TRON Launches Defi Hackathon With $10M Dev Fund

Smart contract network TRON has bolstered its defi credentials with the creation of a global developer hackathon. The event, dubbed the Great Voyage: TRON 2021 Global DeFi Hackathon, will see $10 million in prizes put up for grabs, with dev teams awarded a share of the spoils for their efforts in creating decentralized finance products that will support broader adoption.

The hackathon, which coincides with the TRON network’s fifth anniversary, forms part of the TRON DeFi Entrepreneurial Alliance Support Program, which has a $120 million warchest to disburse. TRON has been doubling down on its defi efforts, which commenced in 2020 with the launch of platforms just as the JustSwap AMM and Just lending platform that functions similarly to MakerDAO. In 2021, TRON is determined to capture a share of the burgeoning defi market, which has broken out of Ethereum and is now filtering through to more scalable smart contract chains.

Calling All Defi Devs and Designers

TRON has issued a rallying cry to defi developers who have the ideas and tech prowess to build out applications and toolsets that will accelerate mainstream adoption and cement TRON’s status as the preeminent platform for hosting decentralized finance. In addition to defi projects already building on TRON, the contest has been opened up to teams working on other blockchains who wish to port their products over to TRON’s expanding ecosystem.

Participants are invited to submit ideas that can be grouped into the following categories: lending, DEXs, payment, protocol interfaces, infrastructure, analysis & visualization, stablecoins, insurance, NFTs, computing power-based mining and BTFS. The latter, BitTorrent File System, enables dApp developers to access decentralized storage by tapping into the world’s largest distributed file-sharing network.

Registration for the hackathon, which commenced on February 5, will close on February 21 before pre-screening occurs between March 1-7. During this period, the organizing committee will scrutinize submissions and green-light the most promising concepts, which will then be built out between March 8 and May 1. Finally, completed concepts will be vetted by the committee between May 2-8 before the winners are announced.

TRON Community Will Shape the Outcome

The hackathon committee won’t be the only ones who get to determine the outcome of the event; the TRON community have also been invited to cast their votes. Public reviewers will be required to use their TRX and SUN to vote on the best entries. The maximum points that any team can score are 100, with projects that reach 80 or more eligible for an incentive prize of $50,000 placed by Justin Sun himself.

Developers who participate in the event are encouraged to create products that utilize services such as JustSwap, JustLink, and TronGrid. Source code should be uploaded to Github for the judges’ consideration. To maximize their prospects of success, applicants are encouraged to assemble a multi-disciplinary team with expertise in both front- and back-end design to ensure that the final product has form and function in equal measure.

$500,000 will go to the entrant that receives the TRON Special Prize, $1 million will be split between five First Prize winners, and another $1 million between 10 Second Prize winners. To participate in TRON’s biggest hackathon to date, teams should join the Discord community and complete an application form before registration closes on February 21.