What is claimed to be “the first ever blockchain hackathon” has been announced by a blockchain consulting group Chainsmiths.
The hackathon is scheduled to take place in Dublin, Ireland and will last 50 hours, starting from 6 November.
During these 50 hours the participants are expected to create a full new blockchain product, from start to finish. Before they begin, a team of Chainsmiths experts will prepare trainings and workshops dedicated to a vatiety of topics, from the basics of blockchain coding to financial regulations.
The most successful team will win €5,000, the second and the third prizes being €2,000 and €1,000. The teams will be formed out of 150 participants by their own choice around the core ideas, which will be presented by the volunteers on the first evening. Every presentation should last no longer than 30 seconds. The participants will vote to choose 25 best ideas. They don’t have to be restricted to financial sphere or necessarily relate to Bitcoin digital currency.
The official page of the event welcomes both newbies and experienced developers to share and learn.
During the hackathon VIPs and journalists will not be allowed to observe the process, but there will be tickets reserved for them to come on the final day and see the results of the teams' work.
The hackathon is sponsored by Fidelity Investments, Deloitte, DCU, Hackers & Founders.
Though the event is proclaimed as the first of this kind ever, educational programs on the subject are flourishing now, including university Bitcoin courses and research labs.
Pompeu Fabra University and Barcelona Bitcoin Community recently launched a joint program to promote study of cryptocurrency.
The Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering was opened in Imperial College London.
Princeton and Stanford launched online courses on bitcoin in August.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the largest and most established venture capital firm according to the Wall Street Journal, has made its first investment in a blockchain company.
Moscow-based HSE.lab hosted a blockchain hackathon 13-15 November. During the hackathon 25 ideas were announced and 14 teams presented their projects on the final day.
Two UK-based organisations, Innovate Finance and Hartree, in collaboration with IBM and with the support of the UK government open a lab to research the public ledger technology behind the bitcoin digital currency. The founders hope to move the blockchain one step closer to mass adoption.
The US federal postal agency has issued a report discussing potential applications of the blockchain technology for the needs of USPS. Apart from financial services, the technology seems beneficial for various aspects of the US postal system.
The research division of Intel Corporation, Intel Labs, is looking for a graduate of a Computer Science department to study “public ledgers”. The aim is to create “cutting-edge cryptographic algorithms”.
