The TON Foundation, a non-profit association of developers and enthusiasts that exists to advance The Open Network (TON), has announced a global hackathon in collaboration with DoraHacks, a global hacker organization that “acts as a bridge, connecting hackers to enterprise challenges and entrepreneurial ideas.”
Titled, Hack-a-TONx DoraHacks, the virtual hackathon will “offer a total prize pot of $180,000 in Toncoin (TON) as participants compete to build myriad projects on TON, a revolutionary technology to unite all blockchains and Web2 internet into one open network.” It was born “to empower billions of Telegram users with genuine Web3.”
Justin Hyun, Head of Incubation at the TON Foundation, said:
“This is a major global hackathon, enabling top talent from around the world to build on TON. We are confident that this event will onboard thousands of Web2 and Web3 developers from the TON ecosystem and beyond, showcasing the many possibilities of building on TON. It’s time to join the movement!”
The hackathon “kicks off 30 January 2023 at 11:00 am GMT with tracks including: Decentralized finance (DeFi), Social/Decentralized Identifier (DID), Non Fungible Token (NFT)/Soulbound Tokens (SBT), Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), Gaming, Web3 Services (Metaverse), and Web 2.5 (The Ultimate Challenge).”
The hackathon, which will be “live-streamed across YouTube, Binance Live, and Bilibili, will showcase the depth of global talent building on the TON ecosystem.” The event will conclude on March 31 2023 with “a closing ceremony and winners announcement, where the prize money and gifts will be distributed.”
Hyun added:
“Funding from the TONcoin Fund will also be up for grabs for the teams that come out victorious, providing a bountiful opportunity from a $250 million ecosystem fund dedicated to supporting founders building on The Open Network.”
The hackathon will also be “a headstart to submissions for The Open Challenge (TOC), a metric based TON awards program.” Furthermore, teams that “make it to the finals in the contest may have the opportunity to travel to Dubai on an all-expenses trip and meet the TON Foundation leadership team and investors.”
GitHub repo is “required and live demo recommended.” Teams can “close-source GitHub repo during the hackathon but are required to open-source upon completion of the submission period.” Teams can “opt for open-source under BSL 1.1, which stipulates that the codes cannot be used for commercial purposes by other parties.”
As noted in the update, the Open Network (TON) is a technology “to unite all blockchains and Web2 internet into one open network.”
It was born “to empower billions of Telegram users with genuine Web3.” Originally introduced by the Telegram team inheriting its freedom and openness ethos, “it has been run as an open-source community project since 2020.”
TON’s layer-1 architecture is “designed to scale up to 2 to the power of 32 workchains, each of which can be subdivided into up to 2 to the power of 60 shardchains.” It can “support millions of transactions per second near-instantly.”
Telegram has helped people stay connected. TON will “transform the communities into economies.”