Neo has announced its beginner-friendly hackathon to bring top developer talent to N3 and facilitate ecosystem development.
Singapore, March 7 — Following the recent move to Neo N3, a fully decentralized, all-in-one blockchain, Neo is now looking for the world’s top talent to develop in its ecosystem: Neo’s next hackathon, Polaris Launchpad, is now accepting entries.
Polaris Launchpad participants will compete for prizes and business incubation support by building cutting-edge projects in five categories: decentralized finance (DeFi), the metaverse and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), middleware incorporating NeoFS and oracle, and general.
The prize pool for Polaris Launchpad totals $500,000, with opportunities to receive further funding for business development through Neo’s $200-million EcoBoost program.
The event will launch on March 7 through a virtual community kick-off session. Da Hongfei, founder of the Neo Foundation, will lead off with a discussion about Web3. Steven Liu, head of development at Neo Global Development (NGD), will follow with a briefing on the Neo technology stack and N3 functionality.
Catherine Lu, business development manager of Neo Global Development, will discuss the N3 ecosystem and the types of projects that Neo wants to incubate for growth regarding N3. Dean Jeffs, founder of Neo News Today, will deliver the concluding remarks, including an overview of Polaris Launchpad’s logistics and how to get started.
The first phase of the Polaris Launchpad event will be the optional, one-month Planathon. This phase is focused on conceptualization, education and planning. Planathon participants can join panel discussions on the metaverse, DeFi, NFTs and DAO, as well as introductions to the N3’s all-in-one developer ecosystem of NeoID, Neo Oracles, NeoFS and more. In weekly 60-minute demo panels, past hackathon project developers and community leaders will discuss their hackathon experiences to spark new ideas and inspiration.
Polaris Launchpad is a beginner-friendly hackathon event. Neo hopes to attract talent and fresh ideas by providing technical education during and beyond the event. The classes and hands-on workshops, weekly office hours and question-and-answer rooms on Discord aim to establish a level playing field for all participants. Neo community mentors will offer their support during the entire hackathon.
Neo is yet to announce the Polaris Launchpad event’s judges, but it has already teased a few names: Among others, Neo’s judging panel will host Neo’s leadership and community developers such as the project’s founders Da Hongfei and Eric Zhang, NGD president John deVadoss and NGD development lead Steven Liu. The key judging criteria will include concept and feasibility, project design and project implementation.
Judges will look for projects that fully take advantage of N3’s functionality and decentralization and have the potential to bring more end-users to the ecosystem.
Following the announcement of the hackathon’s phase winners on May 30, Polaris Launchpad will move to its final phase: Polaris Plus, running from June 8-21. Polaris Plus is a bonus round where the community will vote to select projects to receive additional support. Neo GAS tokenholders will choose the winners of this final phase by popular vote, and Neo will match funding through quadratic means.
Polaris Launchpad marks the next phase in Neo’s evolution as the foundation of the smart economy and an enabler of Web3. Much like journeying explorers once looked to the North Star as a guide to new destinations, developers can look to Neo’s Polaris Launchpad as a guide to bring their visions to life on the Neo N3 blockchain.
Developers can sign up here: polaris.neo.org
About Neo
Neo is an open-source, community-driven blockchain platform established in 2014. It is the most feature-complete blockchain platform for building decentralized applications. Neo enables developers to digitize and automate the management of assets through smart contracts. It also provides powerful native infrastructures such as decentralized storage, oracles and domain name service, creating a solid foundation for the next-generation internet. Learn more on the website.
For any media inquiries concerning Neo, contact Krystyna Kozak.
About Neo Launchpad
The Neo Launchpad hackathon series is purposely built to help developers succeed with Web3. Neo Frontier Launchpad, the first Neo hackathon on Neo N3, took place in 2021. The event attracted more than 700 participants and 95 teams. It resulted in 11 winners-, who are all now building on N3. The event gave birth to up-and-coming DeFi, crowdfunding, NFT-centric and other innovative projects including the likes of Humswap, ToTheMoon, Rentfuse, Lyrebird Finance and more.
Polaris Launchpad takes the Neo hackathon series to the next level with an expanded prize pool and extensive opportunities for post-hackathon business incubation support in this newest opportunity to join the growing Neo ecosystem.
Contact
For all media inquiries regarding this release, contact Krystyna Kozak.
Telegram: @krystynakozak
