It’s been ten years since the inception of blockchain, and using crypto and DApps is still hard. Too hard for the widespread adoption it deserves. Things are getting better: there are many great initiatives to make accessing DApps easier for new users, such as Metamask, Portis, and Torus, but to an extent these are only scratching the surface of great Web 3 user experience. How do we not only lower the barrier of entry, but make every interaction that a user has with a smart contract understandable and safe? As we extend the usage of distributed ledgers from simple value transactions to elaborate smart contracts and realise an open data economy, how do we provide ways for users to interact with it, without creating new centralised gatekeepers?
In this track we want to see DApps on the Convergence Stack that use innovative ways to use the decentralised web securely. We encourage you to think beyond the browser - augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), voice interfaces (VUI), conversational interfaces (CUIs) and NFC tags are all ways to engage with a cryptosystem.
Focus areas: UX
How can you leverage the Convergence Stack to do Good, with a capital G? In this track we invite you create your moonshot for a better world. The crazier, the better.
Focus areas: Learning, Storage, Networking, Middleware, UX
2000 EUR available in prizes in bounties.
ETHBerlin and the Department of Decentralization are coming to Diffusion 2019! We are excited to be hosting a track within the hackathon and there will be bounties of course. There will be Department of Decentralization Community Improvement Bounties focusing on all areas in the Convergence Stack, with a soft focus on Ethereum. Bounty details:
Middleware Community Improvement Bounty: during ETHBerlinZwei, DeFi reigned supreme. We saw incredible projects such as the mixer of mixers S.U.D.Z, Cherry Swap: swapping interest rates using the Compound Protocol, or Ratelock: fixed interest rates for lending/borrowing.
The most innovative DeFi app built at Diffusion 2019 will be awarded 1,000 EUR.
UX Community Improvement Bounty: We are looking for a project that truly moves the needle when it comes to overall User Experience and usability for the ecosystem. Working with a nascent technology it is necessary to address the underwhelming user experience and foster new mental models that users can easily rely upon when interfacing with the complexities of the Web 3 Technology Stack.
This bounty will also be awarded 1,000 EUR.
Networking Community Improvement Bounty: this is a continuation of our initiative with Protocol Labs’ Libp2p. Before ETHBerlin, we sourced feedback from developers building on Cosmos, ETH2.0, Golem and more and identified pain points that Libp2p needed to overcome for a better experience building the core networking stack for technologies such as Cosmos, Polkadot, ETH 2.0, and many others. During ETHBerlinZwei, we offered six bounties.
We are continuing this great work by allocating 1,000 EUR to a Libp2p improvement bounty at Diffusion 2019. The more Libp2p continues to improve, the more teams around the blockchain ecosystem are benefitted! If you would like to contribute to the bounty, the scope is here.
Diffusion is all about Web 3.0 - decentralised, open, user-owned. You are the pioneers. Now how do we onboard the 99% of developers and organisations who are not into Web 3 yet? This track is focused on bridging the world of Web 2 and Web 3. Can you build a DApp that leverages one or more centralised services, while maintaining its openness and decentralised nature?
Submissions in this track are required to integrate at least one centralised service into their DApp, in addition to using the Convergence Stack.
Focus areas: Learning, Storage, Networking, Middleware, UX
The Challenge: Creating the infrastructure for collaborative knowledge networks where questions meet people who want to help answer those questions. An open-source, decentralised network of (curated) ecosystem nodes, where people actually want to find each other. Their stories are bright stars, bound to be connected, only to find out the connection is already there. A winning team will...develop an open-source, scalable solution maximizing the opportunities for bottom-up growth through the Odyssey ecosystem and the ecosystem of its friends and partners, like Diffusion.
Budget and development after Diffusion
There is budget available for developing the open source winning solution after Diffusion. The winner(s) of this challenge are invited to co-develop their Serendipity-solution with us and to test it with 2.000 participants at Odyssey Hackathon, 2-6 April 2020. When successful and with the learnings of this test, all Odyssey friends & partners are invited to run a node of the system, boosting the serendipity:)
Ambition
Since 2017, Odyssey has grown into the largest AI and blockchain hackathon in the world. Anyone who has ever been at Odyssey experiences a network and serendipity effect that is unlike any other hackathon. To get a feel for that serendipity, just have a look at the Odyssey 2019 after movie.
With the Serendipity Network we want to digitise and distribute the serendipity effect of the Odyssey Hackathon experience for everyone in the world and create a network of ecosystems committed to helping each other. Where each actor and ecosystem is connected, not based on who knows whom but on who is working on what and in which context.
Focus areas: UX, Storage, Middleware
Machine learning has taken a great flight over the past decade. The unreasonable effectiveness of data has quickly brought us to a world where machine learning is used in almost every service we use on a daily basis. In parallel, advancements in techniques like federated learning, differential privacy, homomorphic encryption, and tokenization enable us to build secure, privacy-preserving and collectively-owned machine learning.
When data has become a digital asset, how can you leverage it in your DApp? What can you achieve with machine learning with the ever growing open datasets that decentralised systems themselves produce?
Submissions in this track are required to use a form of machine learning. Privacy-preserving forms of machine learning are preferred.
Focus areas: Learning, Storage
The client-server model of computing has been the dominant paradigm for decades. The vast majority of data is kept in silos, and the vast majority of algorithms to deliver value from that data is run by centralised operators. With Web 3 and the Convergence Stack we have the building blocks for different models, bringing the user back in control. Peer to peer protocols, agent-based architectures and distributed ledgers have opened the door to new ways of building ecosystems unified by software. But how do we ensure data reliability and long-term durability when users own their data, while keeping data private? How do we enable access control in decentralised systems? In your system design, what happens at the inevitable point in the future when the cryptographic algorithms break?
In this track we want to see DApps built on the Convergence Stack that use an innovative model of storing and processing data to address these questions.
Focus areas: Storage, UX, Middleware, Learning
Cryptoeconomic systems will allow us to establish new rules and economic incentives for blockchain ecosystems. For the first time in history we will be able to define such systems from scratch and use tokens as a programmable representation of value.
To develop such systems we can apply tools and methods from complex systems engineering. One core element are simulations that allow us to verify a specific system design before launching it to the real world. Over the last months, BlockScience developed a token modeling framework called cadCAD, which already sports a vibrant community.
CommonsStack.org has open-sourced cadCAD at the tegg.io conference in August - it is now available to everyone to start simulating token economies.
The TokenEngineering track seeks developers to use cadCAD to validate and improve a given cryptoeconomic building block, or create one.
In our introductory workshops you’ll learn how to design a token system from scratch, break it down to cryptoeconomic building blocks, think multiple layers of abstraction and use simulations to validate and iterate on a given module. This requires basic knowledge in Python, system dynamics, and token models.
For more details see this Medium post and this Medium post.
Head to the Token Engineering room on 1st floor for kick-off. Attending this session is really important if you want to participate in the Token Engineering track!
Companies are constantly looking for more secure ways to share data over a trusted network, without losing time, reducing trust and ownership. Current Data Exchange Interfaces are central servers, making it hard to scale, access and take control. As we push towards ecosystem infrastructures (Ecostructures) by using blockchain, members will require access rights, safer methods to store data, scalability solutions, as well as a way to monetize data by using tokens.
In this track we would like to see developers develop a role-based data sharing solution, which encompasses digital identifiers to source (locate) data, user roles for access rights via a permissioned blockchain, and build a data marketplace to monetize data.
T-Labs recently launched an example of this with Xride Stax, a decentralised open mobility ecosystem, which facilitates collaboration in communication and data sharing between Riddle & Code, Ubirch, Jolocom, Simple Mobility, and Bundesdruckerei. With benefits such as instant user onboarding, seamless KYC processes, secure machine identities, decreased transaction fees via micropayments and improved availability via decentralized storage.
We would like developers to experiment with identification processes for users and data, attribute-based access control, scalability solutions, smart contracts and tokenized data sharing.
Developers in this track will get access to Stax, the multi-blockchain orchestration suite developed by T-Labs which can be used to spin up infrastructure for Ethereum and other technologies.
Focus Areas: Security, UX, Storage
The Hyperledger project governs a rich set of open source technologies for the decentralised web, including Hyperledger Indy which underpins Sovrin, an important component of the Convergence Stack. Other notable Hyperledger projects include Fabric, one of the most popular platforms for enterprise blockchain networks, Iroha, a modular distributed blockchain platform, and Burrow and Besu, both EVM-based blockchain code bases.
In this track we invite developers to build innovative solutions using self-sovereign identity and verifiable credentials with Hyperledger Indy, Aries and Ursa. Some themes to start with:
- Travel credentials and crossing borders
- Customer relationships in online commerce and offline (retail) commerce, and where they come together
- Internet of Trusted Things: credentials for devices
Additionally, we invite hackers to build with other Hyperledger technologies and combine them with components of the Convergence Stack.
Developers participating in this track will get access to Evernym Verity nodes, which offer a powerful interface to the capabilities of Sovrin and other Hyperledger Indy networks, including credential issuance and verification.
Focus areas: Storage, Middleware, UX
$4,000 available in bounties and prizes for:
- Integrated Credential -- Targeting integration between projects and technologies to use credentials in an innovative way.
- Empowering IoT -- Similar to Integrated Credential, but specifically targeting the use of Credentials in the IoT space.
- Social Impact -- Using SSI and credentials to address a social problem in a meaningful way.
- Travel Enablement -- Using SSI to enable smoother travel for people (and goods).