HackFS 2023🔍 Key Information
The final stretch of the hackathon involves submitting your project and presenting it to the judges. Here's everything you need to know to ensure a smooth process and give your project the best chance at success.
📅 Submission Deadline: All projects must be submitted by Sunday, June 18th 2023 at 12:30 pm EDT. Late submissions won't be accepted, so be sure to plan ahead!
🔗 How to Submit: Head over to your Hacker Dashboard to submit your project. You'll fill out the form with essential details like your project title, description, and a link to your repository.
🎥 Demo Video: You are required to submit a 2-4 minute demo video showcasing your project. This video will be featured on the ETHGlobal Showcase, so take your time making it clear and informative.
💰 Partner Prizes: On the last step of the submission form, you'll be able to select which partner prizes you'd like to apply for. Please ensure to select these prizes correctly as it is the only way for partners to assess your project.
🚨 Important Rules
Start Fresh: All work on your project must begin after the hackathon officially starts. Any prior code, designs, or assets are not allowed unless they're from public libraries or starter kits. Projects built before the event may still participate but won't qualify for partner prizes or the Finalist category.
Version Control: Use version control to track your code during the event. Submissions with large single commits or missing histories may be disqualified, as it's important to show your progress throughout the hackathon.
Open Source Libraries & Boilerplates: You're welcome to use open-source libraries and starter kits to kickstart your project, but be transparent.
Include Everything: Your submission should include a GitHub Repo, Figma files, or equivalent, proving the work was done during the hackathon. Clearly distinguish between what's new and what's reused.
🚀 Submitting Your Project
When you're ready to submit, you have two options:
1. Finalist and Partner Prizes
Opting for this will require you to present your project to judges in the Finalist judging session. Partners will be judging your project asynchronously. There is no action required from you here.
2. Partner Prizes Only
If you're not aiming for the Finalist category, you just have to select your partner prizes during submission and you are set. Partners will be judging your project asynchronously. There is no action required from you here.
🏅 Attending Judging Sessions
Once you've submitted your project, information about your Finalist judging session will appear on your Hacker Dashboard. Here's what to expect:
- If you're selected for final judging, on judging day, you'll be sent to the green room and then to your official judging room where you'll present your project to the judges.
- Each team has 7 minutes to present: 4 minutes for the demo, followed by 3 minutes for Q&A with the judges.
Common Questions to Prepare For:
- What inspired your project?
- What tools did you use, and why?
- What challenges did you solve, and how?
⚖️ Judging Criteria
Judges will evaluate your project based on five categories:
- Technicality: How complex is the problem you're addressing, and how sophisticated is your solution?
- Originality: Is your project introducing a new idea or creatively solving an existing problem?
- Practicality: How complete and functional is your project? Could it be used by its target audience today?
- Usability (UI/UX/DX): How intuitive is your project? Have you made it easy for users to interact with your solution?
- WOW Factor: Does your project leave a lasting impression? This is the catch-all for anything unique or impressive that may not fit into the other categories.
🚨 Disclaimer for Async events on Live Judging
For most async events, there are two rounds of judging. The first round is asynchronous, and the second round is live judging at the event. The judging criteria for both rounds is the same and the first round of async judging is used to screen projects. Typically, only the top 20% of projects advance to the live judging session.
The first round of judging has no impact on your project's eligibility for partner prizes and partners do not have access to the results of the first round of judging. At most async events, the majority of prizes are paid out to projects that do not advance to the live judging. So, even if you don't advance in one, you might still succeed in the other!
🎬 Tips for a Great Demo Video
Your demo video is a key part of showcasing your project. Make sure it meets the following guidelines:
- Keep it between 2 and 4 minutes: A shorter, clear demo is better than a long, unfocused one.
- Don't rush: Speak clearly and at a pace that's easy to follow.
- Avoid background noise and echo: A good microphone or choosing a room with better acoustics will make a big difference.
- Keep introductions short: You don't need to spend more than 20 seconds on your backstory.
- Show your project in action and skip any unnecessary waiting (like MetaMask confirmations).
- Use slides to summarize key points: no more than 4 bullet points per slide.
Common mistakes to avoid in your demo video
We see a lot of these mistakes during submissions, which require a team to re-submit their video in order to qualify for judging. Please be mindful of these common issues if you'd like to be considered for prizes. If we see one or more of these items on your submission, you will be asked to re-submit the video.
- 🚨 DO NOT export the video in any resolution less than 720p
- 🚨 DO NOT exceed the 4-minute submission length
- 🚨 DO NOT speed up the video to fit under the time limit
- 🚨 DO NOT play music with text on the video describing your project (instead of talking)
- 🚨 DO NOT use mobile phones to record the video submission
- 🚨 DO NOT use a text to speech synthesizer
💡 Need Inspiration?
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Iris - Iris, messenger of the gods. Twitter x Patreon x Twitch x TikTok, built on Lens
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Splits - Automatically route funds from one address to set of addresses
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Ollie Verse - NFT Trading Card Game that allows player to create and mint their own trading cards
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Cadbury - Open, neutral, border-less, decentralized, and censorship resistance meetings
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Umbra - Umbra is protocol for enabling stealth payments on the Ethereum blockchain
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Sunset Supreme - A Google sheets plugin for MultiBaas (a REST API for Ethereum) to allow display, interaction, and analysis of data on the blockchain
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DeFi777 - Use DeFi protocols from any wallet! Wrapper tokens let you use Uniswap, Aave, Balancer & Set in normal wallets without a dapp browser
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Oya Market - Oya is a decentralized ecommerce protocol owned by its users and run by smart contracts