OPOS Hackathon: Only Possible On Solana

Hackathons have been a key means for Solana to inspire developers and innovators to build in the ecosystem. Of many other facilities, Solana's take on hackathons to reach the peak of its development activities is something that is significant to the network. This August, Solana brings a unique hackathon, with the feature being "Only Possible on Solana".

Solana already manifests a vigorously active developer base. Even at times of controversy, the developers' activities on-chain stayed stable at the top. Hackathons like this contribute to building a diligent developer community, while the tools offered by the ecosystem are the ones that make them stick by. The OPOS Hackathon integrates these two concepts with a tag of "Only Possible on Solana".

The OPOS Hackathon, currently being presented by Lamport DAO, is scheduled to take place throughout a tenure of 21 days, starting from 1st August 2023. The contest consists of 25 tracks, segmented after the developmental features available only in Solana, and a prize pool of $100k.

Sponsors and Partners

The sponsors of this 21-days-long hackathon include Solana Foundation, Jupiter, Helius, The Network State, Superteam, Crossmint, Phantom, Helium Foundation, Backpack, HXRO, Elusiv, Multicoin capital, Squads, Ironforge, BONK, SolBlaze, B00, TipLink, CHAPTER ONE, Coinflow, ellipsis labs, sphere, EV, HOMEBASE, SonarWatch and SUJIKO.  

Tracks

As mentioned earlier, the OPOS Hackathon is inspiring developers to build using tools and features uniquely available in Solana's ecosystem. To magnify this purpose, the whole contest is segmented into 25 tracks based on the distinguishable features. A brief overview of the segments are given below:

• Compression Track: This track focuses on the usability of the new State Compression primitive on Solana. The Prize pool consists of a total, 25000 USDC and Additional: Phantom Swag x 3, 3-month free Coinflow Growth Plan, and 6-month Tier 2 Holaplex Hub API access.
• Integrate with Jupiter: The competitors here are required to use Jupiter's API in improving existing application use-cases or, create new applications using Jupiter's API. The Prize money of, 10000 USDC, for this segment will be offered to a single winner. Phoenix: The idea of this segment is to produce . The first prize of this segment will receive 5000 USDC, and the second prize-holder, 3000 USDC.
• Integrate with Raydium's CLMM: In this track, prize money of $8,000 in RAY prizes is being offered to winning projects for integrating Raydium's Concentrated Liquidity Market Maker. The competing projects have to be composed on top of Raydium's CLMM to build a product or toolset for liquidity providers.  
• Integrate Meteora: This segment requires developers to integrate Meteora's dynamic vault SDK (typescript or rust) with an app flow that deposits and withdraws from Meteora's vaults. The app must be fully functional on mainnet with the integration being completed within the hackathon timeline. The winner of this segment will be awarded with prize money of 8000 USDC.
• DePIN: The development projects in this segment should showcase the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks' community on Solana. This could involve an array of services, including location-based NFTs to Supply-chain applications. A Prize Pool of 6000 USDC is offered to three sequential winners along with 2-day office space at Chapter One's HQ in Los Angeles, a Virtual product session, and Chapter One swag.
• Build-your-own-perps DEX: The track requires developing an open-source application that enables external users to create accounts and trade on the Dexterity platform. The most original implementation will receive 30,000 $HXRO and the second most original implementation, 20,000 $HXRO. The Top-5 projects will be offered the chance to pitch before judges and an opportunity to secure funds to continue working on the project.
• Build and Contribute with Sonar Watch: The purpose of this segment is to involve developers to create the next financial dashboard and applications by using Sonar Watch's open-sourced DeFi Portfolio API. The Prize Pool is 5100 USDC splitting into 3000 USDC for normal prizes and 2100 for API contribution.
• Product Demo: For this track, developers are to build a product that is open-source and developed within the hackathon period. It should demonstrate Solana's fast pace of transactions and low cost. The allocated Prize Pool is $5000.
• Best Product using Solidity in Solana: The winners of this segment will be awarded $2500, $1500, and $1000 respectively.
• Build an application using Ironforge: The requirement of this segment is to use Ironforge and build a functioning project. The award structure is identical to "Best Product using Solidity in Solana".
• New NFT use cases: The requirement entails using at least one of the crossmint's products to build an application.  The Prize Pool is 3500 USDC and additional swags with sequential positions.

• Build with Shyft: The participating projects should be developed using Shyft's API/SDKs and the Prize pool is worth 3200 USDC with top 10 projects receiving 150M Shyft credits.
• Reinventing prediction markets: The requirement is to develop projects that improve and enhance the prediction market & sports betting experience on the Monaco Protocol. The 1st winner will be awarded $2000 and the second winner, $1000.
• Build a Kamino analytics page: The developers are to build an analytics page for Kamino based on which the selected winners will receive 2000 USDH and 1000 USDH respectively.
• Mobile apps on Solana; As the name suggests, competitors will build mobile apps integrating Solana in a meaningful way with an aim to draw new users to crypto. The Prize Pool is, 3000USDC.
• Augmented Treasury: This segment looks for projects that integrate Squads and Clockwork to facilitate financial tasks like automatic payroll/transfers, stream payouts, with spending limit implementation. The winner will be awarded 3000 USDC.
• Music: The participants should integrate audius API in their project. A Prizepool of 3000 USDC is offered for the winners
• TipLink: The winners in this category will be judged based on their integration of TipLink API in the development of their project. The Prizepool for this category is 3000 USDC.
• Pioneering Privacy: ZK Innovations Only: The projects in this track will be selected based on their use of Elusiv SDK. The prizes include a total of 2500 USDC for the first and second position holders and a special role in Elusiv's discord.
• ZK /Privacy Track: The projects will be judged based on their utilization OF Light's zk.js or https://docs.rs/groth16-solana/latest/groth16_solana/ or is a Light PSP (Private Solana Program) built with the Light CLI.
• Payments: The winning project to develop a project that uses Sphere for payments will be awarded 2000 USDC and the opportunity of paid work with Sphere.
• Gaming: Based on the integration of compressed NFTs in Gaming, the 1st winner will be awarded: 1500 USDC + BOO Physical Voxel Collectible + 6 Months of Boobot Free Access and, the 2nd winner will be awarded 500 USDC + 3 Months of Boobot Free Access.
• Real-world Assets (Real Estate on Solana): The participants are to build and deploy an arbitrage bot that can programmatically restore balance to skewed markets on the Parcl trading platform, which would potentially reduce funding costs and improve UX for real estate traders on Parcl. The winner will be awarded 2000 USDC and 1 HOA NFT.
• Make NFT Fun Again: This track offers a prize pool of 1500 USDC and 4 Motley Friends NFTs to create a project that primarily adds or draws liquidity from Night Market.
• DEX Tooling: The developers will be judged based on the utilization of Sujiko SDK in their project. A prize pool of 250 USDC is offered in this track.
• Building with Bonk: The project with the most effective integration of BONK in a new or existing protocol will be awarded 69000000000 BONK.
• A Fresh Bowl of Guacamole: competent projects incorporating the best utilization of GUAC will be selected as winners of this track. The total prize pool is, 250000000 GUAC.
• xNFT: The competitors will need to develop an xNFT application that will gain the highest user satisfaction, both on-chain and off-chain. Two winners will be awarded 1 Mad Lad each.
• LiveQuery Analytics: The requirements for project submission in this track is to build a dashboard on Flipside leveraging LiveQuery and the Helius API, which should highlight at least 5 key metrics relevant to Solana. $2000 of SOL will be awarded to the first winner and $500 of SOL to the second winner.

Conclusion

Although the frequent hackathons might come off as somewhat of an oversaturation, they facilitate the ecosystem to outgrow its competitors. The effects of these innovations are not just limited to the Solana ecosystem but often spearhead major technological improvements across the whole web3 evolution. While the major concept of the OPOS Hackathon is to explore the developing features uniquely available to the Solana ecosystem, it also encourages developers to hone their skills and further deploy their creative enthusiasm throughout multiple arenas of Blockchain.