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 Today, we are interviewing Yumna Sohail, the creator of PvNP, an early-stage educational project aimed at making complex routing problems accessible. The tool visualizes the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) through animation, helping users grasp combinatorial optimization without getting lost in abstract formulas. PvNP What does PvNP do? And why is now the time for it to exist? This is a TSP solver that runs on a regular laptop & works for both fully and partially connected networks. The product not only computes the optimal route but also visualizes the traversal through an animation. Currently, it supports up to 30 nodes. Now’s a good time for PvNP to exist because the demand for interactive and tangible educational tech is growing, making it crucial to lower the barrier to understanding complex computer science problems for students before scaling up to practical routing and logistics applications. What is your traction to date? How many people does PvNP reach? ~3 (private beta — friends reviewing and testing the MVP) Pre-launch MVP currently in private validation with early testers; public educational rollout planned. Who does your PvNP serve? What’s exciting about your users and customers? Its initial focus is universities and educational institutions where it can be used as a tool for teaching search and optimization problems. The next milestone is to scale the solver’s capabilities and customize it for small to mid-sized delivery and logistics companies. What technologies were used in the making of PvNP? And why did you choose ones most essential to your techstack? While the specifics of the core tech stack remain straightforward, PvNP leverages reliable web-based hosting by deploying its minimum viable product on Render. This ensures the solver runs efficiently on regular laptops while providing smooth animations to visually unpack complex network traversals. What is traction to date for PvNP? Around the web, who’s been noticing? Currently, PvNP is a web-based MVP in private validation that has been successfully demoed to a handful of early users who provided positive feedback on its usability. Over the next few months, the focus will shift towards targeted outreach, aiming to secure 20-50 student users through classroom pilots and coursework integration by university instructors. PvNP scored a 21 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/pvnp) PvNP scored a 21 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/pvnp) https://proofofusefulness.com/report/pvnp What excites you about this PvNP's potential usefulness? What excites me most is making a classic NP-hard problem tangible and interactive for learners. Instead of abstract formulas, students can experiment with real graphs, constraints, and search behavior and immediately see how optimal solutions emerge. This lowers the barrier to understanding combinatorial optimization while also creating a foundation that can scale into practical routing and logistics applications as the solver grows. 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

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PvNP Earns a 21 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building an Interactive TSP Solver and Visualizer

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