my opinion on hackathon vs. bounty

author: zxstim

Context

So working as Developer Advocate at Kaia, I have been observing the state of hackathon for the past years. Personally, I think hackathon in the crypto space at current state is just bad. "Bad" here is not related to organization of the hackathon (most are good), or participants (I think many participants are great). But "Bad" here refers to achieving the goals set out originally, onboarding new projects into the ecosystem.

What we wished for

We hoped that hackathons can magically get a bunch of projects to launch within our ecosystems. Teams with technical capability releasing innovative products that attract many millions of Total Value Locked (TVL). With the hackathon prizes, team would have an excellent cash infusion to carry on.

What we actually ended up with

Hackathon projects are not equal to great, commercially viable projects. Given the timeframe of a hackathon, most are just Proof of Concepts. Anyone who has launched a real product and made money with it would know that it takes many iterations and refinements for a product to be able to monetize. Hackathon teams also don't equal to great project team. Given the scope of a hackathon, teams are just people banding together to win prizes. They are just company of convenience. And this leads to my final point.

Winning hackathon teams have zero incentive to keep on building. And we see this time and time again. Winning teams just take the prize, smile, maybe join a few calls with you then disappear (until the next hackathon).

To be fair, that's how hackathon should be. Then why this crypto industry keeps trying to spin hackathon into this magical onboarding methodology. Hackathon probably gets less than 5% conversion rate. Some hackathon winners will go on with their submission and launch great things but most won't. Most will just continue on doing what they were doing before joining the hackathon.

Possible solution

My proposed solution is actually adopting a bounty program for Open Source contributions, projects, and so on. Below are some benefits of a bounty program:

• Can go on indefinitely, no timeline, no rush
• Much more open, allowing many different types of submissions (or contributions) to existing projects in the ecosystem
• You can keep changing the rules as time progresses without major backlash (within reason)

The bounty program will allow individual developers (who probably have a full time job right now) to contribute on their own schedule (just like normal OSS contributions). They can't join a hackathon because they have a job and can't take much time off to focus on the hackathon.

With the right mechanism (continuous submission), bounty program creates the incentives for developers to build on top of each other and keep growing the submitted bounty projects further.

So...

At Kaia, I have been running a bounty program for the past 3 months as a test (starting from ETH Vietnam). We have many developers contributing from contracts, frontend, full DApps, education platforms, etc.

Within the buildstation community, I also have bounty open for DeFi.vn and bootcamp contributors. Results look good so far but slower than what a hackathon can achieve within 2 months timeframe (but I managed to have actual running projects which is a major plus in my book).

I think I still need to experiment more with the rewards to make the financial incentives to be worth it for most developers.

Now, I don't say that we should stop doing hackathons. Hackathon is still great in terms of engagement, marketing effects and overall reach. However, having a bounty program year-round is proving to be a viable strategy for any ecosystems looking to attract developers.