Hackathons: the coolest projects revisited

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A well-executed hackathon combines the right atmosphere, resources (aka endless caffeine), raw talent and teamwork in order to accelerate the transformation of interesting ideas into real, innovative, working prototypes. Here, we’ll rewind to revisit some of the projects that caught our eye and tackle real world problems, both big and small. One project is even preparing for an official launch. If we’ve peaked your curiosity, keep reading!

Rewarding recycling with bitcoin tips: Good Samaritan

Congrats @blockchain challenge winners Samaritius! pic.twitter.com/mPNOnVHMjR

– Peter Smith (@OneMorePeter) November 3, 2014

Team Samaritus won our API challenge prize of 15 bitcoins for Good Samaritan, a project designed to encourage consumers to recycle. The Money 20/20 2014 Hackathon duo proposed the use of technology like NFC or RFID to tag recyclable items. When the empty recyclable is tossed into one of their bins, the good samaritan is sent a thank you in the form of a small bitcoin tip.

Crowdfunded community cleanup: CommPound

Similar in purpose to Good Samaritan, CommPound uses crowdfunding methods to reward individuals for completing odd jobs or tasks that help keep common areas tidy. Beneficial for community parks or a lounge in a college dorm room, users can create a new task or browse a directory of to dos and pledge an amount of bitcoin to a task or pledge to complete a task themselves. The user who completes the task is rewarded with all funds other users pledged to it. This project took 1st in Hack Princeton 2015’s Best Bitcoin Hack and Software categories.

A kid-friendly bitcoin wallet: Sashi

We’ll change it up here with a project designed to help teach kids money management while receiving hands on experience using bitcoin. Winning one of the $20k prizes at Money20/20’s 2015 Hackathon, Sashi is a wallet for kids that encourages healthy habits like budgeting, saving, and donating. Parents have their own dashboard where they can set spending limits, add a merchant, and monitor their child’s financial activities. Sashi added an extra element of fun for kids by letting them level up as they hit certain milestones.

Mentorship & rewards for coders: CodeConnect

A Hack the Planet winner , the CodeConnect team was inspired by the helpful mentors at the event to craft an online platform that offered mentorships for developers to share their skills with others aspiring to learn, and get paid in bitcoin. Video conferencing, messaging, and a shared code editor allows for an interactive remote learning experience and rewards mentors for their time.

Easy cross-platform payments: Shuttlepay

Also from Hack the Planet, developer Tim Su created Shuttlepay , an app that serves as an all-in-one hub for friends to easily send and receive payments across different platforms. So, if you’re the only bitcoin enthusiast in your group of friends (we feel your pain), an app like Shuttlepay could be used to send funds to friends without having to download each of their preferred payment methods. Hello, convenience!

Supporting content creators and empowering users: Yours

Submitted as a project at LAUNCH 2016 , Yours is an app designed to incentivize users to pay for online content they enjoy. Yours allows users to send bitcoin micropayments to content creators to endorse the content, and earlier contributors also receive a cut. In other words, the earlier you pay a content creator, the more you’re likely to receive in return, especially if the content really catches on and heads to the moon. Even more exciting is that you can sign up for Yours’ early preview and opt to receive a heads up when they officially launch.

Originally published at https://blockchain-blog.ghost.io on March 21, 2017.

Hackathons: the coolest projects revisited was originally published in @blockchain on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.