The Decentralised Web Hackathon

4 min readJul 8, 2019

A couple of weeks ago, we joined forces with the Fluence Labs team and co-hosted the Decentralised Web Hackathon in Minsk, Belarus, for two days of non-stop hacking!

The objective of the hackathon was to showcase how Web3 technologies are successfully being used everyday - often unbeknown to users - and how easily other technologies can be used alongside the Arweave permaweb.

We challenged 67 participants across 12 teams to build dApps using the Arweave permaweb and the robust, distributed cloud by Fluence. After two days of workshops, knowledge sharing and hacking — three clear leaders emerged and a prize pool of $4,000 was awarded.

The Winners

Lazy Snark — a trustless off-chain zero knowledge-proof verification system

Zero-knowledge proofs are a secure way of proof-checking how correct computations are in a trustless environment. Unfortunately, it’s quite expensive to check ZK proofs on the Ethereum blockchain so to solve this problem, Lazy Snark checks proofs on the Fluence distributed cloud instead, costing only $0.01 per block, making it 10x cheaper than checking on the Ethereum blockchain!

Pretty impressive stuff right?! Make sure you check out the demo app here!

Devpost/GitHub/Demo

VoteEx — A website reputation and review service

Coming in second place was VoteEx, a game changer in the product review space! Have you ever left a review for a service only to later discover that it had been deleted? Well the decentralised web says ‘no more!’ The website reviewing browser extension uses the Arweave permaweb to permanently store all reviews making it impossible to delete submitted content. In addition, Fluence provides a backend service, performing unbiased rating aggregation while searching through a database of websites and reviews.

Over are the days that our reviews can be tampered with. Truth and transparency for the win!

Devpost/GitHub

SIRES — 2D MMO shooter with tokenised items

In third place, a 2D MMO shooter game with tokenised items! We were so impressed with this submission, as the team came incredibly close to solving common problems many modern games struggle with. Essentially game code is owned by the vendor or platform meaning it can be changed against the will of the gamer. Think items within a game like special swords or armour. But SIRES have come close to a solution!

The Arweave and Fluence tech stack provides another level of ownership for gamers. The game logic can be verified by any player and once deployed on the Arweave’s permaweb it cannot be removed or altered. SIRES works in real-time, scales seamlessly and is ready to be played by you and your mates.

Devpost/GitHub

Honourable Mentions

Hackathons have a tendency of bringing together a huge array of talent, so it’s no surprise we had a hard time picking only 3 winners. That’s why we decided to award a pool of 4500 AR tokens to a handful of honourable mentions.

Qualifile — An education focused app that provides students access to any skill or specialisation. Grades and certifications are then stored on the decentralised web eradicating forgery and simplifying the authentication process.

Devpost/GitHub

SafeAgreements — A simple tool that allows you to store signed agreements in decentralised storage forever.

Devpost/GitHub

Approved.zone — is an application that allows you to manage, track and cancel your token allowances.

Devpost/GitHub/Website

Learn more

For more information on the different technologies used at the hackathon, here’s how you can get started:

Arweave website and deployment guide.

Fluence Devnet Dashboard and quickstart guide.

Thank you!

We have so much gratitude for every one of you who attended and all the amazing speakers, mentors and judges, without you the event wouldn't have been such a success! If you missed out on the talks, be sure to check them out here and to see the photos, make sure you visit Fluence’s Facebook page and to stay up to date with future hackathons, you can follow Arweave and Fluence on Twitter.

And finally, a tremendous thank you to the amazing Fluence team for all of your hard work and organisation, we couldn’t have done it without you!