Top 7 Blockchain Hackathon Ideas

Hackathons offer a great way to market brands, hire top talent and engage with your community. They also serve to drive innovation in an organisation. In this guide, you will discover a list of the best blockchain hackathon ideas that could inspire you to create a hackathon focused on a solution that could benefit your company or open-source project.

What is a Hackathon?

A hackathon is traditionally a live event where people with a technical background create teams around a particular challenge or idea and compete to provide a unique solution. This can be in the form of websites, mobile apps, or hardware. Nowadays, hackathon teams comprise of contributors with varied backgrounds such as operations, marketing, and even HR.

The essence of a hackathon is to provide a venue for creativity and innovation through technology. A hackathon typically occurs within a limited timeframe and offers a prize for the winning teams. Hackathons can further be classified into:

• Internal hackathons
• External hackathons

Internal hackathons involve solely company employees while external hackathons are targeted at outside participants.

Hackathon hosts often incorporate the ideas generated during the event for their products and services or leverage the event for brand awareness and marketing purposes.

Blockchain Hackathon Ideas

Below you will find a list of notable past blockchain hackathon ideas to inspire you to create a hackathon that suits your company or community needs.

Hypersign: A Cryptographic Single Sign-On Solution

A cryptographic-based, single sign-on solution would allow you to securely access applications without having to provide your access credentials. Interestingly, this hack is able to eliminate the need for passwords and usernames in mobile applications by integrating cryptographic algorithms and equations. The application can also securely sign transactions, as well as support easy authentication to the blockchain. The cryptographic single sign-on solution was developed by the Hypersign team during the Unisys Hackathon in late 2018.

Blockchain-based Aircraft Maintenance

Deploying blockchain technology during the servicing of aircraft and their specific parts, with the record of the work being stored in a distributed ledger, date stamped and digitally signed by those overseeing the work. The immutable record will be instrumental in preventing aviation accidents caused by challenges in the maintenance process. Also, the information may be valuable to purchasing parties when aircraft are being sold.

Blockchain Startup Financing on R3 Corda

This concept aims to provide financing for startups through a bank guarantee platform based on R3 Corda. The blockchain-based platform will enable entrepreneurship through the incentivisation of capital allocation and reduction of risk. The idea was proposed by team ‘The Avalizers’ during the 2nd Blockchain Hackathon Stuggart.

B3PO: Blockchain And AI Voting System

B3PO is a project that merges robotics and blockchain technology. The team behind it came up with an interesting idea for blockchain-based voting by developing a system, which handwrites blockchain validated information on an absentee voting ballot which is sent through the mail. The project won the $1,000 third prize during the September 2018 ETH San Francisco Hackathon.

AgroChain: Tracking Farm Produce From Farmer to Consumer

AgroChain is an Ethereum DApp that provides a transparent and tamper-proof digital marketplace for farm products. AgroChain enables farmers to record the potential crops, as well as the expected yield, on the blockchain. Consumers can determine farmer credibility by analysing previous cultivation and supply records in the blockchain. Ultimately, the project will serve as a rating tool to bring trust and transparency in the agricultural market. The project was part of the Proffer blockchain hackathon.

DOP DApp: Decentralised Application for Food Products

DOP DApp is a smart supply chain that serves to track the origin and entire journey of each ingredient of a food product. The Hyperledger Fabric-based application will have a lot of uses for producers, supermarkets, warehouses and most importantly for consumers. Consumers using the DApp will be able to purchase the right product and track the product’s history before it arrived on the supermarket shelves. The idea was proposed during the 2018 Imaguru hackathon.

Thor: Decentralised Weather Data

Thor aims to democratise weather data in societies where agriculture plays an important role in livelihoods. The project attempts to address the issue by developing a global blockchain infrastructure for storing raw weather data, as well as an SMS-based service for registering and receiving forecast information. In addition, the project will identify affordable, open source solutions for collecting weather data. The Thor project emerged as one of the winners in the 2018 London blockchain hackathon.

If you want to learn more about developing blockchain applications, check out our guide to the best blockchain books and blockchain online courses.