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 look at a tool designed to decentralize spam protection and reputation management. We are speaking with Leon Acosta, the creator of Nostr WoT, a browser extension that puts the Web of Trust layer directly inside the user's browser. Nostr WoT What does Nostr WoT do? And why is now the time for it to exist? nostr-wot is a browser extension that puts the Web of Trust layer inside the browser. Any Nostr app become wot-enabled at download time, and can query the extension with two lines of code. The trust calculation runs on the user's own social graph, with parameters they control, and travels with them across every client they use. Now’s a good time for Nostr WoT to exist because as decentralized social networks grow, users need portable, self-sovereign tools to manage trust and filter content without relying on the moderation policies of specific client developers. What is your traction to date? How many people does Nostr WoT reach? It's a new project. However, we already published in Chrome store and Firefox addons. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nostr-wot-extension/gfmefgdkmjpjinecjchlangpamhclhdo https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/nostr-wot-extension/gfmefgdkmjpjinecjchlangpamhclhdo https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nostr-wot-extension/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nostr-wot-extension/ Who does your project serve? What’s exciting about your users and customers? Every Nostr site becomes WoT-enabled the moment a user installs the extension—no client needs to do anything. It reduces development time for client builders; there’s no need to implement WoT from scratch. With just two lines of code, it works. Users don’t have to depend on clients to implement trust. One install works everywhere—no more accepting whatever the app decides for you. What technologies were used in the making of Nostr WoT? And why did you choose the ones most essential to your tech stack? The core technology driving this project is the Nostr protocol, which facilitates the decentralized exchange of social data. By building this as a cross-browser extension, we chose a stack that allows the software to act as a local oracle; this ensures that complex trust calculations happen on the client side, maintaining user privacy and portability across different web-based Nostr clients. Nostr Nostr WoT scored a 57 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/nostr-wot) Nostr WoT scored a 57 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/nostr-wot) https://proofofusefulness.com/report/nostr-wot What excites you about this project's potential usefulness? What excites me most is that this tackles a long-standing problem—handling transient failures—but does so in a way that feels genuinely underexplored in the Swift ecosystem. While retry logic itself isn’t new, there’s been a gap in how cleanly and natively it integrates with modern async/await workflows. That leaves a lot of room for innovation. 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. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: more Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Start for free . Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Learn more

This story contains AI-generated text. The author has used AI either for research, to generate outlines, or write the text itself. 

Between Two Computer Monitors: This story includes an interview between the writer and guest/interviewee. 

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Video Wizard Earns a 43 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building an AI-Powered Video Content Analysis Platform

Typhoon Earns a 46 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building Robust Retry Policies for Asynchronous Swift Operations

Nostr WoT Earns a 57 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building a Portable Web of Trust Layer for the Browser

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