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11 months ago

NEAR MetaBUILD III Hackathon: A letter to participants

Hey builders,
Happy New Year, and thank you all for your patience over the holidays. There are several questions floating around regarding the MetaBUILD hackathon results, and hopefully this will help address the issues.  

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who participated. It doesn’t go unnoticed that folks spent time and energy building, and you all made this one of the biggest hackathons NEAR has hosted to date.

JUDGING

With that scale, it was critical that there were some rules for qualification, and these were the first filters used during the judging process. For transparency, there were several rounds of reviews throughout, and at least 2 judges took a look at each qualifying submission and scored them based on the following criteria:

  • Technological Implementation: Does the interaction with NEAR demonstrate quality software development?
  • Design: Is the user experience and design of the project well thought out?
  • Potential Impact: Is the Project Open Source and how big of an impact could the project have on the NEAR ecosystem?
  • Quality of the Idea: How creative and unique is the project?
  • Project Sustainability: Is the plan for the Project thought out and realistic?

Submissions were allowed to be modified after the deadline as long as the modifications remained substantively the same as the original submission. 

All of this was done by humans, and as a result, it was not a perfect process. Thank you to those who helped identify projects that did not follow the guidelines, and appropriate actions have been taken. 

FINAL WINNERS

The final list of winners is as follows:

Native

  1. ChatMe
  2. OnlyFunds
  3. RECUR

Honorable Mentions

Web2→Web3

  1. Refound Journalism
  2. SEED Web3 Career Hub
  3. Zrk.ua

Honorable Mentions

PAYMENTS

There are folks who are working on the prize disbursements process (mainly KYC and similar logistics), and all prizes should be delivered within the next few weeks barring any unforeseen hurdles with the KYC process. 

MOVING FORWARD

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions throughout this process. As some of you are aware, Maria is no longer with Pagoda managing hackathons, and the transition was a part of a larger redesign of how NEAR is evolving and thinking about hackathons as a whole. There are several ideas under consideration, and updates will be provided as things develop.

The timing and communication has been challenging, and much of that was unfortunately due to the holidays. Please know that all of your feedback is appreciated, and transparency is the top priority as we move forward. 

Questions?

If you have any questions about the hackathon, please post on the discussion forum.