Web3 Foundation Arrives In India with a Polkadot Buildathon

Polkadot announces the launch of their India Hackathon “Polkadot Buildathon: India” aimed at developers and entrepreneurs driving the Web3 wave in India; Winners of the two-month-long hackathon to win prizes from a pool of $14000.

Bangalore, March 30, 2021: Web3 Foundation, a Swiss Foundation that facilitates a fully functional and user-friendly decentralised web in association with Lumos Labs, today announced the launch of the first edition of Polkadot Buildathon: India to build and expand the blockchain developer ecosystem in India. The inaugural edition of the Hackathon aims to empower and equip the developer ecosystem in India with the right set of information to build a blockchain for the Polkadot ecosystem, thereby initiating mass adoption of this next phase of Web3 wave in India. Polkadot, an advanced sharded, multichain network, founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, the Co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum and creator of the Solidity programming language, is the flagship project by the Web3 Foundation.

Spanning over eight weeks, the hackathon will be divided into two phases of four weeks each - the Ideation Phase and the Integration Phase. During the course of the Ideation Phase, the participants will be provided with training workshops to learn basic local node deployment and identify viable real- world problem statements that can be solved on the chain. By the end of the second phase- the Integration Phase, the participants will customise their blockchain solutions adding features that improve their project. The hackathon is open to innovators, blockchain enthusiasts, startups, students and developers from all over India familiar with blockchain technology, or having worked with the programming language Rust in the past. The Hackathon is also looking for developers who can build tooling for existing solutions on Polkadot like Block visualisers, DAOs etc. It also presents a good segue into blockchain technology for new developers looking to venture into this thriving decentralized technology. 

The Hackathon includes incentives such as a $200 USD grant to the top 20 teams that qualify for the first cohort and build their solution using Substrate, the blockchain-building framework utilised by many in the Polkadot ecosystem. The program will be interspersed with multiple meetups, webinars, workshops and will begin with four-week-long ideation support, followed by a four-week-long integration period. The ongoing support ranges from access to tech guidance on projects, networking opportunities, PR support and more. The winning projects will win prizes from a pool of $14,000

“As the world heads towards the next (Web3) wave of the internet, India stands at the forefront of this decentralisation revolution with its vast developer pool, second only to the USA. We at Polkadot recognise the true potential of this demographic and are excited to build a strong community that will further our mission to empower the innovators to build better solutions, and free the society from its reliance on a centralized web where its large institutions can violate trust. Our Polkadot Buildathon: India initiative is a step forward in this direction and we are very excited to kickstart one of our many engagements to come with developers in India.“ Urban Osvald, Growth Manager at Web3 Foundation said.

The flagship project by Web3 Foundation - a Swiss organisation of 50 research scientists founded to facilitate a fully functional and user-friendly decentralised web - Polkadot improves the conventional linear model of a blockchain that frequently faces clogged pipelines and surging transaction fees. It does this by introducing a Relay Chain that allows other blockchains to be built on top of it. The Relay Chain not only processes transactions from these chains in parallel but also allows seamless communication between the parallel chains allowing them to exchange assets across parachains. 

The 8-week long hackathon is launched in partnership with Lumos Labs, an innovation management firm specialising in running technology open innovation programs in India. The registrations are open from today for developers across India and will be open till May 30, 2021.

If you want to learn how to build a blockchain and are excited to apply for Polkadot Buildathon: India. Click here! For more details on the challenge and the registration process, visit - https://polkadot-buildathon.devfolio.co/