DeHack

Now I've tried few hackathons this year and so far ETHGlobal been the golden standard. Unfortunately trying few hackathons outside of ETHGlobal made me realize there's undeniable issues in this space. Especially when it comes to funding and transparency on the prizes. So I've decided to build a transparent and fair hackathon ecosystem for all participants! Enter - DeHack!

DeHack is a modern decentralized hackathon platform built on Ethereum that improves how hackathons are organized, judged, and funded. The platform addresses known issues in traditionally hosted hackathons: lack of transparency in judging, delayed or missing prize distributions, and centralized control that can lead to unfair outcomes. After all, we are building decentralized future and space, so hackathons should also be little bit less of a black-box paradigm for everyone.

Core Features:

• On-Chain Transparency: All hackathon activities, submissions, and judging are recorded.
• Multiple Voting Systems: Implements 4 different voting mechanisms.
• Automated Prize Distribution: Smart contracts ensure guaranteed prize payouts to winners.
• Factory Pattern Architecture: Gas-efficient hackathon creation using cloning pattern.
• Curve Finance Integration: Automatic ETH to PYUSD conversion for stable prize pools.
• Global Judge Governance: Decentralized judge management system with reputation.

User Roles:

• Organizers: Create hackathons, set parameters, manage lifecycle (can have a fee)
• Sponsors: Contribute to prize pools, distribute additional rewards (promotes tech)
• Participants: Register, submit projects, claim prizes (tries to win the pool)
• Judges: Evaluate submissions using various voting systems (gets incentives)

Live Deployment: Successfully deployed on Ethereum Mainnet with active hackathons and real transactions.

This platform also serves as a tool to catch any wrong-doings by hackers such as re-submitting same projects twice, or pre-coding it before hackathon or using only mock to fake submission.

Made with care and love But also with a lot of technical aspect, solidity contracts ensuring organizers commit funds on chain and also allow these funds to earn money while they are sitting in the vault (deposit hooks)

Journey starts with organizer creating hackathon and providing initial funds. (Dashboard allows to set distribution in various ways per track or winners or equally or completely custom breakdown of the prize pool)

Sponsors also add prizes on-chain with transparent funding, but can decide distribution on their own or ask judges for help to decide if needed. Judges get small incentive from the pool to provide their expertise for hackathon voting, all votes are verifiable.

Smart Contract Architecture:

• Solidity with comprehensive inheritance hierarchy
• HackathonFactory.sol: Factory contract using OpenZeppelin's cloning for gas-efficient deployment
• Hackathon.sol: Main contract inheriting from StakeSystem, VotingSystem, and JudgingSystem
• Multiple Voting Systems: OpenVoting / ZKVotingSystem for different privacy levels
• Curve Finance Integration: Automated ETH→PYUSD conversion for stable prize pools
• Judge Council: Global governance system for judge management

Frontend Technologies:

• Next.js with React 19 for the dashboard builder
• Wagmi + Viem for Ethereum integration
• ConnectKit for wallet connection

Backend Infrastructure:

• Python Flask with Flask-CORS for API endpoints
• JSON file-based storage for lightweight data persistence
• RESTful API for hackathon management, project submissions, and analytics
• Image upload handling with multipart form support

Deployment & Testing:

• Hardhat for development and testing
• Mainnet deployment with verified contracts on Etherscan
• Live hackathons with real ETH transactions and PYUSD conversions

The platform successfully blockchain technology with practical hackathon management, creating a transparent, fair, and efficient ecosystem for decentralized competitions.

Smart contract serves as a backbone. Also AI tooling helps judges make decisions by analyzing submissions can help scan the projects and find plagiarism or any issues by using Github MCP.

With AI involved and judges delegating voting tasks to AI Agents making decisions, the future of hackathons might look like this: