Sign Up for Supernova, the First Global Internet Computer Hackathon

The Supernova hackathon is underway, with $6 million in prizes and funding across DeFi, SocialFi, GameFi, metaverse and NFTs, and more.

Web3 is transforming the internet, and will provide extraordinary opportunities to developers and entrepreneurs. The Internet Computer blockchain’s global Supernova hackathon welcomes developers and entrepreneurs to start building using the most advanced Web3 platform in existence today, while winning up to $6 million in prizes, grants, and seed investments in the process. A host of impressive dapps and services have already been deployed on the Internet Computer, including the social platforms DSCVR and Distrikt, the instant-messaging dapp OpenChat, and the automated market maker InfinitySwap.

Supernova participants can play a key role in building out a new open web in which social media and other services are directly owned, run, and updated by DAO-based communities. In this brave new world, social media and online games will blend with DeFi functionality to become SocialFi and GameFi, combined together to support a growing Web3 ecosystem and decentralized metaverse. Supernova includes six categories: SocialFi, GameFi, metaverse and NFTs, asynchronous DeFi, public good/social impact, and an open-ended “blue sky” track.

Submissions will be accepted until June 20, 11:45 PM Pacific Time. Learn everything you need to know about Supernova on the DevPost.

Supernova kicked off on May 10 with an event featuring talks and presentations with Polychain Capital founder and CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee, Messari co-founder and CEO Ryan Selkis, Tom Serres of Warburg Serres, Maria Shen of Electric Capital, Lucas Liu of Huobi Incubator, and many more.

Scroll below to see a list of videos from the event.

As Selkis remarked at the kickoff, to understand the emerging future and where you can fit into it, “there’s no substitute for building within the space.”

“There’s a social graph now being drawn in crypto that no one is capturing,” added Shen, based on ownership. “That’s where the opportunity is: something so fundamentally new and Web3 native, and really breaks from the mold of how we’ve been thinking about social up until now.”

Launched in May 2021, the Internet Computer is a new kind of blockchain that can host mass-market, hyperscale Web3 apps and services, with all of their data and computation on-chain. Truly decentralized online services can be built using advanced smart contract code written in programming languages such as Rust and Motoko (a native language that can be quickly learned by any Solidity or JavaScript programmer) that compile to WebAssembly.

“The Chain Key cryptography that powers the Internet Computer is being surfaced through APIs that are going to allow you to control token balances and invoke code on other blockchains directly, without any bridges,” explained DFINITY founder and chief scientist Dominic Williams at the Supernova kickoff. “This is completely game-changing, and it’s going to allow you to combine different blockchains together and to create a kind of meta glue that enables you to, for example, create a DEX on the Internet Computer that allows you to trade ICP [utility tokens] for Bitcoin in which the Bitcoin is just sent to an address that belongs to the DEX on the Bitcoin blockchain.”

On the Internet Computer, smart contracts can serve interactive web experiences directly to end users, and can store and process data with greater efficiency and at lower cost than other blockchains. This allows developers to create systems, dapps, and decentralized services that run entirely on the blockchain. Using the Internet Computer, you can build truly decentralized dapps and services with end-to-end security, while leveraging advanced tokenization strategies to fundraise and drive viral growth.

This is the vision behind Supernova, marking the explosive growth of the Internet Computer ecosystem just a year after launch, and setting the stage for an expansion that will shape the future of Web3.

Internet Computer: Blockchain Singularity

Dominic Williams, DFINITY founder and chief scientist, welcomes everyone to Supernova. He provides an overview of the Internet Computer and discusses the first anniversary of Internet Computer Genesis.

Supernova Overview with Hacker Fund

Justin Brezhnev, Hacker Fund founder and executive director, discusses the details behind Supernova, including how to get started, the prize pool, and different categories.

Introduction to Developer Materials

DFINITY’s Carsten Jacobsen gives an introduction to developer materials and resources for Supernova.

Web3: Reinventing the Internet

Adriana Hamacher of Decrypt chats with Olaf Carlson-Wee, Polychain Capital founder and CEO about why developers should build on the Internet Computer. They discuss the IC’s ability to host decentralized apps and services end-to-end on-chain and redefine the nature of ownership and control under Web3.

Founder Spotlight: DSCVR with Rick Porter

Founder Spotlight: InfinitySwap with Max Chamberlin

Founder Spotlight: Toniq Labs with Bob Bodily

Web3: Billions in Value Ready to Be Created

DFINITY’s Anna Escher interviews Tom Serres (Warburg Serres) and Maria Shen (Electric Capital), who discuss how investing models have changed under Web3, and what top VCs are looking for from Web3 startups.

The State of Web3

Ryan Selkis, founder and CEO of Messari, chats with Decrypt’s Adriana Hamacher about the development of the crypto ecosystem and the growth of Web3.

Founder Spotlight: OpenChat with Hamish Peebles

Founder Spotlight: Portal with Jesse Neumann

Founder Spotlight: IC Gallery with Tommy Mallow

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Start building at smartcontracts.org and join the developer community at forum.dfinity.org.

Sign Up for Supernova, the First Global Internet Computer Hackathon was originally published in The Internet Computer Review on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.