We knew the bar was set pretty high when we began work on NFTHack2022. Last year’s event was like no other hackathon we’d ever created, and it perfectly foreshadowed the rise of NFTs in popular culture. Though we approached this year’s edition with cautious optimism, nothing could have prepared us for the absolutely electrifying experience that was NFTHack 2022.
For one weekend in January, we brought together the brightest developers and creatives in the ecosystem to drive progress in the NFT space, hosting nearly a thousand hackers for 48 hours of madness—it did not disappoint. Now that the dust (and digital confetti) has settled, here are some of our favorite moments.
NFTHack 2022 by the numbers:
- 800 Staked Hackers
- 17 Ecosystem Partners
- $160,000+ in Prizes
- 68 Countries & 17 Timezones
- 255 Projects Submitted
- 16 Finalists
Our 16 NFTHack Finalists were selected from a pool of 255 projects, all created in a whirlwind of excitement over two short days. It goes without saying that these teams represent the next generation of NFT projects to evolve in the ecosystem. Read up on our finalists below, and head over to the project showcase to view more.
🏆Our Finalists
⚔️ Multi-Contract Battle Royale
Multi-Contract Battle Royale A fully on-chain battle royale, queueing system, & analytics with multi-contract support.
Team: @0xMaticMike
What was interesting: Battle Royales are all the rage right now, but this is the best one we’ve seen (and one of the few exclusively on-chain). Interesting use of partner tech, an impressive amount of thought behind the game, and an even more incredible UI.
🖼 0xPhotos
Stock photography marketplace using NFTs that puts creators first, and pays royalties every second.
Team: @ianhunter, @anynft, @JasonSc83963209, @jonnyliebs
Why we chose it: A stock photo marketplace using Superfluid with great presentation, and it’s clean? What’s not to like?
🎥 NFT Cam
NFT Cam brings your NFT to AR in one click: NFT Cam can turn any OpenSea NFT link into an interactive AR experience.
The Team: @ZeroLuXR
What we liked: NFTHack was full of creative, boundary pushing projects like NFT Cam that impressed us by their sheer creativity—the interactive demo was just a cherry on top.
⛏ Creativerse
A Minecraft server where you own plots of land as NFTs and all of the block data of each plot is stored in the NFT. This allows anyone to run a server, making it a decentralized Minecraft protocol.
What intrigued us: Creativerse blew us away with its potential—Metaverse and Minecraft mixed without the problems of a centralized universe. In five years, Creativerse will no doubt be viewed as an important step in the path of NFT-based gaming.
🥷 Yoink Club
Releases NFT utility tokens that are otherwise locked in secondary markets and liquidity pools.
The Team: @tomwade
What we enjoyed: Yoink is amonst a new generation of projects adding functionality and versatility to NFT ownership in an attractive package—with bonus points for a fun name.
🎨 Graffiti Mint
A Dapp to digitize and mint street art from IRL graffiti events.
The Team: @zenbitMX, @cryptojiye
What was compelling: We’re thrilled by any progress in connecting the phyiscal world with the digital one, especially if it intends to amplify surrounding cultures in the process. Graffiti’s iterative nature makes it a perfect medium for the exploration of NFTs, and we look forward to more experiments in this vein.
🎤 Charisma
Charisma analyzes your personality through your NFT assets and on-chain data. Mint your personality NFT and find similar friends.
The Team: @thejoycelai, @Lexiw0000d, @alexcucos3
What we thought was cool: As we extend our physical lives online, our expressions of self will need to catch up. These (often aesthetic) choices amount to a crucial communications layer IRL, though it is often overlooked. Charisma sets the stage for the codification of taste and culture, and solves the intricate problems that digital identity faces today by incentivizing users to contribute to the solution.
💫 NFTopia
An NFT marketplace fusing the power of DAO and AI, that encourages reviewing NFT to earn rewards, and provides smart insights to help buyers make better decisions.
The Team: @crown_of_bojji, @Bearine3
What we liked: The Holy-Grail of the current NFT market is a reliable system for ranking the investment potential of ambiguous new assets. What better way to fit the needs of a decentralized market than to collect insight from the community itself?
🤝 DuoMint
Duomint is the stress-free onramp to web3. New users receive an NFT for free and are guided through the magic of web3 without the stress of wire transfers and gas fees.
The Team: @backaes, @dao_punk, @naheelio, @Anuarrk
What we enjoyed: We’re here for any project that attempts to directly contribute to the growth of the space (how could we not be?). DuoMint takes an interesting approach to the onboarding problem by forcing new and veteran users to interact at square one, rewarding both for their participation and contribution. Projects like this one will narrow the divide between those who know, and those who need to know about web3.
🔎 Instant Blockchain Domain Search
Search domain availability across various blockchain name providers.
The Team: @TheSaleel
What we thought was cool: One of the simplest (read: efficient) and most practical (read: useful) applications we’ve seen in awhile (and we’ve seen a lot of projects). Good execution plus good UI equals great project, and we can’t wait to see how it will grow from here.
💸 NFTpay
Make your own blockchain-hosted invoices — hosted for free on IPFS and fulfilled by cryptocurrency.
The Team: @chrisbcore
What we liked: We were really impressed by NFTpay’s usefulness for payments with ETH, a source of frustration with all users. Creating automated invoices in a simple, user-friendly way paves the way to mass adoption, and we’re here for it.
🕵️♀️ Spyglass
Spyglass is an NFT curation tool featuring powerful real-time analytics and organizational tools built into a snappy UI. Use Spyglass to find the best NFTs out in the OpenSea before anyone else.
The Team: @david_melnychuk, @dsawod6, @kartentaucher, @sudhithxavier
What was interesting: NFT curation is of huge imporance for the growth and longevity of the space, especially as it reaches new heights in adoption. Spyglass sets the bar by providing valuable information in a sleek, user-friendly package.
🌾 Cropsin
A platform that pays creators in crypto to use indie artists songs in their videos, and lets them share in an artists success by investing in them through album art, songs, tickets, metaverse merch, and song royalty NFTs. Artists stay independent and get noticed, paid, and funded.
The Team: @javiesses, @JoshTsch, @fishman_asher
Why we chose it: Blending the lines between marketplace and community, Cropsin finds ways to reward both artist and investors simultaneously. Apps like Cropsin will help incentivize growth in the creative side of web3 while the rest of the world catches up.
⚡️ ZeusDAO
Web3 Open Protocol for Community Management (If Discord was to take the Web3 Pill)
The Team: @a_moonboy, @lla_dawn
What we liked: If Discord and other micro-niche community platforms are the future of social media, and web3 is the future of the internet, then ZeusDAO is the future decentralized community of our dreams. Good for users, great for community managers, and even better for the community-at-large.
👍 DoNFT
Do[NFT] is a protocol that allows you to create an NFT that can own other NFTs.
The Team: @hellebore_near, @pe4enable
Why it’s cool: This project aims to be the “instagram filter” of the NFT space, and if the former is any evidence, this might be a useful niche. Giving users more to do with their NFTs is a win-win for everyone, and making the process fun is even better.
📢 Metaverse Advertisement DAO
A decentralized autonomous organization dedicated to facilitating business models in the metaverse by maximizing utilization of community-owned virtual real estate assets in advertising, and sharing profits with metaverse players such as landowners and builders.
The Team: @madxyz_
What’s interesting: Ad-revenue sharing mechanisms that incentivize builders and renters in virtual worlds, like Metaverse Advertisement DAO, could be the fastest way to develop virtual worlds in lieu of centralized structures. M-Ad DAO brings a level of positive cooperation to a realtively uncharted world.
NFTHack Set the tone for the new year
If NFTHack is any indicator, 2022 seems like it’ll be a big year for crypto. For the first time, our events were pushed to their limits, and we maxed out our hacker capacity due to extreme interest. In every team formation, brainstorming, or project feedback session, hackers were enthusiastic and excited for the two-day event. Amongst the 800 hackers who joined us from around the world, 46% were new to Ethereum entirely, and their fresh perspective turned some heads. Some of our newcomers even walked away as finalists, and you could be next.
Within the creative chaos of the weekend, we hosted workshops from a number of our partner teams, giving seasoned hackers (and newcomers) access to insights that translated to real value in their projects. On top of that, 3LAU and Cooper Turley joined us for a discussion on the future of Music and NFTs, which directly influenced a number of music related hacks over the weekend.
On top of all of the excitement, we hosted a number of team formation, idea brainstorming, and project feedback sessions. Hundreds of hackers joined us to network with their peers, battle test their ideas, and prep their projects for the main stage. Partner teams like Superfluid and Livepeer dropped in to offer hackers a chance to ask complex questions and get valuable feedback. All weekend long, hackers brought a level of enthusiasm that impressed everyone involved.
With all the talks, workshops, and discussions we wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t able to keep up—don’t worry, we’ve got it all on tape! If you missed any of our talks or workshops, full versions will be available on our Youtube page.
NFTHack 2022 would not have been possible without the support of our partners…
After a record-breaking year for our team, we knew the bar had been set pretty high. This year’s NFTHack kicked the year off strong, and blew us all away. Our tech mentors, support staff, judges, and partner teams engaged with hackers non-stop to troubleshoot and assist their builds, and multiple teams walked out of the weekend with budding companies or grant-worthy primitives.
To pack a week’s worth of content and hacking into 48hrs took a lot of work behind the scenes. We owe everything to the dedication of our partner teams, speakers, and developer mentors who pooled their time and resources together to ensure that this event could remain free of charge for those wanted to hack. Through their support, we’ve lined up an incredible year of hackathons and events designed to launch the next thousand projects into the space, and help hackers achieve their dreams in Web3.
We strongly encourage hackers to continue building after our events, and we will extend our network to help them access grant funding and other opportunities for growth. As we like to say: no project is too small, or idea to far-fetched — if you believe in it, so do we.
Don’t miss our next event — Road to Web3:
Our next event is coming up fast! Join us from February 3rd — 8th for the Road to Web3 hackathon, brought to you by the incredible team at Polygon. Join us and learn from the pros, collaborate with developers and creativbes from around the world, and explore the possibilities of Web3.
Applications are now open, and we would love to see you there! Follow us on twitter to stay in the know about future events, share Road to Web3 with friends and potential teammates, and tag us when you make cool stuff. We can’t wait to see what you build!
