Midnight led a zero-knowledge (ZK) technology hackathon track during Cardano Tech Week in Buenos Aires this December, bringing together developers to tackle essential challenges in governance and data protection. Participants explored innovative ways to build decentralized applications (DApps) that could have a significant impact on the world.
The overall hackathon featured multiple tracks: participants could choose to build on Midnight, on Cardano or on both chains. All teams focused on the hackathon’s theme of governance. Out of the approximately 60 participants, half chose to build on Midnight to leverage additional data protection functionality.
The event helped developers learn about Midnight’s ZK technology and Compact, Midnight’s smart contract programming language. Compact is designed to be familiar and easy to get started with for developers who know TypeScript.
Teams were encouraged to showcase creativity, innovation and unique solutions to solving real-world problems.
#1: TxPipe
The team from TxPipe took the top spot with their DAO-focused voting system, designed to streamline governance for decentralized organizations. Their solution stood out for its practical application, demonstrating a clear use case for improving decision-making processes in DAOs.
Image credit: Tim Harrison
#2: Edda Labs
The team from Edda Labs, led by Erick Romero, earned second place with their innovative private voting feature. The application was developed for integration with the Mesh Multi-sig platform. Their project showcased robust functionality and practical utility, demonstrating how Midnight can be used to build consensus-building governance tools with built-in data protection features.
#3 - Protofire
The team from Protofire competed in both the Cardano and Midnight tracks. Their identity voting DApp leveraged Midnight’s zero-knowledge-powered data protection to provide a secure governance tool.
The DApp incorporated data visualization tools with past voting data, enabling users to review committee members' actions and past behavior. This offers accessible and transparent insights into the previous decisions and activity of actors, empowering more informed decision-making.
The project also highlights the future potential of Midnight’s data protection capabilities, allowing committee members or participants to share only the necessary information while protecting unrelated data.
Learning while building
Hackathons like this provide an engaging opportunity to explore Midnight’s technology through hands-on experience, guided by expert engineers. Overall, the hackathon posed a practical challenge alongside opportunities to learn which drew in participants with different perspectives and approaches.
What’s next
Many more virtual and in-person hackathons are planned for 2025, offering developers further opportunities to build on Midnight. Follow Midnight on X and check the hackathons page for updates on upcoming events and projects.
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