Building engaging & well-run web3 hackathons with CharmVerse

Recently, someone asked for our help to set up the CharmVerse platform to run their hackathon. With many hackathons happening in and out of the web3 conferences, we want to share some best practices to make your next hackathon awesome and easy to run using CharmVerse.

Start on the right foot

Get organized by pulling together all the necessary information for the participants and putting them in one place. Create your public hackathon site with these pages:

• Venue location & direction

• Schedule

• Theme

• Judges & judging criteria

• Team forming Instructions & help

• Resources including dataset, APIs

Automate access control

If you are granting SBTs, NFTs, or POAPs to participants and ecosystem partners, you can create multiple token gates in which each asset holding is tied to a specific role. Each role can be assigned different permissions in viewing, giving feedback, editing, and voting to automate access control of every aspect of the hackathon.

Help hackers find each other

One of the most daunting tasks in a hackathon is getting on a team, especially for non-developers. Effectively encouraging hackers to post ideas and form teams will drastically increase the likelihood of success of your hackathon.

Hackers with project ideas can create project pages in CharmVerse to gauge interest and gather comments/suggestions. More passive individuals can create "my hackathon history" pages highlighting their experiences.

An individual profile is automatically created for anyone joining your hackathon workspace. Members have the option to highlight their backgrounds, interest, and skill sets. Admin can set up custom properties to solicit info most applicable to your hackathon. Organize team names as a Member Directory property, so it is easy to search and filter out various teams and see if there is still room on a particular team.

It is similarly difficult to cultivate relationships between judges and participants. Hackathons are great opportunities for judges to meet potential investments and recruits. Conversely, many participants are looking to network with the judges as well. A well organized Member Directory will lower the friction in forming meaningful relationships.

Facilitate team collaboration

Teams can create a page for themselves with the pitch, relevant links, and task board so everyone can decide who is doing what. To be more organized, admin can set up these pages ahead of time with well-formatted titles and proper permissions for team members.

Vote with transparency

Many cups of coffee and matcha later, it is finally time to determine the winners. Judges, identified by their on-chain reputation can cast their votes directly in CharmVerse. If Snapshot is more your cup of tea, judges can vote directly on Snapshot through the CharmVerse integration.

Announce & pay the winners

To further highlight the winners, you can create dedicated pages for their projects or simply turn their project submissions publicly accessible with the teams' permission.

Many hackathons prefer to handle the prize payments offline, retroactively funding the winners. Though it is possible to pay the winners directly on CharmVerse. DAO tokens or USDC can be paid via Gnosis Safe to Gnosis Safe or specific wallets. It is up to you.

Ready to take your hackathon to the next level?

1. Watch our product demo

2. Sign up for a free hackathon workspace today