Workshops

  • Hackathon Kickoff - Thursday, August 18th at 1pm EST: Hear from speakers from the Moonbeam Foundation, Axelar, and Arrington Capital. We'll explain the bounties, discuss sample projects, and review hackathon logistics.
  • Building Connected Contracts on Moonbeam - Tuesday, August 23rd at 1pm EST: Kevin Neilson, Moonbeam DevRel Engineer will introduce you to XCM (Polkadot's general message passing framework) and show how you can use Axelar to send a cross chain message to a remote chain.
  • Building Cross-Chain DApps with Axelar - Wednesday, August 24th at 1pm EST: Axelar Developer Vladimir Agaev will show you how to quickly get started with Axelar and build cross-chain dapps.

Welcome

From August 15 to September 26th, Moonbeam, Axelar, and Arrington Capital invite you to build and launch your cross-chain dApps on the Moonbeam network for a chance to win prizes from a $55,000 USDC award pool. Moonbeam’s Connected Contracts Hackathon is made possible by the Moonbeam Foundation, Axelar Foundation, and Arrington Capital. 

  • Moonbeam is the smart contract platform for cross-chain connected applications, which offer superior user experiences by unifying access to users, assets, and services across any existing blockchain.

  • Axelar is the universal overlay network, securely connecting all blockchain ecosystems, applications, assets and users to deliver Web3 interoperability. 

  • Arrington Capital is a thesis-driven firm investing in digital assets and Web3 since 2017, and recently launched a $100M fund to accelerate the growth of the Moonbeam Ecosystem.

Moonbeam is a smart contract platform for building cross-chain connected applications that can access users, assets, and services on any chain. By uniting functionality from Ethereum, Cosmos, Polkadot and more into a single platform, Moonbeam solves today’s fragmented user experience — unlocking true interoperability and paving the way for the next generation of applications. The Moonbeam platform uses integrated cross-chain messaging to allow developers to create smart contracts that access services across many remote blockchains. This approach, plus Moonbeam’s developer-friendly EVM platform, vast tool support, and modern Substrate architecture, creates the ideal development environment for building connected applications.

This hackathon is a valuable opportunity to explore and experiment with connected contracts and the new use-cases they enable. Axelar’s General Message Passing (GMP) enables you to call any function on any other connected chain. Being able to call any contract on any chain is a revolutionary breakthrough for developers and users alike. Instead of segmented deployments across different chains, you can deploy once on Moonbeam and access liquidity and functionality across many different chains. It’s not hard to envision new features and radical improvements enabled by connected contracts. For example, you could dispatch governance decisions to a remote chain, allow a user to supply collateral from a foreign chain, or access a niche data feed from an oracle on a particular chain. The new paradigm of connected contracts enables users to access more features more efficiently while retaining a delightfully simple user experience on Moonbeam. 

Designed to appeal to all builders, Moonbeam’s Connected Contracts Hackathon features larger bounties for experienced devs, and a few easier bounties for builders new to Web3. You’re highly encouraged to incorporate cross-chain functionality into your project but it is not a requirement. We can’t wait to see what you build!

Get Started

Requirements

What to Build

Build an application that furthers the cross-chain ecosystem. For example, you might build a user-facing DeFi app that considers a user’s balances across several chains and enables new cross-chain functionality, such as remote-chain swaps or collateral usage. Your application’s primary smart contracts should live on Moonbeam or the Moonbase Alpha testnet. You could also launch a tool such as a cross-chain explorer or wallet that improves the end-user experience without necessarily requiring a smart contract deployment. You’re highly encouraged to incorporate cross-chain functionality into your project but it is not a requirement.

What to Submit

  • Link to your public code repository

  • Link to a publicly deployed web app (using tools like Heroku, Vercel, etc.) If your submission is not publicly deployed yet, please provide clear steps in your ReadMe explaining how to run the project locally. 

  • Addresses of any smart contracts

  • (Optional but recommended) Include a video (about 3 minutes) that demonstrates your submission. Videos should be uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo, and set to public or unlisted.

Specifics for the submission

  1. The Project must be capable of being successfully installed and must function as depicted in the video and/or expressed in the text description.
  2. The Project must run on the platform for which is specified in the Submission Requirements. 
  3. If your project includes smart contracts, at least one of them should be deployed on the Moonbeam network or Moonbase Alpha testnet.
  4. The Entrant must make the Project available free of charge and without any restriction
  5. Multiple Submissions: An Entrant may submit more than one Submission, however, each submission must be unique and substantially different
  6. All Submission materials must be in English

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$55,000 in prizes
Cryptocurrency logo Prizes paid in cryptocurrency

Build a cross-chain Moonbeam DApp using Axelar Network (13)
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Axelar delivers secure cross-chain communication for Web3. Cross-chain communication means you can build a complete experience for your users that lets them interact with any asset, any application, on any connected chain with one click. Use Axelar’s General Message Passing (GMP) feature to enable dApps to call smart contracts cross-chain, delivering any payload or token transfer. These cross-chain contract calls are currently possible between the following networks: Moonbeam, Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom.

Submission Requirements: The project must use Axelar GMP and it must play a non-trivial role in the DApp. Value added to the project by using Axelar is considered during judging. A full prize description is available here: https://moonbeam.devpost.com/details/category-details

Prize Tiers:
1st place - $9,500
2nd place - $5,000
3rd place - $2,500

$300 as a follow up prize for the top 10 remaining projects

Moonbeam Foundation Grand Prize (2)
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The Moonbeam Foundation is dedicated to promoting the development, growth, and adoption of Moonbeam and its ecosystem. With these prizes, the foundation would like to recognize projects that, once fully launched, stand to make significant contributions to the Moonbeam ecosystem. The Moonbeam Foundation Grand Prizes are awarded to projects that excel in all 4 categories of judging criteria: technical excellence, user experience, value proposition, and creativity. There are no additional requirements for this bounty.

Prize Tiers:
1st place - $6,500
2nd place - $1,500

Improve the Governance UX (2)
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Build an app that makes it easier for the community to participate in democracy on Moonbeam. Your challenge is to build any app that improves the voter or proposer user experience. Two example projects are provided at https://moonbeam.devpost.com/details/category-details, which you are free to take on, or you can tackle another part of the governance process.

Prize Tiers:
1st place - $7,500
2nd place - $2,500

Straw Poll DApp
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This is a less difficult bounty aimed at developers new to Web3, but this is a great opportunity to get started building :) You could create a “straw poll” DApp that collects user-submitted ideas and records them on-chain with a simple upvote / downvote system at no cost to the user. More details on this prize are available at: https://moonbeam.devpost.com/details/category-details

Prize Tier:
1st place - $2,000

Arrington Capital Moonshot Prize (2)
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The Moonshot Prize will be judged based on technical complexity, user experience, originality, and value proposition. Taking on more difficult challenges is rewarded, even if the resulting solution is not fully baked. More details can be found here: https://moonbeam.devpost.com/details/category-details

Prize Tiers:
1st place - $6,000
2nd place - $1,500

Arrington Capital Moonbase Prize (2)
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To qualify for this bounty, your project should not be a fork or a copy/paste deployment from another chain. Your submitted project can be deployed to any Moonbeam network (Moonbeam, Moonriver, or Moonbase Alpha). More details can be found here: https://moonbeam.devpost.com/details/category-details

Prize Tiers:
1st place - $6,000
2nd place - $1,500

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

Judges

Derek Yoo

Derek Yoo
Founder & CEO, PureStake

Ninos Mansor

Ninos Mansor
Partner, Arrington Capital

Sam Kim

Sam Kim
Investment Research Lead, Arrington Capital

Zsófi Major

Zsófi Major
Hackathon Manager, Parity Technologies

Jacky Yuan

Jacky Yuan
Software Developer, Axelar

Canh Trinh

Canh Trinh
Software Developer, Axelar

Erin Shaben

Erin Shaben
Developer Relations Engineer, PureStake

Kevin Neilson

Kevin Neilson
Developer Relations Engineer, PureStake

Achim Schneider

Achim Schneider
Smart Contract Tooling Developer, Parity Technologies

Keli Callaghan

Keli Callaghan
Partner & Chief Growth Officer, Arrington Capital

Jeremy Boetticher
Developer Relations Engineer, PureStake

Alberto Viera

Alberto Viera
Developer Relations Manager, PureStake

Judging Criteria

  • Technical Excellence
    High scoring submissions in this category may demonstrate impressive technical skill and quality of implementation. Teams tackling challenging problems, even if the resulting solution is not fully baked will rank higher.
  • User Experience and Design
    Can you abstract away complex cross-chain concepts into a simple and intuitive experience for the end user? High scoring projects in this category will be thoughtfully designed to provide an enjoyable experience for Web3 beginners and veterans alike.
  • Value Proposition
    Are you making something users want? The highest scoring submissions in this category will have the potential for significant market adoption due to their clear value proposition.
  • Originality & Creativity
    Unique projects or new and creative approaches to existing ones will be among the highest scoring submissions in this category. Copy / paste deployments from other chains will be ranked lower in this category.

Questions? Email the hackathon manager

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