin Foundation
Week 2: All About Building 🛠️
The next week started with the project check-ins and feedback sessions preparing hackers for the fast-approaching submission deadline at the end of the week.
HackFS 2024 Finale 🎉
After two weeks of hard work, project judging took place June 3–4. With 157 submissions, the judges faced the challenging task of selecting the finalists. In the end, seven ETHGlobal finalists and several other sponsor prize winners were announced on June 7th, aka finale day!
Check out the HackFS Finale with all the finalists and winners here:
HackFS Finalists 🏆
Seven standout finalists were chosen to demo their projects on June 7th, Finale day!
🤖 Civ AI
Civ AI creates an autonomous world where on-chain AI agents lead civilizations to collaborate and compete with each other to research AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
🎫 Blaze ID
Blaze ID focuses on securing data with zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials. This local-first wallet provides ultimate control over personal data, emphasizing privacy and security in the digital age.
📦 Silo
Silo offers a decentralized infrastructure designed to distribute compute across multiple machines in parallel. This project addresses the need for scalable and efficient computation in the decentralized ecosystem.
🎥 Delorean Protocol
Delorean Protocol introduces an innovative IPC subnet that extends the timelock encryption capabilities of DRAND. This enhancement significantly boosts the security and reliability of data transactions.
🎮 CryptoClash
CryptoClash is an exciting multiplayer first-person boxing game where players can unlock skins, weapons, and fight in their MONAVERSE metaverse spaces.
🌞 WeatherProof
WeatherProof utilizes real-time weather data and AI to assess risk and determine insurance premiums, revolutionizing the insurance industry by integrating predictive analytics and decentralized technology.
🧪 Technology Trees
Technology Trees aims to revolutionize scientific collaboration by creating decentralized and updatable maps of technological progress. This project allows users to contribute, fund, and earn rewards, driving collaborative growth and precision in futuristic technologies.
Finalists and HackFS Themes
The finalists well captured the ethos of the moment by all tackling one of the four themes that were mentioned above:
- Decentralized Storage
- Data Privacy
- Scalable Compute Infra
- Data Products
Silo addressed the theme of decentralized storage by providing a robust infrastructure for distributing compute tasks across multiple machines, enhancing data management efficiency. Blaze ID focused on data privacy with its use of zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable credentials, ensuring secure and user-controlled data management. Delorean Protocol also contributed to data privacy by extending the time lock encryption capabilities of DRAND, significantly boosting the security and reliability of data transactions.
Civ AI tackled the theme of scalable compute infra by creating an autonomous world where on-chain AI agents lead civilizations, showcasing the potential of AI within decentralized frameworks. Silo additionally contributed to scalable compute infra by enabling efficient computation distribution across multiple machines.
WeatherProof emphasized the importance of data products by utilizing real-time weather data and AI to assess risk and determine insurance premiums, revolutionizing the insurance industry with predictive analytics and blockchain technology. Technology Trees, another innovative data product, enabled decentralized scientific collaboration with updatable maps of technological progress, driving community-driven innovation and advancing the decentralized ecosystem.
Celebrating the HackFS Community 🎊
A heartfelt thank you goes out to our 117 ecosystem partners, and countless technical mentors, judges, speakers, and volunteers who made this event possible.
As we wrap up HackFS 2024, we are incredibly proud of the talent and passion within the ETHGlobal community. The innovative projects created during this hackathon demonstrate the boundless potential of Web3 technology. We eagerly anticipate seeing these projects evolve and make a significant impact in the decentralized space.
Up Next: ETHGlobal Brussels July 12–14, 2024 🇧🇪
Join us in the beautiful city of Brussels for another exciting hackathon weekend filled with creativity and collaboration. Apply now for ETHGlobal Brussels, and gear up for our biggest event to date, with access to over $500,000 in prizes.
Sign up now: https://ethglobal.com/events/brussels/
🚨 Don’t delay — applications close Saturday, July 1st at 11:59pm ET.
See you soon,
The ETHGlobal Team 💙
