Welcome to #HackStacks, the second hackathon in the Stacks 2.0 Hackathon Series.

From trustless token exchanges to Bitcoin price oracles, you’ve seen what you can achieve with Clarity. Now, it’s time to apply your Clarity smart contract expertise to the final key piece of the Stacks 2.0 blockchain: Proof of Transfer or PoX.

#HackStacks is a virtual hackathon focused on leveraging the power of PoX, a novel, Bitcoin-secured mining mechanism enabling endless potential for new business models.

With the launch of the Stacks 2.0 blockchain and this new mechanism come unique functionality, namely mining and Stacking. Mining on Stacks 2.0 allows miners to mint new Stacks (STX) tokens by simply committing Bitcoin (BTC) to the network, while Stacking enables “Stackers” to earn that BTC by locking up their STX tokens on the network.

In essence, mining and stacking offer all stakeholders the opportunity to share in value creation on the Stacks 2.0 network. #HackStacks supports and rewards developers for building tools and products that make mining and stacking more accessible to the Stacks community.

Project Ideas:

[Stacking]

Directory where STX hodlers can self identify and interact with developers
“Proof of Stacking” login/authentication
Stacking “social network” where users can log in with Proof of Stacking and meet other STX hodlers
“Autostacker” product that enables users to automatically mine and stack more STX by forwarding BTC earnings into mining
Stacking wallet
Kickstarter for Stacking products (Stackers request products from the dev community)

[Mining]

A mining bot that automates much of the miner onboarding process
Arbitrage bot
Dynamic and interactive diagram that illustrates the PoX process
User friendly web app that simplifies the miner onboarding process
“Proof of Mining” login/authentication

See more ideas from the community here.

Live Sessions:

Live Hack Hour with Joe Bender on 11/09, 4:00pm EST: Drop into the #dev-hangout voice channel to ask any final questions or work through technical challenges live.

Discord AMA sessions with Joe Bender (ongoing): Got questions about navigating the Stacks 2.0 testnet or simply want advice on how to approach building your project? Drop into the #ask-me-anything channel on Discord and submit your questions at anytime. Blockstack PBC Dev Evangelist, Joe Bender will be on a few times a week to answer your questions.

Eligibility

You must build and submit new stacking or mining tools to be eligible.
It will be at the discretion of Blockstack PBC if it is suspected someone is trying to game the system by trying to make slight changes to existing contracts for the reward.
Participants must be at least eighteen years old and may participate individually or form teams.
The Hackathon is open to U.S. legal residents and residents of any other jurisdiction where the Hackathon is not prohibited or restricted by law. The Hackathon is not open to residents of Brazil, Quebec, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, or and any jurisdiction where the Hackathon would be restricted or prohibited by law. Participants, including individual participants and members of a team, must be at least 18 years of age (or the local age of majority where they live, if older) at the time of registration.

Requirements

You can submit projects in two categories:

Mining: Tools and products that make it easier to onboard Stacks 2.0 miners.
Stacking: Tools and products that make it easier for anyone to participate in stacking.

Beyond fulfilling these basic criteria, creativity and thinking outside the box are highly encouraged. Building with community and business potential in mind is a must.

In other words, winning submissions will be judged based on how well they serve the Stacks community.

Submissions will receive a score from 1-5 on each of these aspects and scores will be combined for a final total score. The highest total score will place 1st, the second-highest score will place 2nd, and so on.)

**For application submissions: Applications must integrate Blockstack authentication for login. Finished apps should be available for public use. Applications must use registered domain names and should be hosted at a URL belonging to the domain. The app website must use a secured (https) connection.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

$8,750 in prizes

#HackStacks Grande Prize

There will be one (1) over-arching Grande Prize winner of #HackStacks - $5,000 cash value.

Mining 1st Place

The 1st Place Prize for Mining is $1,500 + Blockstack swag.

The 1st Place Prize winner in the mining category will have submitted a tool or product that has abstracted away much of the complexity of miner onboarding, such as setting up a miner node and engaging with code in general. The user experience and design should be sleek and accessible, not only making it easy for current miners to get started, but encouraging to miners interested in joining Stacks 2.0 as well.

Stacking 1st Place

The 1st Place Prize for Stacking is $2,000 + Blockstack swag.

The 1st Place Prize winner in the stacking category will be responsible for the product that could get everyone, from your 90-year old grandma to your typical crypto enthusiast to start stacking. That means that the technical functionality of this submission is so seamless, and its user experience is so sleek that users might question whether crypto is even involved.

Mining 2nd Place

Apple AirPods Pro with wireless charging case + Blockstack swag.

The second place winner’s submission is very much on its way to becoming part of the Stacks 2.0 miner’s toolkit. It will have technical functionality that is comparable to that of the grand prize winner’s submission, with a user experience that could use slight improvements. That is, the user experience is accommodating of current miners, and with a couple of tweaks, could be absolutely ready for new/interested miners.

Judges

Adelyn Zhou
CMO and Head of Marketing, Chainlink

Muneeb Ali
Co-founder, Blockstack PBC

Sean Li
CEO, Magic Labs

Aaron Blankstein
Engineer | Clarity, Stacks Blockchain, Blockstack PBC

Mark Hendrickson
Product Manager, Blockstack PBC

Patrick Collins
Developer Advocate, Chainlink

Judging Criteria

User Experience
Is the product/tool accessible to a broad audience? In other words, could a user with minimal technical skills use and enjoy using it?
Technical Functionality
How powerful or robust is the functionality that the product/tool provides? How much can users do with it?
Real World Viability
How applicable is the tool to use in real-world situations? Is there potential to grow or build on top of it?
Originality / Creativity
How unique or innovative is the product/tool?
Documentation
Does the project come accompanied by comprehensive documentation or README? Is the code commented thoroughly so anyone could read through and discern its functionality?