In the new paradigm of cryptonetworks, where open source crypto projects can be built on top of other applications without permission, the possibilities are endless. During Beyond Blockchain, our goal was to show how these new applications could effect real problems, real people, and have impact inside and outside of blockchain world.
In the new paradigm of cryptonetworks, where open source crypto projects can be built on top of other applications without permission, the possibilities are endless. During Beyond Blockchain, our goal was to show how these new applications could effect real problems, real people, and have impact inside and outside of blockchain world.
We’re happy to report that Beyond Blockchain was a success! By the numbers:
From the broadest prizes to the narrowest, see below to see how our sponsors and hackers worked together and grew open source in the past few weeks. Congrats to the winers!
ConsenSys Labs, our lead sponsor for the event, wanted hackers to think Beyond Blockchain for three major industries: finance, healthcare, and media. The submissions they got back provide lots of color into how blockchain applications could improve the future of these industries and the world at large.
Decentralized Finance: Wrapped Coffee Coin 
Wrapped Coffee Coin, by the Affogato team, aims to provide coffee farmers the same access to financial tools as those available to coffee buyers. But how?
As shown above, coffee farmers deliver their coffee to a coffee cooperative which issues the farmer a ‘token’ which can be easily traded for other assets on crypto exchanges. As crypto exchanges trend towards normal exchanges, this increase in liquidity for a local farmer to participate in the global coffee market could create tangible, healthy improvements in the economy over time. Congrats to the Affogato team!
Healthcare: Immunoblock 
️
ImmunoBlock is a blockchain based tool to help physicians and researchers to gain insights into chronic inflammatory and immune conditions.
By using Ethereum to store identity information and to provide an interoperable source of information for physicians to access, Immunoblock improves workflows for both patients and physicians. This is done all while 1) patients retain ownership of their data and 2) ensuring privacy and HIPPA requirements are met.
Media Winner: Invest-y-gative 
Invest-y-gative aims to secure and amplify innovations in journalism as well as address major problems afflicting the news media sector generally. It does so by leveraging Web3 blockchain technology to promote:
An example run through of using Invest-y-gative is as follows:
Consumer Need: An Invest-y-gative media consumer issues a bounty of 100 ETH (of the equivalent in Invest-y-gative’s token) on a story, for example, that can prove rumors that Western travel warnings to Kenya are part of a trade war on the east African country.
Source(s) Cited / Journalist(s) Investigate: Material is submitted through a Web3 Secure “Dropbox” which (hashed on IPFS and notarized on the Ethereum blockchain); and/or journalist apply to write the story (explaining the sources they will base their story on) or are solicited by the editors.
Editors: Editors initiate a process of corroboration of source material. Editors can decide to pursue the story or spike it. In considering journalists who apply to write the story, editors will consider the journalist’s pitch, sources, previous publications, and overall reputation.
Congrats to the ConsenSys Labs winners 
, and the runners-up (Idle, Honest Media, and Active Health) in all three categories.
The Graph team opted to post one simple project: build a Subgraph. Once a subgraph is up and running, it immediately is usable to query blockchain transaction data for any application you’d like to build. In two weeks, they received 9 submissions and selected five as winners 
One hacker, Jose Aguinaga, went the extra mile to take his Kyber subgraph and build a Kyber “whale” directory on top of his hackathon project. This was done to much success — showing the value of The Graph’s protocol!
“Ended up actually coding https://thekyberwhales.now.sh/ using my subgraph. It’s amazing how I was able to query that much information in seconds, the page doesn’t even blink, anyone can inspect over 100+ txs just like that. Really cool stuff, I’m really enjoying working with the project guys, congrats again!” – Jose Aguinaga, MyBit Foundation + Hacker
A huge congrats to the winners and great job by The Graph team on an amazing, useful hackathon prize idea! We look forward to more to come with the Graph team.
Arweave team is working on something awesome — the permaweb. Straight from the team:
The permaweb is an immutable, decentralised web that puts the power back in the hands of the masses. The permaweb is the only one of its kind, offering incentivisation and information permanence across a globally distributed network. It’s the web you can own and run.
Welcome To The Permaweb
They entered the hackathon five four wonderful prompts, all showing the unique benefits of the permaweb and why it’s important to built it as the internet continues to evolve.
Of the five prompts, three were completed in the last two weeks and the App Store (a…big project 
) is in progress!
Enter Adam (a family tree on Arweave), Email Proof, and AR Open Knowledge. All of these projects are hosted on Arweave’s permaweb today!
Great job by the hackers and excited to see what comes of the app store prize to come
By integrating the Portis SDK, developers can let users start using blockchain applications in seconds, with no installations, from any device. And thanks to its end-to-end encryption architecture, users enjoy a non-custodial wallet that keeps them in complete control of their private keys.
In their mission to make it as easy as possible to use the blockchain — they offered a prize for anyone who integrated Portis in a dApp in way which followed their vision of redefining the blockchain user experience.
Enter Chari:A crowdfunding platform for charitable donations which won the 3ETH prize!
Chari used Portis in their application — and already started one fundraiser which will be matched with community contributions.
As a contributor to the Ethereum crowdfunding ecosystem via Gitcoin Grants, we’re excited to see a project like Chari take a wider view on crowdfunding generally. We wish them luck post hackathon in working on their project!
Alethio is a comprehensive suite of blockchain exploration and analytics products for the Ethereum network. They recently launched an API as a direct way for developers to get real-time access to synthesised, indexed on-chain data in a robust and reliable way. Find out more about the capabilities of the API in this Medium article.
During the hackathon, they received three winning prizes which push forward their goals of making Ethereum more transparent and accessible to all. They had two prizes for freestyles using 1) the Alethio API and 2) the Alethio Lite Explorer, both of which support custom integrations… as they are open source!
Lite Explorer‘s 1st Prize went to @Smit and @tezansahu for their work on their pay-no-load Lite-Explorer plugin.
The API freestyle’s First Prize went to to @corpetty for his Golang Client SDK! This project will become a part of Alethio’s official suite of developer tools, ultimately making it easier for the Go developer community to use their API.
@Smit and @tezansahu also made a submission on the API freestyle called Waffle-CLI and won 2nd place, giving them two wins in one hackathon. Congrats to the winners!
PegaSys was our sole sponsor building an Ethereum client, as they work on Pantheon — an open source Ethereum client in Java. In efforts to stay up to date with the scheduled Istanbul hard fork in Etheruem, PegaSys needed to add BLAKE2b support to their client.
As part of the Istanbul network upgrade, BLAKE2b support will be added to Ethereum. This (prize) is to implement a BLAKE2b precompile as part of Pantheon that conforms to the specification in EIP-131 (as specified in this Github PR link) as required for the Istanbul Hard fork EIP-1679.
PegaSys’s Prize For Beyond Blockchain
The PegaSys team found their submission via Ivaylo Kirilov — who made a PR for the pre-compile. While incomplete (partially because because there are still pieces of the EIP missing), Ivaylo was awarded half of the $1,000 prize and plans to continue work with PegaSys here after the hackathon.
The work which came out of the Ethereal Hackathon and Beyond Blockchain to follow has us more excited than ever about the work which can be done to grow open source via hackathons.
The nature of open source is that lego blocks stack on other lego blocks, and every hackathon project sets the stage for the next hackathon project. Somewhere in that path, great companies and great products are formed.
We’re excited to accelerate that process towards growing open source, however we can.
While that wraps up the fun for Beyond Blockchain, we’re excited to keep the show rolling with Grow Ethereum. Join us — let’s grow open source, together. 