Staging the Sea Battle
The Midnight Sea Battle Hackathon challenged developers to reimagine a classic board game through the deployment of blockchain and zero-knowledge technology. Inspired by the classic turn-based naval strategy game Battleship®, hackathon participants tested their skills to deploy smart contracts with public and private states using turn-based game structure in a decentralized environment.
Bringing Midnight functionality to life
The range of projects demonstrated how Midnight’s underlying technology can be used to create highly customized user experience with features like:
- Data protection gameplay: Midnight’s zero-knowledge technology secures ship placements, moves, and hits, revealing information only when necessary.
- Trustless interactions: Cryptographic proofs ensure game rules are enforced transparently and accurately, eliminating reliance on third-party servers.
- Decentralized state management: Midnight enables flexible public and private data handling, allowing developers to control information visibility in a trustless multiplayer environment.
The hackathon highlighted how Midnight’s capabilities are ideal for simulating strategic interactions, where hidden information and player incentives shape user behavior.
Judging criteria
Submissions were judged across four key criteria: Technology, where teams demonstrated their technical proficiency in leveraging Midnight’s features; Innovation, which highlighted creative approaches to gameplay and privacy-preserving mechanics; Completion, assessing how fully developed and functional the projects were; and Documentation, ensuring clarity in explaining implementation and design choices.
Unique approaches to the same challenge
The submissions to the Sea Battle Challenge were impressive, showcasing strong presentations, creative approaches, and effective use of Midnight’s features.
Each teams’ approach varied, reflecting their unique styles of building. Some opted for sleek and contemporary designs that reimagined the classic game in a modern digital style, while others embraced fun and quirky esthetics, using graphics and emoji to evoke the tactile feeling of traditional board game elements.
The winners
#1 - Brick Towers
The judges were blown out of the water by the submission from Brick Towers. Their Sea Battle game was fully playable, requiring only a Chrome browser and Lace wallet. To enhance the competitive element of gameplay they added token stakes. Each player commits 100 shielded tBTC tokens to the game, and the winning player discreetly receives 200 shielded tBTC in their wallet.Hackathon judge and Midnight Developer Relations Engineer Claude Barde said Brick Towers had “the best hackathon code I have seen so far”. Their full presentation, including a live game demo and complete with a Midnight Sea Battle shanty, can be watched on Midnight’s YouTube channel.
The hackathon judges were also impressed by the quality and comprehensiveness of their documentation, which is available along with the full submission on GitHub.
#2 - Edda Labs
Edda Labs delivered a clean, elegant design that gives the classic game a modern, blockchain-friendly look. Their slick drag-and-drop interface, with real-time updates, is both functional and intuitive.
Their approach to zero-knowledge proofs was well-structured. They built four circuits: join game, commit grid, start game, and make move. Each circuit generates a zero-knowledge proof that verifies game rules while maintaining privacy. These circuits were implemented in Compact and compiled to interact seamlessly with the public ledger while preserving private information.
The presentation was strong, covering development features, open-source documentation, and potential future enhancements.
Watch their presentation on the Midnight YouTube channel, and check out their code on GitHub.
#3 - ShipySpace
It was this team's first time exploring the functionality of zero-knowledge technology, and their project successfully replicated traditional game mechanics, providing clear descriptions of player interactions within the game and with the Midnight network.
Their presentation was engaging, and they created a fun, visually distinctive version of the sea battle game. The project functioned as intended, enabling players to deploy, join, and resume games, all without a centralized server. As a first foray into zero-knowledge proofs, it delivered well on core features.
Their project pitch is available to watch on the Midnight YouTube channel and their code is available on GitHub.
Honorable mention - Mediocre Hacker
Mediocre Hacker deserves an honourable mention for his hackathon pitch. Though the project was incomplete, the approach demonstrated innovation, particularly in leveraging the wallet connection function, PureScript, and storing matrix data as an array.
The judges appreciated his clever and innovative approaches to the challenge, and his feedback as a developer working with the Compact language and Midnight network.
Advice for future hackathon participants
Share your projects
The hackathon judges welcomed developer feedback and insights into challenges faced by participants. Even unfinished submissions provide valuable learning opportunities both for developers and for the team working on Midnight, helping refine Compact and network features. Understanding these experiences is key to enhancing the developer experience as Midnight progresses toward mainnet.
Early project planning also helps identify potential blockers that can be discussed with other developers or addressed by asking questions in the Midnight Discord before they become major setbacks.
Show your work
For all developers planning to participate in future hackathons, keep the judging criteria in mind when preparing and presenting projects. Strong documentation is as crucial as creativity and technical execution, ensuring others understand a project’s functionality and key decisions.
Clear setup and gameplay instructions improve user experience, while thorough documentation of smart contract implementation demonstrates technical sophistication.
What’s next
The next Midnight hackathon, the ZK Identity Challenge, focuses on digital identity solutions. With Midnight’s ability to maintain private and public states on the blockchain, it is ideal for DApps involving Know Your Customer (KYC) and identity verification. Registration is open from February 3 to 28.
Visit the hackathons page for details and to sign up.