CTRL+Hack+ZK: Meet the winners!

Let’s wrap up the first self-hosted Aleph Zero virtual hackathon and see who received the most attention from the judges and the community!

This three-week innovation journey began with an Aleph Zero ecosystem town hall, where various innovative teams developing on Aleph Zero gave a run-down of their value propositions and the progress they’ve made over the past few months. This was followed by the kick-off of the hackathon and three days of workshops packed with educational programming forums and hands-on mentorship.. Prizes of up to $75k in bounties, $500k in EFP funding, and $10k for the best overall project were up for grabs – and now – it’s time to announce the winners! 

Five hackathon tracks judged by industry experts

Challenges were thrown down across five different tracks: Telco, Degen/DeFi, DiD, Tooling and Infrastructure, and Gaming.

Here’s a short overview of what were the tasks in each.

Telco track

The participants were challenged to redefine the future of telecommunications using Aleph Zero’s cutting-edge features by optimizing infrastructure or even creating new services. All submissions were judged by industry leaders – and Aleph Zero partners – Deutsche Telekom, stc Bahrain, and Telefónica.

Degen/DeFi

As Aleph Zero allows for easy integration with regular DeFi primitives, participants on the Degen/DeFi track were encouraged to leverage Aleph Zero’s robust infrastructure – and create unique financial solutions to expand the ecosystem’s functionality.

DiD

Teams on the DiD track were tasked with exploring identity-related solutions such as AZERO.ID and leveraging Aleph Zero’s native privacy stack to enable secure and decentralized identity management.

Tooling and Infrastructure

While participants on the Tooling and Infrastructure track focused on developing applications, node providers, libraries, and tools to enhance developer experience and the overall ecosystem.

Gaming

Lastly, on the Gaming track, teams were challenged to think creatively and build innovative gaming solutions. This spanned a wide range of possibilities – from developing in-game items such as NFTs, to building components that streamline game development for others – or designing smart contract templates for payouts and collectibles or creating indexers for gaming data, etc.

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the CTRL+Hack+ZK winners!

Each track had a total bounty of $12,000, with $6,000 reward for the 1st place, $4,000 for the 2nd place, and $2,000 for the 3rd.

Without further ado, let’s introduce the top picks of the judges!

General:

• 1st Place: ZKRamp
• 2nd Place: DeTelco
• 3rd Place: FairPetuals

Telco Category:

• 1st Place: DeTelco
• 2nd Place: Bridgehead
• 3rd Place: Demi

DiD Category:

• 1st Place: ZKRamp
• 2nd Place: The Hunt3rs
• 3rd Place: aleph-zero-login

DeFi Category:

• 1st Place: ZKRamp
• 2nd Place: FairPetuals
• 3rd Place: Safe Send

Tooling & Infrastructure Category:

• 1st Place: GrantMe
• 2nd Place: Mysign.id
• 3rd Place: aleph-zero-login

Gaming:

• 1st Place: Doggo
• Recognition Award: The Hunt3rs

Community award:

After concluding the submission process, we also introduced an additional Community Award, where all community members could vote on the Aleph Zero Discord and Telegram on their favorite projects. The snapshot of votes has been made on February 5th at 0:00 CET. The winner gets 5,000 AZERO.

And the winner is… AzeroSCA!

Winners, please keep an eye on your email inbox for further details on your prizes and suggested next steps.

To learn more about the projects, head over to Taikai.

Turning new Web3 ideas into reality on Aleph Zero is the real award

We want to congratulate all the winners – and everyone who participated in the hackathon. We believe the real award is watching new Web3 ideas turn into reality on Aleph Zero – it’s a pleasure to see passionate developers build and grow. 

Previous hackathons have brought projects that are now important parts of the Aleph Zero ecosystem – AZERO.ID and Syncra. They are now key building blocks of this young ecosystem.

We would like to sincerely thank all our partners and judges who made the hackathon possible. We hope you had just as much fun as we had!

Stay tuned for announcements on the dates and location of the IRL edition of CTRL+Hack+ZK coming later in 2024!