ETHDenver Hackathon finalists take new aim at adoption barriers

Data protection, real-world interactions, and DAO infrastructure highlighted the finalists of the ETHDenver Hackathon.

At the ETHDenver conference closing ceremony on Sunday, 30 hackathon finalists presented their project to hundreds of people on the Sports Castle website, a variety of presentations mostly focused on solving common pain points in the Ethereum ecosystem.

With teams vying for up to $5,000 in grand prizes across multiple categories, even the finalists are likely to garner plenty of attention from venture capitalists and angel investors, a popular trend in a crowded, cash-hungry, and greedy investing space.

In the DeFi category, submissions like Dust Sweeper, which collects and trades small amounts of tokens or “dust” that would be expensive to consolidate into other currencies, and SlowSwap, an AMM that avoids SRM with delayed trades, focus on user colic Mimicry Protocol and Bunker.finance focused on loans and derivatives for NFTs respectively.

Likewise, DAO-focused presentations focused on solving common problems for emerging organizations.

The second Solana hackathon has successfully concluded with interest from projects all over the world. Our chads @OmniscientAsian, @ttx0x and @cweihan took this opportunity to go through all the projects and drop some free alpha. Here are some interesting ones to monitor:

— Sino Global Capital (@SinoGlobalCap) June 14, 2021

Background Network introduced a DAO that outsourced helpdesk and community management tasks, while AcademyONE focused on offering rewards for creating and consuming educational content.

A few surprisingly compelling games stood out in the Metaverse and Gaming category: INDAO, a sci-fi title that produces performance, and MoonScape, a fantasy RPG that uses NFTs for gameplay elements.

Perhaps the most interesting presentations, however, focused on data protection with the use of zero-knowledge proofs as well as greater integration with the real world.

ZKmaps would use ZK evidence to allow users to prove that they were present in a specific geographic location at a specific time without revealing their precise location.

Zk Proof of Buffness, on the other hand, proves that a user has an NFT from a specific collection without revealing which specific NFT they have.

IdentDeFi introduced a privacy-friendly KYC architecture, while ExchangeIt! introduced a real commodity exchange platform leveraging smart contract custody and DAO dispute resolution.

The full list of the ETHDenver Hackathon category winners will be released in the coming days.