A review of the blockchain hackathon

In recent years, blockchain technology has gradually attracted the attention of world-class financial institutions and commercial organizations, and many large banks and institutions have carried out research on blockchain technology. In order to promote the development of blockchain technology, accelerate the cultivation of blockchain technology development forces in my country, and let Chinese enterprises and technology developers have a personal experience of the development process of blockchain, Wanxiang Blockchain Lab and Deloitte jointly held a Blockchain Hackathon (a programming design competition) in Shanghai, with a prize of up to 100,000 US dollars. The event lasted two days and ended successfully on the afternoon of January 10, 2016.

At 5:30 pm on January 8, the event site on the 5th floor of the Bund Center had already welcomed dozens of developers as dusk approached. In the next 50 hours, they would become teammates and work day and night for the common development goal. Due to the common goal of participating in the competition, the developers naturally became familiar with each other and discussed their own project ideas with each other.

Chen Hui from Beijing just got off the plane and came to the 5th floor of the Bund Center with his luggage. He has more than ten years of communication and technology development background. He and several like-minded friends formed an open network technology interest group called "PPk Pub" and are trying to integrate innovative technologies such as blockchain and IPFS to do something interesting. This time, they prepared two topics, one is "The combination of PPK ODIN naming and identification technology based on blockchain and smart hardware", and the other is "New business model of mutual insurance based on blockchain".

On the eve of dinner, Chen Hui took out the model made by the team for testing, which attracted the attention of other contestants.

Some members of the Ant Group, which had just completed crowdfunding, also signed up for the competition. After forming teams on site, three people participated in three different project teams. Zhang Zhengwen proposed the idea of ​​digitizing the RMB (legal currency), peer-to-peer payment on the blockchain, eliminating intermediaries, and replacing paper money, which attracted Zhang Jiannan to join the team for joint development; Da Hongfei's idea of ​​using blockchain for academic certification was also recognized by several developers. Their project idea is: the certificate issuing or certification agency records the hash value of the certificate on the blockchain. Those who need to verify the certificate can identify the authenticity of the certificate by simply querying the hash value on the blockchain.

Since the first blockchain conference was held in October this year, Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, the organizer of this event, has successively launched the global excellent blockchain project sponsorship program (BlockGrant X), blockchain knowledge training program (BlockTrain X), etc. This hackathon is also one of its series of projects around blockchain.

At the beginning of the event, Dr. Xiao Feng, Vice Chairman and Executive Director of China Wanxiang Holdings and founder of Wanxiang Blockchain Lab, gave a speech. Dr. Xiao introduced the background of the establishment of Wanxiang Blockchain Lab and a series of projects around blockchain technology since its establishment a few months ago. He also mentioned the blockchain technology development cloud platform and blockchain series of books under development.

Qin Yi, the leading partner of Deloitte Asia Pacific Investment Management Industry, explained Deloitte's research and progress in blockchain technology, and introduced the Deloitte Rubix blockchain technology team to the participants. It is reported that Deloitte has started research on using blockchain technology to improve audit efficiency and processes. As early as more than ten months ago, Deloitte had already started research in the blockchain direction, and has established a blockchain research team of more than 100 people in Ireland and Canada.

In addition to the application in the financial industry, the Rubix team also has and has helped enterprises plan nearly 30 application models, some of which are in the demonstration stage, and some have entered the stage of establishing actual operation models. One of the applications designed based on Rubix is ​​Deloitte's PermaRec blockchain application technology. This is a global distributed ledger that improves the transparency of the purchase and sale process by connecting with various financial reporting systems such as SAP and Oracle. Ultimately, auditors can implement 100% coverage audit work and automated tax compliance declarations through real-time access to relevant data, benefiting both users and regulators.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, Ether.camp, and Factom project staff also shared their insights on blockchain technology.

After dinner, through advance and on-site team formation, by the end of the team registration period, 23 projects and nearly 100 team members had registered.

A diverse group of tech geeks and senior experts from all walks of life (some of whom don’t even know technology) collaborated on the scene. Coffee, cola, Red Bull, snacks, heated discussions and the sound of keyboards, combined with the unbeatable scenery of the Bund Center, created a unique atmosphere. The intense 48-hour competition schedule, at 3 a.m. on the 5th floor of the Bund Center Building, nearly a hundred developers were still working all night.

The BitSmile team led by Shuai Chu has jointly developed a blockchain mobile application APP for charity donations and traceability. Through blockchain technology, the flow of each donated fund is traced. Anyone can initiate a fundraising campaign on BitSmile's private chain and can easily query and manage the use of funds through the mobile terminal, eliminating the charity "black box".

Kimi, a blockchain visual designer, came from Taiwan to participate in the event. He formed a team with developers such as Chuxiahu and Zhuangzhong and completed a project based on Factom, which stored medical records, test reports and other related information on the blockchain, so that doctors in different locations can easily access them. At the same time, it can provide credible proof and improve the efficiency of insurance claims. Kimi gained a lot from this hackathon. There are few blockchain exchange activities in Taiwan. Industry experts who could only communicate on Weibo in the past can now exchange skills face to face.

The application scope of blockchain technology proposed by the contestants of the hackathon is quite wide. The 23 teams registered on site for topics including:地域性股权交易联盟,信用信息共享,全民医疗记录存证,慈善捐赠和追溯,资产管理与流动性化, insurance agent credit rating, etc. After 48 hours of hard work, the presentations of each team were even more brilliant. After the DEMO demonstration and PPT presentation, a total of 7 high-quality projects won awards and were awarded a bonus of US$100,000.

The first prize of $30,000 was won by the Cargo Chain project team, the second prize was Smart Property, with a prize of $20,000, and the third prize was Medical Records, with a prize of $10,000. Nevermore, Food Chain, and Random Number Generator won the winning prizes respectively, and Bitsmile won the Distributed Capital Special Award.

A developer analyzed:

The above-mentioned CargoChain, Medical Records, FoodChain, and Bitsmile are similar in that they all store the originally scattered data on the blockchain and provide credible consensus proofs, which can achieve lower costs and higher efficiency compared to traditional solutions. Smart Property and Nevermore are slightly more complex in function, reflecting the use of distributed smart contracts. Random Number Generator is a pure technical application of a "clever algorithm" that utilizes the characteristics of blockchain.

Judging from the winning projects of this competition alone, it is relatively easy to understand and gain recognition for using blockchain as a new, trusted distributed database to improve the needs of real business scenarios.

The performance of the project presentation is an important factor in the selection of the blockchain hackathon awards. As Qin Yi, Deloitte Asia Pacific Investment Management Industry Leading Partner, pointed out, only by clearly demonstrating the technology to others can others recognize its value.

Although he didn't win the award, Chen Hui still thought the trip was worthwhile:

“Although we were a little disappointed that we didn’t win the prize because we focused on the on-site construction of the technical prototype and didn’t meet our expectations in PPT writing and presentation, it also made us realize that the original PPT and other materials had deficiencies in communication and needed to be improved. Under the guidance of FACTOM experts, we tested the feasibility of integrating FACTOM technology into our ODIN logo on site, and exchanged ideas on the application of blockchain with many friends. Several friends related to the smart hardware industry may be able to further cooperate with us through our technical prototype combining blockchain and smart hardware.”

Wanxiang Blockchain Lab official website:
http://www.blockchainlabs.org/

Blockchain Hackathon Team List:
http://blockchainlabs.org/hackathon/view.php

Source: Babbitt Information