Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon Proof of Usefulness Hackathon $150k+ Submit your project to get started Submit your project to get started In this interview, we speak with Demetri Rodriguez about Ekstra AI, a project designed to provide privacy-first physical world intelligence. By offering big-box retail-grade insights to small and mid-sized businesses, Ekstra aims to level the playing field without compromising individual privacy. Ekstra AI What does Ekstra AI do? And why is now the time for it to exist? Ekstra is building a privacy-first intelligence layer for the physical world, designed to help people understand how places behave without tracking who individuals are. Today, Ekstra Business brings big-box retail–grade location and foot-traffic insights to small and mid-sized New York City businesses through an intuitive, plain-language interface guided by AI. Together, they establish a more ethical, accessible foundation for how physical spaces are measured and decisions are made. Now’s a good time for Ekstra AI to exist because small businesses need the same analytical power as major corporations to survive, but require a solution that respects growing consumer demand for privacy and ethical data usage. What is your traction to date? How many people does Ekstra AI reach? Current pilot- 53 storefronts in NYC Who does your Ekstra AI serve? What’s exciting about your users and customers? Ekstra Business is built for small and mid-sized businesses in New York City—retailers, cafés, service providers, and local operators—who need reliable location and foot-traffic insight but cannot access or justify enterprise-grade tools. More broadly, Ekstra is designed for cities, developers, and organizations that need physical-world intelligence without relying on personal data or surveillance. What technologies were used in the making of Ekstra AI? And why did you choose ones most essential to your techstack? Ekstra AI leverages a combination of Artificial Intelligence to provide plain-language interfaces and blockchain technology, specifically within the Solana ecosystem, to manage its $XTRA token incentives. This tech stack was chosen to balance the sophisticated data processing required for physical-world analytics with the decentralized, community-driven nature of the DePIN model. What is traction to date for Ekstra AI? Around the web, who’s been noticing? Traction is building through both community engagement and physical deployment, evidenced by a community of nearly 2,000 $XTRA holders and active discussions on Discord and Telegram. On the operational side, the team has successfully conducted door-to-door discovery with approximately 50 NYC businesses, resulting in 53 signed locations for their upcoming spring pilot. Ekstra AI scored a 46 proof of usefulness score(proofofusefulness.com/ekstra-ai-report) Ekstra AI scored a 46 proof of usefulness score(proofofusefulness.com/ekstra-ai-report) proofofusefulness.com/ekstra-ai-report What excites you about this Ekstra AI's potential usefulness? What excites us most is proving that meaningful physical-world intelligence does not require tracking people. Ekstra has the potential to give small businesses the same decision-making power as large corporations while setting a higher standard for privacy, trust, and accessibility. If scaled responsibly, it can change how cities and communities use data—shifting from extraction toward insight that is both useful and humane. Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: brightdata.com Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. 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