Hack-Nostr-On Global Long-Term Hackathon Round 1 Recap

By Shaun, Wendy Ding

YakiHonne, a technology-driven decentralized media protocol, seamlessly connects and provides comprehensive coverage of global high-quality projects and top developers on the Nostr platform.

The Hack-Nostr-On global Hackathon Round 1, hosted by YakiHonne and supported by the DoraHacks platform, successfully concluded on May 28. Round 2 of the Hack-Nostr-On Hackathon began on June 8. This long-term global Hackathon event aims to support the ecological development of Nostr. Four tracks were established for this Hackathon: Relay, Client, NIP Protocol, and Community and Content. Participants from 15 different countries registered 50 projects. After a thorough process of project registration, screening, development, discussion, demonstration, and sharing over 60 days, six projects emerged as winners and secured Hackathon funding.

To further promote the development and effective integration of the Nostr protocol, YakiHonne organized 15 online workshops, 3 live demo sessions, and 2 offline Nostr Meet Up sessions during the Hackathon event. These two offline Meet Ups took place in Hong Kong, China, and Miami, USA respectively, garnering support from prominent core developers of the Nostr ecosystem, the Nostr community, and Bitcoin2023. These events served to strengthen the bonds and unity among members of the Nostr ecosystem. Moving forward, YakiHonne has plans to organize the Berlin Nostr Honne Meet Up in Berlin, Germany, scheduled to take place from July 14 to July 16.

Let's take a look at the features and projects worthy of attention of this Hackthon.

1. A Quick Look at Hack-Nostr-On

Nostr is a simple, open, justice, and neutral early protocol. Nostr, short for "notes and other content transmitted through relays", is developed by the Lightning Network developer fiatjaf, A new communication protocol developed in 2021 that grew out of LNBits developer Ben Arc's attempt at a fully decentralized marketplace called Diagon Alley. Unlike other communication solutions, most of which work through dumb clients and smart servers, Nostr offers smart clients and dumb servers. Relay only provides the ability to store data, and the client can customize business logic, communication logic, and governance capabilities, thereby improving the user's ability to resist censorship.

In December 2022, the Nostr community received funding of 14 BTC from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, which brought unprecedented attention to the protocol.

As a currency-free protocol, Nostr not only has huge space and possibilities to bring development to decentralized applications but at the same time, more builders are needed to join in the construction. As a Nostr-based long-content media protocol, YakiHonne deeply understands the importance of Nostr’s early infrastructure construction, Start preparations in March 2023 and get support from Dorahacks, one of the most active geek platforms in the world, officially launched the global long-term Nostr Hackathon on April 1: Hack-Nostr-On, Aims to promote more ideas, applications, and functional problem solving; meanwhile, YakiHonneOrganize all-round activities of Nostr ecology, especially the global technology workshop, report various progress of Nostr ecology and sponsor Nostr ecology curators and creators to conduct research and creation.

2. Hack-Nostr-On Round1 Features

1）Attract global Nostr Builders to build together

Setting up four tracks, not only developers but also community builders and communicators can join together:

• NIP: Functional construction and optimization of the Nostr protocol to support more applications.
• Relay: Design or optimize the Relay network, incentive mechanism, filtering algorithm, storage possibility, etc.
• Clients: Various clients and developer tools built on top of Nostr.
• Community and content: Spread the Nostr protocol and promote the development of the Nostr community.

A total of 50 projects participated in these 4 tracks, and they came from more than 10 countries and regions around the world, such as the United States, Germany, Argentina, El Salvador, Belgium, Spain, India, China, Hong Kong, and South Korea. During the entire Hackathon event, whether it is NIP, Relay, community and content, or client track, the participants have proposed/developed many highly innovative projects, fully releasing their unique talents and creativity. At the same time, Nostr enthusiasts and developers all over the world can feel the culture and enthusiasm of participation from different communities around the world.

2）Healthy Competition Workshop and Demo Live

In the 60-day Hackathon event, various online activities held every week are also the core part of Round 1 activities. With the enthusiastic participation of project Builders, YakiHonne successfully held 15 online workshop live broadcasts and 3 demo live sessions. Through the workshop, 15 project teams shared Nostr-related knowledge and project development experience. Through the online Demo live, more than 20 projects showed different innovative demos to the judges and all audiences. As of the end of the event, it has attracted more than 15,000 people to watch the online live broadcast, and had instant interaction with more than 300 offline guests, successfully providing a space and place for Nostr ecological builders to share and communicate.

3）Linking and exposuring online and offline

While carrying out the online Hackathon, YakiHonne also innovatively held two offline meetups, "Hong Kong Nostr Honne" and "Miami Nostr Honne", in April "Honh Kong Web3 Festival" and "Miami bitcoin 2023 Conference" in May respectively. Through the direct connection between online global high-quality Hackathon projects and offline Nostr ecological top developers and professional enthusiasts, the development status of Nostr ecological builders will be shared with the world in real-time, and many well-known judges will participate in roundtable discussions.

The two Meetups attracted more than 200 top developers from all over the world to participate in the event. They were well received beyond expectations and were rated as the most valuable and innovative Nostr side events.

HongKong Nostr Honne Event - Taken on April 14, 2023 in Hong Kong

Miami Nostr Honne event pictures - taken in Miami on May 20, 2023

3. Review of some exciting projects

Prize A：

ONOSENDAI：A reference cyberspace client based on Nostr's truly decentralized metaverse protocol, its goal is to create an extension of reality in the digital space. Detail ｜ Workshop

Prize B：

Confstr：A censorship-resistant open-source conferencing app powered by Nostr for iOS, Android, and the Web. Detail

N.O.M.A.D：This project will revolutionize Nostr through innovative NIPs, reshape the decentralized landscape, enhance user experience, and unlock infinite possibilities. Detail ｜ Workshop

Prize C：

Bitcoin Library：A decentralized and community-driven educational platform for Bitcoin based on the Nostr protocol. Detail ｜ Workshop

RoadRunner：Committed to providing a decentralized peer-to-peer platform for locating and organizing ride-sharing opportunities, and leveraging the Nostr Network for communication and the Lightning Network for financial settlement. Detail ｜ Workshop

Flamewerk：Using AI to build a PWA with decentralized integration allows users to create websites, apps, stores, and communities within 10 minutes for free. Detail ｜ Workshop

Others：

Hodl.ar：An open-source SDK for the community that enables users to quickly join their autonomy stack without technical knowledge. Simplifies the process of setting up a personal node with Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Own Cloud, NOSTR Relay, and more with simple step-by-step guides. Detail ｜ Workshop

la crypta community：Accelerating users' hands-on experience with the Nostr protocol by introducing an all-in-one open-source stack. Detail ｜ Workshop

zapddit：A Reddit-style client for Nostr. Detail

Denny：Secure, private, and decentralized group chat messaging tool on Nostr. Detail

4. At Last

As the first round of the Nostr Global Hackathon initiated by YakiHonne, this event has come to a successful conclusion.

YakiHonne held this event to link the global Nostr ecology developers, further strengthen and promote the development and cooperation of the global Nostr ecology, and add vitality to the diversity and innovation of the Nostr ecology. Through YakiHonne's events, participants showcased innovative projects and solutions while strengthening their connections and partnerships.

The projects in these Hackathons play an active role in the Nostr ecosystem and are destined to create a prosperous and sustainable future for the global Nostr community.

YakiHonne's continuous exploration of the Nostr ecology has just begun. We will use more diverse and more affluent forms to fund and actually participate in the development and construction of the Nostr ecology's infrastructure.

Let's keep participating Hack-Nostr-On Round2 !

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