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Building on Bitcoin: Hackathon & Pitch Winners
Recorded: June 6, 2024 Duration: 0:49:18Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hello, everybody.
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you may be tuning in from around
the world.
We're going to go ahead and get started here in just one moment as we have a few more speakers
making their way to the stage.
So bear with us for just one more minute.
All right. Well, everybody, let's go ahead and get started. We got a lot to talk about today because last week was a ton of building, building on Bitcoin.
That is, there were a number of hackathons and building events across the world that were all focused around Bitcoin.
We're just coming off the heels of the consensus conference in Austin, where there was a few hackathons and pitch competitions.
There were also some that took place in Europe as well.
So we're going to dive into what happened at some of these, who some of the projects were, what some of the teams came out with on the other side of the hackathon after anywhere from 54 to 72 hours of nonstop building as well.
And also, if this is your first time joining us, welcome to this week's Crypto Internet Show.
This is our regular series talking about everything stacks, the broader ecosystem, and building on Bitcoin layers.
Everything spoken about here today is for educational purposes only.
It is not financial advice.
And please do your own research.
As we wait for the last speaker to join the stage, a big shout out this summer, July, Bitcoin Builders Conference is coming back.
And this time, we're going to Nashville.
Please join us.
We'd love to have you either as a speaker or as an attendee or just come hang out.
Nonetheless, have a good time with us and talk about what's going on in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Check out bitcoinbuilders.io to sign up for that.
And we've got one other exciting event that we'll toss out at the end of today's session.
That said, let's do a quick round of intros as we do have one more speaker joining.
So I want to make sure that they have enough time to get up on stage.
Louis, quick intro.
Is it good morning for you, Kyle, or good afternoon?
All of the above.
All of the above.
Good day.
It's a good day.
Good day.
Good day.
That's a better one.
Well, I'm Louis Goss.
I'm the CEO and co-founder at Ryder, which is a crypto wallet with an app, hardware, and recovery tag that makes hardware wallets simple to use and easy to recover.
That's pretty much it.
Love it.
Thank you very much.
Christopher, quick intro.
Hello, hello.
Christopher Perceptions, CMP for short, CEO of NoCodeClarity at the intersection of Building on Bitcoin through Stacks, AI, and NoCode, launching as of June 20th.
So very excited about that.
Ooh, a little alpha there.
Christopher, congratulations on the launch upcoming here in about two weeks.
That's very, very exciting.
And then lastly, because we're joined by an awesome all-star of Teams, the last intro I want to get out there is Adam.
Quick intro, please.
Hey, everyone.
My name is Adam Hahn.
I lead the community programming efforts at the Stacks Foundation and work with a lot of the builders who are coming up to the Stacks ecosystem.
So happy to be here with you again, Kyle, and looking forward to our chat.
Same, same, Adam.
And let's kick it off together, man.
Hackathons.
There were a number of hackathons that happened over what seems like the last 10 days, maybe two weeks.
Everything between non-fungible conference.
We also had efforts in Lisbon going on over in Europe and then in ConsenSys as well.
Can you give us the TLDR and kind of what went down maybe with ConsenSys?
And Louis, I believe you were participating and supporting as well at the non-fungible conference.
But I'd love to hear from both of you why these locations, what happened at these conferences, and just kind of a summary.
Yeah, I'll start with Lisbon.
I mean, so both of those two events specifically rolled out in a matter of just four or five days total.
So in Lisbon, you know, Ileana, also from the Stacks Foundation, Ileana Malacreno, led all of the efforts for putting together the first in-person Ready Layer 2 competition.
So for those who don't know, Ready Layer 2 is a pitch competition and hackathon depending on what the initiative that we're trying to pull off is.
And we've done it online twice.
And this time around, we did it in person.
And as I mentioned, Ileana spearheaded that.
She got lots of support from incredible all-stars in the ecosystem like Louis.
And they did a one-day in-person event and had tons of success.
Louis was there, so he can sort of speak to that more.
But then just two days later, we had the Consensus Hackathon that ran from Wednesday through Friday.
And this was something that we were very confident in was going to be a success.
The past two years, really, all the hackathon participation we've had has always been strictly Stacks ecosystem.
This was the first multi-chain hackathon that we participated in as long as I can remember.
The reason we were open to that is because we do kind of like getting exposure to other ecosystems,
but also because the organizing partner of that event was EZA.
And we've held two hackathons with EZA as our partner just one month ago in Boston.
And that was our first of 2024.
And then we did it again last fall in London in 2023.
Both these hackathons had hundreds of turnouts, incredible projects, dozens of submissions.
So we were really, really optimistic about going into this Consensus Hackathon.
And, you know, and they didn't disappoint.
We had great, really talented developers come from multiple countries, you know, cities all over the world, multi-continental.
And yeah, it was really great to see.
I think the one thing, just as a little teaser, that I was most proud of was seeing return builders.
You know, one thing I think lots of people and builders and ecosystems talk about is acquisition, acquisition, more users, more builders.
But for me personally, it's so much more rewarding when we get higher retention from these builders.
And to see lots of people that we've already interacted with and met at a previous hackathon,
travel such great distances to participate in another hackathon that was just so enjoyable to see and very rewarding for us.
That's incredible.
Louis, I want to share a little bit of what you saw take place in Lisbon.
Yeah, I feel old now because somebody said an all-star in OG.
It reveals my age and how I've been long in the ecosystem now.
Anyways, not to derail and change topic, I went to Lisbon.
Well, I should get a medal, first of all, for attending three meetups for Stacks.
For the Nakamoto thing, I did San Francisco, Lisbon, and Amsterdam.
So Adam, I deserve a big medal for that one.
I'm a big supporter of Stacks, as you know, guys.
For Lisbon one, there were like a few key projects.
I think that was very, very nice.
So the one was factoring and they were able to deploy smart contracts during that day, which I think is pretty impressive.
So they had the idea, they built it, deployed the contracts on Mainnet.
For me, it was super impressive when it comes to implementation and just doing like a pitch.
The next one is Mateo.
Mateo is actually here.
So I don't want to steal the thunder, but I think it's better to get a quick fill from the participant.
Mateo.
Hey, guys.
Can you hear me well?
Yeah, loud and clear.
Give us a little bit of your experience at the hackathon and what you and your team put together and what the end product was.
Yes, very happily.
Yes, the hackathon went very well.
It was a very great event.
A lot of cool people, very interesting connections to do as well.
And of course, at the end, a little bit of chill at the end of the day.
And the pitching went very well.
We presented Photon, which is our Layer 2 for Bitcoin, which is the first UTXO-based Layer 2 focused on the ability of creating ZK Knowledge Proof very easily and leveraging the scaling of UTXO model.
But yes, all the projects were very interesting.
So we were one of the many that participated and the event inside was a great success.
So what drove you to participate in this hackathon?
I mean, to build something in just under three days with a team and specifically in the ecosystem of Bitcoin, what drove you to this hackathon more than some of the other hackathons that you may have participated in the past?
Well, we were building already this Layer 2 for Bitcoin and we didn't show it to anybody before that day.
So we were really happy to actually present it for the first time ever and was very nice to do it there because it was Layer 2 competition in this case.
And it was very well welcomed by judges, for example, and the people around that listened to the pitch.
So, yes, it was a very good opportunity to present a Layer 2 that is very different from the ones that exist or they are being built so far.
Very cool. Mateo, I'm going to come back to you on that and want to hear a little bit more on the UTXO L2 side as well.
I know it's a hot topic, so we'll come back to that in just a little bit.
Luis, all right, so let's keep going.
So you got the chance to see Mateo participate.
Any other takeaways from Lisbon and or your two other Stacks events?
Yeah, biggest takeaway, building on Bitcoin is the coolest thing in Web3.
I think that's pretty much it, right?
So, I mean, you've seen it, Kyle.
I mean, you did a lot of narrative building and I'm going to spoke back in 2021.
And in 2021, I met Mark McKenzie, you know, and also Brian Laughlin for Ordinals Ball.
We were talking about NFTs on Bitcoin on Coindesk and it wasn't a thing.
And now there's an entire NF summit for Ordinals, which is NFTs basically on Bitcoin three years later.
So, you know, you're an OG when 2021, you're already pitching about absent smart contracts on Bitcoin.
And now everybody's building on Bitcoin.
It's just, I think, amazing to see like a room back with builders, founders, and just like VCs talking about what's possible on Bitcoin.
That's like my main takeaway.
That's incredible.
Thank you, Louis.
And speaking of building Bitcoin, let's dive a little bit into Ryder for half a second.
You and the team have been building, you know, this pretty outstanding product over the last couple of years.
What has been some of your experience after attending these meetups and these hackathons?
What has your experience been in the past to now revitalized enthusiasm going forward?
I mean, Kyle, no, I think as a founder, one of the biggest struggles that we had before was his raising capital, right?
There's not really a lot of capital for teams building on Bitcoin.
But I feel now as a founder, just like capitals left and right, you know, like people are throwing checks at me left and right.
And I think it's fascinating to see because before I know how hard it is, it's just so, I think circa 2021, it was so hard.
It's like pulling teeth, especially like during the bear market, it's very dry.
And now, as long as you have Bitcoin on the deck, I think anybody can pull a check.
Building on Bitcoin is not only fun, it's cool, but also it's important as well.
To Lewis's point, we've seen this narrative being built over the last couple of years and now really come to fruition as well.
Thank you, Lewis, and appreciate the commitment across three events at once, almost a traveling space and time as well.
Adam, coming back to you, let's dive into ConsenSys and the EZA Hackathon.
This seemed to be quite the effort and the undertaking across multiple ecosystems.
As you said, it was a multi-chain hackathon.
What were some of your big takeaways?
I mean, this one was 72 hours as the past, if I'm correct.
The one in London was 54 hours.
So the teams had almost an entire extra day to really focus on building their products out and also building on Bitcoin.
So what were some of your takeaways after three days of building?
Yeah, that was a big one, the extra day of building.
And I also think the majority of the teams saved a lot of time at the start of the competition where they might not have to have so much pressure on forming a team.
Because from a lot of the teams that participated in this consensus when they were already preformed.
So that kind of speaks truth to the value of the retention aspect that I was mentioning before, is that a lot of these people kind of knew exactly what they were getting into.
From what they wanted to build, who they were going to build it with, maybe the scope of their project, and a really big familiarity with the actual technology itself.
We did add a little bit more to our Clarity workshop.
So Kenny Rogers, Dev Advocate at the Foundation, always leads these incredible workshops that demonstrate to people what Clarity is, how to utilize it.
And he did that again at this one.
And so kind of just like setting the tone right there as this hackathon is focused on Clarity, here's how to access it.
And knowing that all the participants had all the tools and resources they did right from the beginning and then three days to build.
I think that just gave so much additional, was so much of an additional value to the participants, but then also to the judges and the mentors.
Because you're kind of just working with an overall higher caliber of quality all around.
The other thing was this one, this hackathon for the Stacks protocol was a little bit more focused.
So previously we've kind of had these sort of more grander, vaguer type of themes.
So in the past we've done Bitcoin and AI, we've done scaling Bitcoin for themed tracks.
This one was you could really do anything you wanted to.
There weren't any specific niches, verticals, themes, but you did have to have a strong correlation and utilization of Clarity.
So we wanted to make sure that this was solely focused on Clarity.
And that was sort of another sort of like expectation that we could set very early on in the process.
And then just giving everyone the additional time and open office hours.
You know, we always have set office hours, but the supporters of the Stacks ecosystem are so supportive that they're always there and available to help and serve people throughout the entire event.
So all of those things took place within this, you know, three-day hackathon, and it was really great to see the final outcomes.
Chris, your thoughts.
You were there supporting, you were there mentoring when it comes to Clarity, Mr. No-Code Clarity.
What were some of your thoughts and takeaways from the event?
Yeah, I'm honestly excited to see all of the builders that are coming to Stacks.
As Lewis mentioned, the narrative of building on Bitcoin is now in, and it is cool.
And I feel like Stacks is not only the leading L2, but it's also the best place for innovation from the standpoint of leveraging Clarity, because there's so much opportunity.
Obviously, we have critical bounties that the Stacks Foundation has launched and is available for anyone that wants to contribute.
And I think that a lot of these builders, they are not only creating new nascent opportunities, but they also are setting themselves up for future funding, potentially, by contributing to the ecosystem, not just being a, as Adam and I kind of call it.
Some people are hackathon mercenaries, and that's cool, you know, but we're really big into making sure that people can get into the ecosystem, that they can meet people like Hero Gamer, and they can get involved and need grants.
So I think that the hackathon serves as the perfect, I would dare say, kind of retention hub where people get introduced, they learn Clarity, or they get a chance to experience Clarity, and then they're able to say, hey, wait a minute, there's something happening here, and this is the leading Bitcoin L2.
So one of the biggest things that I really enjoyed was seeing the first and second place people who are actually here, so that's Gekko and Punchstarter, and I would love for them to kind of talk a little bit about their project, but creating really novel use cases and opportunities, leveraging Clarity, and creating full-fledged products.
Like, these aren't things that were just built as hackathon things, and then they close their repo, but these are things that could get funding, potentially, and I believe will, but I'll let them take it from there.
I love it. Thank you, Chris. That said, Gekko team, and also we do have the winners as well from Ready Layer 2.
We're going to bounce back and forth. Let's start with number one, the winner of the EZA Hackathon, Gekko and the Gekko team. Are you here with us?
Love to hear from you. And then I believe it's Drexfy or Drexfy. We're going to grab you next. Gekko.
Hey, everybody. Yeah, my name is JJ. I'm from London. My background is in cybersecurity, and my intro into Stacks was at the EZA London Hackathon, and then again at the Boston Hackathon, and then most recently at this consensus where I built Gekko.
And Gekko is the first static analyzer for Clarity smart contracts to find security vulnerabilities in the code, and how it works is a user would just provide a smart contract, and this can either be deployed
or by providing the actual code they want to test locally, and it will analyze the contract and report if there are any vulnerabilities.
I think the repo explains it in more technical detail, and I can talk to anyone after, but yeah, so I built this in three days, so there is still a lot of development, but I'm excited for the security space around Clarity because I think there's a big need for tools and security in this space,
and I think from a technical perspective, Clarity by design is already more secure than other smart contract languages, and it makes it really interesting with the type of tools we can develop and the way we can kind of tackle the problem of security.
So I'm really excited about security in this space, and I'm glad to be in this ecosystem.
JJ, we're happy to have you, and what was kind of the inspiration leading up to this?
I mean, entering into a hackathon, you've got a world of possibilities that you can build.
What was that inspiration that drove you and your team to put this together?
Yeah, I think like Chris said, I've done previous hackathons before, and because the previous hackathon tracks were quite focused on maybe DeFi or something else that wasn't really with my experience,
we kind of just built products out that we didn't really want to follow through with.
But because this kind of leverages a big need, that there are a need for security tools in this ecosystem, plus all my background,
it was a kind of perfect combination of building something that is valuable and needed, that I can really continue out the development and provide a lot of value to the ecosystem.
So I think, yeah, combining those two together was what made me build this up.
And participating in the hackathon, again, it's a multi-chain hackathon.
There's a ton of developers from around the world hanging out in Austin at ConsenSys.
What was maybe a summary of your experience participating in such an event over three days with all these different chains around you and then selecting stacks and building up Bitcoin at the end?
Yeah, I think I really like Clarity.
It's a really interesting language, and I think there's a lot that we could do with security tools as well.
And that was kind of an obvious choice why I was going to build in the stacks ecosystem.
It was a very long three days of just coding straight.
So I didn't really get to talk to many people, but it was worth it in the end.
Did you get some good pizza?
Yeah.
Some good treats?
Okay, okay.
As long as you got some good pizza, that's all that matters.
Awesome.
Well, thank you very much, Gecko, and congratulations as well.
Next up, let's see.
I believe we have the PunchStarter team who got second.
Do we have the team here with us?
Let's see.
Yeah, I'm here.
Oh, right on.
Welcome.
Hey, Adam.
So maybe, yeah, just a summary of what PunchStarter was and your experience of winning.
Yeah, so PunchStarter was a, you can call it kind of a social crowdfunding platform.
So we looked at platforms like Kickstarter, where there is crowdfunding, but it's actually
kind of hard to find products.
And compared it to a place like Reddit, where, you know, finding stuff just happens really
naturally as people upvote things.
And we really just combined the two.
So it was kind of like product hunt, but with a crowdfunding aspect.
All right, Adam, let's go down one level deeper.
Crowdfunding industry has been around for over a decade.
What prompted you and your team to invoke change into it?
And why on Bitcoin?
Yeah, so this gets into more of the actual aspect that's happening on chain.
So we implemented a clarity.
So the part that actually happens on chain is the crowdfunding, where we put out a clarity
smart contract and people fund that contract.
And to prevent, like, scams in the crowdfunding space, because that's what typically happens
with crowdfunding is the money is crowdfunded and then just sent off to the person.
And there's no oversight afterwards.
And so with our system, they crowdfund the smart contract.
And then the funders have an ability to actually, like, track the project afterwards.
Not all of the money is sent at once.
They're sent an initial first portion.
And then after that, the funders have to vote on milestones that the creator submits to them
to show them that they're actually making progress.
Huge.
Congratulations.
And what was your experience over three days, similar to JJ and his team?
You guys are hanging out for 72 hours.
Pizza all around.
I'm sure there was good treats and good snacks as well as provided.
But being in a room with all these developers, all these different networks, what led you to choose Bitcoin to build on?
But then also, what was your experience overall in the hackathon?
Yeah, I mean, it was a great experience.
We ended up building Punchstarter out for four different chains, Stacks being one of them.
We actually, we ended up starting this project as raised at the Boston hackathon a month ago.
And so it was really a continuation of that.
And so Stacks was really just the, you know, they were the natural chain for us to keep building on.
We had already sort of built out the Clarity smart contracts.
We did a lot of improving at the actual consensus hackathon on those smart contracts.
But they were kind of the natural choices.
They were the one that we ended up starting out on.
And Adam, since you participated in the hackathon previously, what was, what did you notice as a difference, if any,
between what was happening in Boston and then what was happening in Austin?
I think the quality of projects was pretty big.
There was a pretty big difference.
I think the quality was very, very, the quality at consensus was very high.
And it was pretty hard to compete with that, especially when you have people like JJ building.
So that was a lot of fun to have a lot more competition.
That's awesome, man.
Congratulations again to you and your team and JJ to you and your team as well.
And then last but not least, Stacks Assets, who took third place, I believe we had up on stage.
We might have lost them as well.
So we'll come back to them here in just a little bit as well.
That said, I want to switch back over, or maybe before we switch back over to Ready Layer 2, Adam,
any closing thoughts on consensus and the hackathon?
Again, congratulations, JJ, to you and your team, Adam, to you and your team,
and also to the Stacks Assets team for placing third.
But Adam, any additional thoughts to wrap up on consensus?
No, I mean, as the other Adam was just saying, the quality was so high.
When Christopher and Kenny and myself were basically finalizing the top,
the way that the finals went this time, we would choose three projects that we wanted to showcase.
And that process was a challenging one.
It took a long time for us to get to those final three projects.
And just one more sort of like compliment to all of those builders.
They had three days to work on their projects, but then they only had two minutes to actually present it.
So if you can sort of like empathize with that, you're spilling your brains for 72 straight hours
and just trying to get all this stuff done.
And then at the very end of that, maybe you're running on fumes and leftover pizza.
What you're trying to do now is just put everything you just did into a two-minute presentation.
And so that alone is just such a huge challenge.
Previous hackathons, we did three minutes or plus.
So this one to be done in two minutes.
These finalists did a great job of putting that together.
And then the other thing, just to sort of build on what Christopher was saying earlier,
I'm just really excited to see all these projects continue to move forward.
There's already lots of good use cases that we have in the ecosystem.
And we're, you know, logistically trying to make lots of connections to some of these builders
and others in the ecosystem to encourage and support them to keep moving forward.
A lot of these projects are just really well-timed and needed.
And also just the ecosystem is really primed for all this influx of builders to come with.
Currently, there's the D-Grants program taking place.
We have critical bounties taking place.
So there's just lots of opportunities for these builders to continue to stay on board
and keep building in the Stacks ecosystem.
So it's just been a privilege and a pleasure to work with them and help them keep moving forward.
Great.
Incredible, inspiring words there, Adam.
And I did notice, actually, we just had the Stacks Assets team rejoin.
So I want to make sure they get a chance to talk to us a little bit about what they built
and also their experience as well.
Stacks Assets.
Well, hello, everybody.
Really glad to be here.
It was an amazing hackathon consensus.
So, yes, the journey for us started from the easier hackathon at Boston where we actually
got introduced to Stacks.
Little did we know about it then, but then the team was so welcoming that they helped us
get started and then, you know, build a whole new product.
Fortunately, we did one of the easier hackathon at Boston and we started our journey through
there to the consensus hackathon.
We built an amazing platform where we could, you know, tokenize real world assets on Stacks
blockchain, right?
The, you know, blockchain layer, especially on Stacks is so secure that, you know, it helped
us quickly ramp up our product on it.
And then we started from scratch in three days.
It was an amazing experience with the team.
Christopher Adams, thanks a lot for helping us.
And then the hero systems too.
They were there.
Everybody was so welcoming.
It was an amazing hackathon over.
Congratulations, Stacks.
Oh, thank you.
But congratulations to you.
You and the team built this company.
And so what was the inspiration to want to build this as you've already kind of leaned
into why Stacks, but why Stacks assets?
What made you want to bring this company to life with you and your team?
Right.
We were really interested in building something like really fascinating out there.
And especially topics like real world assets are going to be a trillion dollar products
in the near future.
And then Christopher, we actually pitched the idea to Christopher initially, and then he
encouraged us to, you know, get along with that since an amazing idea, right?
So it was pretty nuanced to actually explore and research the topic and code it all in a
matter of three days, but it was a challenge, but it was fun to work along.
I love the enthusiasm and the spirit.
Good luck with the company.
I can't wait to have you back on in a couple of months to hear how things have developed
for you and your team as well.
So with that said, I want to switch back over to the ReadyLeader2 competition in Lisbon.
We do have both the teams, both first and second, to talk a little bit about what they built
as well.
Drexfi, our winner.
I believe that's 0xAces.
Yeah, it's me.
Hey, Kyle.
It's Drexfi.
Drexfi, thanks.
Drexfi, thank you.
Yeah.
Well, thanks so much for hosting us here.
Thanks for the opportunity at Stacks.
Last week was very intense at NFC.
Well, essentially at Drexfi, we tokenize invoices.
So companies that have any cash flow issues can tokenize their invoice and resell them globally.
So we are mainly work of real-world assets tokenization of invoices, and we decided to do a Bitcoin network through Stacks.
All right.
All right.
You know the drill here.
Why Stacks?
Why Bitcoin?
Well, Bitcoin, Stacks is easy, right?
So we are specialized in EVM, Solidity.
So to move that from Clarity was not that harder.
And smart contracts are much needed on our architecture and design.
And Bitcoin, that's also very easy.
We need to use the modern chain more.
We are originally from Brazil, and Brazil is developing a CBDC.
So we need to push towards the other direction to increase Bitcoin adoption and Bitcoin use case.
And I believe by tokenizing there, it's a good way to do it.
And what was the experience working through the hackathon in Lisbon to maybe some of the other hackathons that you participated in as well?
It was hard in the beginning, actually.
We started studying Clarity on Friday.
So three days before, we went to study documentations and Clarity, how does it work.
And then on Monday, we woke up very early, and we managed to deploy some smart contracts on Stacks.
We managed to deploy some routers and awesome Stacks.
So it was hard working, but worth it.
Well worth it.
That's incredible.
So you went from Monday or Friday starting to learn Clarity, and then Monday entering into building on Clarity.
So within three days, you and your team were able to pick up some of the details of what was necessary to convert from the Ethereum or EVM world and Solidity over to Clarity.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's correct.
Yes, yes.
Because our whole architecture owns on EVM.
So yeah, I was not alone.
Hugo is here on the chat also.
He's my CTO.
He worked a lot.
So I need to thank him a lot.
Thank you, Hugo.
Yeah, the big shout out.
Let me get a little clap for him there as well.
That's a CTO's job as well.
Cool.
All right.
Well, next up, thank you very much.
And next up, I want to come back.
Of course.
And I want to come back to the Photon team.
Matteo, Raul.
Raul, we haven't heard from you.
So we'd love to hear your thoughts and experience participating in the hackathon.
And then I have a question for both you and Matteo as well.
Sure.
Thanks, Kyle.
Yes, actually, the hackathon was really a nice experience.
It was our first conference regarding Bitcoin, Bitcoin community, Bitcoin builders.
And there were so many different ideas.
And there were even builders over there just attending in order to learn about who were the competitors,
what were the projects that we were building on top of Bitcoin and on top of stacks.
I think that from my key takeaway from the hackathon is the fact that actually there is so much opportunity for builders.
And, for instance, we had to learn how to deal with the clarity in our case,
because even if a photon is a separate layer 2, we want to fix the issue.
What's the issue?
The fact that there are many layers 2s and every builder has to learn a new language.
But what if we can merge this?
What if a builder can come on stacks, build on top using clarity,
or then go over a photon and use the same code, the same language that has already learned to build over there?
In this case, you can really build a huge community of builders supporting each other and learning from each other.
And I think that this is the way in order to grow our ecosystem and become, you know, way more competitive even in the space.
Because the more the builders, the more the competition, and the more quality products you get at the final day.
That's awesome.
And for both you and Matteo, Matteo, you mentioned it's a UTXO-based layer 2.
I'm curious on why going down that route of UTXO-based L2.
I know there's a ton of discussion in the greater ecosystem of Bitcoin around how layers and various protocols can be built.
What made you choose UTXO?
Yeah, that's a very good question.
The reasons are two.
One is philosophical and one is technical.
The philosophical one is that it stays very similar to Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is layer 1, mainnet is a UTXO architecture.
So it basically has the same philosophy of, for example, keeping your tokens in your wallet and not in a smart contract somewhere.
So it keeps the original philosophy of the Bitcoin blockchain.
And the technical one is instead because UTXO allows is so UTXO is more complex as an architecture, less intuitive at the beginning, but allows a higher level of scaling because you can manage UTXO separately.
And you don't have one global state and thanks to this thing, we can also create ZK zero knowledge proofs that involve only the UTXOs that we want to spend, basically.
So the proofs themselves are very cheap and small, which is not the same normally on EVM, for example.
So this is why we took this road.
We also have a lot of years of experience on UTXO blockchains development.
So the FI in general and architectural choices.
So we think we are the correct team to create a UTXO-based layer 2 that can scale very well and also be very easy to attach to the Bitcoin layer 1 because of the same architecture, basically.
Very excited.
Thank you, Matteo.
And similarly, excited to see where you guys progress from here in the next couple of months and look to revisit later in the summer and hear how things have evolved as well for you, Raul and the team.
Christopher, coming back to you, give us a TLDR on consensus, just the hackathon, but also the greater conference as well.
Yeah, of course.
I was bouncing around between mentoring and judging that hackathon and spending time at the booth.
I love hackathons, one, because that's where the true innovation happens and it's electrifying.
And Kenny and Adam are really good partners to be there with on the grounds.
And then from the standpoint of the booth itself, that's where the business, the networking opportunities can kind of come up.
One really interesting experience happened where I was speaking with a team called OneKey and found out that they were the biggest hardware wallet on the eastern hemisphere of the world.
And they were interested in Stacks.
So we spent roughly 20-ish minutes unpacking what it would look like.
And I believe there might be a new hardware wallet that is going to be integrating Stacks very soon.
So I'm excited to see the strides there.
But that came from ConsenSys.
Also spoke with a family office where they were kind of tracking Stacks and seeing what would be a good time frame to make a position potentially within Stacks.
And I said, well, you know, do your own research, but I say the time is yesterday.
So we spent 20 minutes and then 20 minutes turned to 45 minutes and they left feeling very empowered with the knowledge and also encouraged with what was happening within the ecosystem.
Talk with investors, talk with people that were interested in Stacks in general from a building standpoint.
So it was really, really good overall.
I think, again, the narrative of building on Bitcoin is clear.
It's understood.
Couple that with everything that happened with Grayscale and Stacks having a trust with Grayscale now.
From so many different verticals, it was a positive output for Stacks and building on Bitcoin and Bitcoin layers in general.
There was a collaborative event that took place with Rootstock and with Stacks to show that, you know, the pie is big enough for everyone to take care and win.
And I think with Stacks leading that, it's going to be a really, really good opportunity.
So shout out to all the builders that are here now, all of the listeners that are here now.
You are early.
You are on time.
And I'm looking forward to what the future holds.
Thank you, Chris.
Adam, any additional thoughts around the Ready Layer 2?
Hackathon, both in Lisbon and any that we might have upcoming as well.
Yeah, so I, you know, at the start of May, I was just thinking, like, this is going to be an insane month with Boston Hackathon, Austin Hackathon, RL2 in Lisbon.
But with the support of Ecosystem, as I was mentioning before, Ileana did such a great job of bringing so many of those folks that were going to be in Lisbon or getting them to Lisbon to participate in that.
So I love seeing the collaboration.
We, I mean, these things work.
These things bring in the right builders.
The people like what they're working on.
They get the support that they need, whether they know it or not.
And it's just so rewarding to sort of, like, you know, observe all of that from the fifth row.
And so this process is something that we'll do more of.
I mean, we have a lot of stuff planned coming up.
June, I think we're just going to take a quick second to catch our breath.
But, you know, in July, as you already alluded to, Kyle, we have the Bitcoin Builders Conference happening in Nashville.
I invite all builders, whether you're current or aspiring to be a Stacks builder, to be there.
You know, maybe a question for our host, Kyle, who doesn't get too many questions.
But, you know, maybe there's going to be some investors that will be present in Nashville that a lot of these builders might want to have some opportunities to connect with and meet with and have open conversations about what they're working on.
We have another regular, too, that we'll be announcing shortly.
That one's also going to be kicking off late July.
So July is going to be gearing up for Bitcoin L2 summer.
And that's just going to lead into a really, I would say, chaotic, but like in a good way of builder activations in the fall.
We'll be doing another EZA Stacks only hackathon this fall.
Location hasn't been announced yet, but that's definitely going to be in the works soon to come.
And then one other thing that I'll give a little teaser, too, because it's not confirmed yet.
But, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we had a really, I would say, successful experience doing this sort of multi-chain hackathon.
And so we might also explore what that looks like to do and experiment with another multi-chain hackathon just this year, also in that fall time frame.
So between now and later this year, October, September time frame, there's going to be a lot of stuff.
And then we're going to be doing a recap of everything, every builder, every builder activation in one large event that's going to be showcasing a lot of this talent that's been just developed in this SACS ecosystem in the year 2024.
So what's ahead is a lot of exciting things.
I'm really looking forward to rolling those out one by one and, you know, giving everyone an opportunity to keep to keep building and keep giving them the path to do it.
It's very rewarding. And that's why we're here.
Great closing words, Adam, and to your question for me, yes, I believe there are going to be a number of partners, investors, and the entire support of an ecosystem in Nashville that would love to hear from those that are building, whether it's those that participated in both competitions last week or otherwise.
So, yes, do join us in Nashville. There'll be a ton happening that week.
That said, do make sure to check out each and every one of the projects mentioned today and had the chance to participate in the hackathon as well, even those that may not have had time on stage with us today.
So, again, Stacks Assets, Abstract, Fragment, Punch Starter, Gecko, Direct Spy, and then Photon as well.
And, of course, Ryder, NoCodeClarity, and the Stacks Foundation.
A shout-out to everybody, as well as EZA for helping to put on an incredible hackathon.
And to Ileana, who does not get enough stage time, but will give a shout-out as well for all the support for the hackathon in Lisbon.
And also, again, to Adam's point, Nashville, if you are a builder, if you are an investor, if you are a participant, as you are a service provider, if you are a partner, an ecosystem, anything, we'd love to see you in Nashville.
So, BitcoinBuilders.io, Bitcoin Builders Conference, taking place in July in Nashville.
We also, next week, will have the Building on Bitcoin Virtual Stacks Showcase.
We've got over a dozen different products and projects that are going to be showcasing from throughout the Stacks ecosystem, their teams, what they're working on, what's coming next, as well from each of them, some new.
Some that you might have heard of in the past with new, exciting announcements, as well.
So, make sure to tune in to that, as well.
You can find that on the Stacks Twitter handle, as well.
Thank you all very much for tuning in to this week's Crypto Internet Show.
If you would like to tune in live, ask questions, or join the conversation in the future, be sure to follow Stacks on Twitter and tune in every week at our regular time, 10 a.m. Eastern, on Thursdays.
Until next time, everyone take care.
Have a great day.
I'm your host, Kyle Laca.
Take care, everybody.
