GalaChain is growing all the time, with more people jumping in and building on-chain every day! Last month’s hackathon, however, was a moment like no other in the growth of GalaChain. We saw amazing developments and innovative new ways to use the chain for a better web3 world.
After intense deliberation by our esteemed GALAthon guest judges and our chain team, the time has finally come to announce the results! Congratulations to each and every one of the winners… and thank you to every single participant! It’s all of you who make GalaChain amazing!
Judges’ Favorites
We’ve already discussed the in-person judges’ favorites, but we wanted to sing the praises of these innovators again.
NFTD.GG –
200,000 USDT + $10k AWS Credits, $25k VGX and a $400 Alienware Monitor
Team No Rest –
150,000 USDT + $5k AWS Credits and $15k VGX
Corgi AI3D Forever –
100,000 USDT + $5k AWS Credits and $10k VGX
We’re proud of all the projects that participated at this hackathon, and we think the judges made incredibly astute observations to pick these three top projects.
Remote Participation Prizes
After going through each project and presentation, we have awarded a number of additional prizes in several categories:
Best Use of AI: Fuzzle Prime
Fuzzle Prime is a project that embodies the ideology of blockchain technology in so many ways. For this Hackathon, they created Fuzzle UniverCity to leverage the powers of AI to create instructional course content using GalaChain!
Prize Awarded: 50,000 USDT + $10k AWS Credits
Most Creative Project: Dragon Slayers
The Dragon Slayers crafted the Dragon Board, a way to burn NFTs directly for fungible tokens on chain. This could be a way for users to recycle NFTs they are no longer using, allowing a natural increase in scarcity and overall letting users engage with their on-chain items in more ways.
Prize Awarded: 50,000 USDT + $5k AWS Credits
Most Innovative Solution: KFS
During GALAthon, KFS built out their concept of “CourseHub”, an educational platform powered by GalaChain. CourseHub is designed to reinforce education through blockchain, by monetizing educational content with incentivized learning. Eventually, KFS hopes to issue digital certificates using NFTs.
Prize Awarded: 30,000 USDT + $5k AWS Credits
Best Representation of Gala Community: Valley Games
Valley Games is the brainchild of Happy Valley Arcade Bar in Beacon, NY. Valley Games will bring web3 gaming to the classic cabinet, by integrating a multi-game arcade cabinet with GalaChain games. Eventually, the team hopes to streamline rewards on Valley Games with a token on GalaChain. Talk about incentive for that high score!
Prize Awarded: 5000 USDT
Best Integration with Gala Film or Gala Music: Taco Truck
Taco truck set out to create the first memecoin on GalaChain – $TACO! Along the way, they engineered a pipeline for users to mint their own coins. In cooperation with Emily Lazar from September Mourning, they hope to soon use this system to allow artists to create their own verifiable tokens directly on GalaChain.
Prize Awarded: 5000 USDT
Best Use of On-Chain Data: Achis.net
Achis was mentioned as a community option in our recent Founders Node vote about block explorers… but achis.net is far more than just a block explorer. Using powerful data analytics, Achis continued to build out its functionality during the hackathon. Using powerful data analytics and on-chain data, achis.net can show users what’s happening on GalaChain in terms they don’t need decades of programming experience to understand.
Prize Awarded: 5000 USDT
Most Useful Day-to-Day: THX
THX works with Gala on marketing initiatives on occasion, and we were overjoyed to see them hop into the hackathon and work on something to make our work even better together! Previously, someone redeeming points for rewards on THX was just receiving a unique URL that would help manually fulfill rewards. They crafted an integration so that rewards can now be distributed directly from GalaChain!
Prize Awarded: 5000 USDT + $5k AWS Credits
Most Enthusiastic Project: Pearswap.io
Pearswap.io did what many successful innovators have done in the past… recognized a problem and designed a solution. Pearswap recognized that the bid to ask spread on GalaSwap could be improved with liquidity pools, so they created the groundwork for that system through pearswap.io!
Prize Awarded: 5000 USDT
Non-Stop Development
This will wrap up this GALAthon, but GalaChain never stops! The net progress that will be made leveraging all these developments on GalaChain cannot be understated. GalaChain is an entire ecosystem, and any and every application on it works together to make it a chain that can accomplish nearly anything. Every link builds us up.
We’ll have more events like this in the future, but we’d like once again to thank everyone who participated in, followed along, or even just read a thing or two about last month’s GALAthon! GalaChain is here for all of us, and we can’t wait to build the next innovation with all of you.
Last week’s hackathon brought a wave of new innovation to GalaChain! We saw new tools and platforms come to life before our very eyes. Thank you to everyone who participated and to everyone who followed along with the development frenzy!
We’re already starting to think about future developments on GalaChain based on some of the major innovations from this event! Before we leave the GalaChain Hackathon in the past, however, we wanted to just recap some of the biggest developments from the event!
Big Names, Big Prizes
As you may have noticed over the past few weeks, we had some big names show up to help judge entries from the Hackathon!
Judge’s carousel
While our chain team and the judges are still deliberating over category prizes for the entire hackathon, the Judge’s Choice Awards for in-person participants has already made some GalaChain hackers into big winners!
Caption: (Left to Right): Jason Brink, Team NFTD, Team NoREST, Team Corgi AI3D Forever (+ data dog)
The winners of the in-person Judges’ Choice Awards took home a combined $450,000 prize pool! The awards are far from over though, as more than $500k of prizes will soon be awarded for the rest of the general category winners!
Congratulations to the winners of The Judges’ Choice awards… and a special thanks to all the judges who joined us for this major development event!
Caption: Check out the presentation for the first place Judges’ Choice – NFTD!
Innovation on Chain
Each of the three teams picked by the judges contributed massively to GalaChain, but that only scratches the surface of what came out of this hackathon!
💜 The Fuzzle Prime team participated in the GalaChain hackathon from @GoGalaGames, and we're thrilled to share our journey with you.
Below, you'll find three links to explore the results of our hard work. Dive in and discover the innovation! 🥂
Those in-person represented just a portion of total participants, and there were projects that we haven’t even touched on yet diligently coding away through the 24-hours. We want to give each of those projects a chance to get the attention they deserve. Expect us to be talking more about individual efforts in the near future after our chain team has had time to appreciate the nuance of each project.
Open source development isn’t just a sprint and then done. Everything that is crafted on chain creates more tools and opens the floodgates for better and better innovations.
Those gates are open on GalaChain, and this is just the first trickle of the torrent to come.
Thanks for Joining Us!
Whether you were laboriously swatting bugs and troubleshooting code all night along with us or you were at home just following along on Discord or our livestreams… thank you! The GalaChain Hackathon is about creating a better ecosystem for our community, and not only the techies among us benefit from that. Your comments, suggestions, support and excitement are a vital part of this process. Even if you’re not actively building on GalaChain, GalaChain is building for you!
Many of us were traveling home from GDC and the GalaChain Hackathon over the weekend, and we’ve finally had a chance to browse back through some of those hidden gems hiding in our phones…
Check out just a quick glimpse of what the HQ of the GalaChain Hackathon was like throughout the event!
Getting Started
Swag, ✔️Little local flavor before the main eventThe calm before the storm…
Time to get down to business…
Who has time for a lunch break!?Great demo w/ Trenton Potgieter, AI/ML & Analytics Lead at AWS!Wrecks on the scene!I’ve definitely worked with worse views…At a hackathon you never have to puzzle through a problem alone!
Wrapping up…
NFT Tower Defense… NFTD. This passionate group of community devs went above and beyond to create an awesome game!CorgiAI blew minds in their presentationA sleep well earned.
We hope all the hackers had a blast during the event! We know that those that made it to the HQ were only some of everyone who participated across the world… we hope everyone out there had as good a time hacking GalaChain as we did!
GALAthon has finally come to its close, but the innovations it spawned will continue to incubate and grow in the minds of their creators. For the past 24 hours, this event was the talk of the cryptosphere, presenting GalaChain to the world as a petri dish of innovation, collaboration, and groundbreaking developments in the blockchain world.
Before we all rest for a long nap, it’s time to ease the anticipation of the entire web3 ecosystem with the eagerly awaited announcement of our “Judges’ Favorites” winners.
A Showcase of Pioneering Talent
GALAthon brought together some of the brightest minds in the industry, giving hackers a chance to demonstrate their web3 prowess, game development and digital artistry. The diversity of projects submitted has been nothing short of remarkable, reflecting the vast potential and dynamic nature of the web.
The Role of Our Esteemed Judges
Our panel of judges has had the challenging task of evaluating these innovative projects. Their expertise and insights have been instrumental in identifying entries that not only showcase technical excellence but also embody the spirit of innovation and community engagement.
The Judges’ Favorites
The “Judges’ Favorites” segment of the GalaChain Hackathon is a much-anticipated moment, where each judge selects a project that resonates with them on a personal or professional level. These picks are not just endorsements of the projects’ current achievements but also a nod to their potential impact on the future of gaming, entertainment, and blockchain utility.
Without further preamble, let’s get into the Judges’ Favorites.
Left to right: Jason Brink, NFTD team, Team NoRest, Team Corgi AI3D Forever
3) Corgi AI3D Forever
With generative AI hot in the news, we were extraordinarily pleased to see an onsite entry with such promise that focused on generative AI using GalaChain.
This team successfully created the world’s first AI3D x LLM “AI Virtual Human” to be minted on a blockchain, and GalaChain is proud to have been that blockchain.
Basically, AI3D is a plan for a system that allows users to create and configure a 3D person that will “live forever on GalaChain.” Primary characteristics and programming for your AI can actually be stored on GalaChain with UUID (Universally Unique Identifiers), ensuring the permanence (immortality) of your AI companion.
AI3D essentially bridges the gap between Large Language Models and the blockchain ledger, allowing users to input commands and iterations for their AI that are digested and remembered by the blockchain.
While we don’t have much to share, hopefully we will see a lot more from this San Francisco based development team, pushing the limits and possibilities of generative AI in blockchain tech. Well done!
2) Team NoRest: RESTful API for GalaChain
Team NoRest clinches second place by introducing a transformative RESTful API for GalaChain. This open-source project simplifies interactions with GalaChain, offering functionalities like token balance checks, token grants and automatic minting on startup. Designed to make blockchain more accessible, Team NoRest’s API lowers barriers for developers eager to explore GalaChain’s capabilities.
Key Features and Future Vision: Beyond its current offerings, Team NoRest outlines future enhancements including user registration for custodial wallets and extended token contract functionalities. Their focus on ease of use, with a “Plug n’ Play” approach, promises a user-friendly ecosystem that invites more developers to innovate on GalaChain.
Team NoRest’s project is a notable step towards bridging traditional web technologies with the blockchain, significantly expanding GalaChain’s potential applications. Congratulations to Team NoRest for their pioneering work and for setting new standards in blockchain accessibility and developer engagement!
1) NFTD
The overall Judges’ Favorite winner is a gaming project built by well-known members of the Gala community, collectors of Gala Games NFTs from way back.
Beautifully demonstrating interoperability with existing GalaChain NFTs, the team created a fully playable alpha playtest build for their aptly named game, Non-Fungible Tower Defence.
In addition to designing and GalaChain integrating a well planned and brilliantly executed playable project, this team presented a comprehensive and transparent slideshow presentation, complete with animated slides and aesthetic appeal. To learn more about Non-Fungible Tower Defence, check out their presentation HERE.
Incredible job to Deadily, Timboslice and Cryptograham for an extraordinary effort at GALAthon. Thanks for participating, and we hope the prize will empower your team to greater heights and innovations in web3 than you imagined!
After closing this important chapter of Gala history, we reflect on the incredible journey of discovery, growth and innovation that this event represents. GALAthon may be over, but the ripple effects of the projects showcased and the connections formed will be felt long into the future. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all participants and a special word of thanks to our judges, whose contributions have been invaluable.
Announcements about additional winners as outlined in this blog will come within the next couple weeks, as the GalaChain team has time to examine and evaluate the multitude of remote entries.
Thanks for your participation! Let’s do it again soon.
A hackathon is about collaborative development, but it’s also about getting your work in front of the eyes of experts! We’ve assembled a diverse group of incredibly qualified professionals to help us judge this hackathon.
GALAthon Prizes The excitement surrounding the 24-hour GALAthon Hackathon San Francisco event on March 20th and 21st continues to build ...
These are the industry veterans who will be judging projects at the upcoming hackathon. Each of them brings unique skills and experience to the table, giving a very broad perspective to analyze the innovations from the event as a group.
You don’t have to make it to this hackathon to build the future on GalaChain
Rising to the Top
Every participant in the hackathon (virtual or in-person) who submits a presentation at the end of the event will be able to have their project reviewed by our judges.
Tons of prizes will be available – including nearly $1million in USDT, piles of AWS Credits and sweet Alienware kit!
