Pandacash Wins Grand Prize at BCH Devcon

The second BCH Devcon hackathon took place in Amsterdam on Oct. 27-28, with more than 100 people competing to build useful cryptocurrency applications. The event culminated with a project called Pandacash winning the grand prize by delivering a “one-click” Bitcoin Cash blockchain software development kit.

Also read: Send Bitcoin Cash Over the Web in a Private Fashion Using Tor

Two-Day Hackathon in Amsterdam

Permissionless Ventures, a $50 million innovation fund created by Bitmain Technologies, started hosting the BCH Devcon series of events earlier this month. News.Bitcoin.com recently reported on the first BCH Devcon hackathon in San Francisco, which saw the Yenom development team take home the grand prize. This past weekend, software programmers and blockchain executives gathered once again to build new cryptocurrency platforms, but this time the dev teams were allowed to use any blockchain they desired.

BCH Devcon Amsterdam and the Pandacash team

The Amsterdam event featured a number of cryptocurrency luminaries as judges and panel presenters, including Ryan X. Charles, Nikita Zhavoronkov, Gabriel Cardona, Eléonore Blanc, Nikol Daru, Paul Wasensteiner, Alejandro DeLaTorre, and Epperly Li. The BCH Devcon judges based their decisions on whether participating projects offered the right mix of utility, creativity, usability, and overall functionality. Over the course of the two-day event, programmers crafted streaming applications, software development kits, smart contracts, and tokenization concepts.

BCH Devcon teams discuss their blockchain-powered projects.

BCH Blockchain Tool for ‘Lazy’ People

Pandacash, the winner of the BCH Devcon grand prize in Amsterdam, is a proof-of-concept software development kit created by Adrian Barwicki, Rosco Kalis, Bryan Lee-A-Leong and Nikolay Manolov. According to the team, the project is the “lazy person’s” Bitcoin Cash blockchain utility tool.

BCH Devcon Amsterdam grand prize winners Pandacash

Pandacash can fire up a personal BCH chain that runs tests and executes commands. It can also be controlled on a whim.

“With [Pandacash] you can make calls to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain without the overheads of running an actual Bitcoin Cash node,” the developers explained in a recent blog post. “Addresses can be re-cycled, reset, instantiated with a fixed amount of bitcoin cash (no need for faucets or mining), and debug logs are displayed by default.”

Additionally, the Pandacash specifications are fully documented on the project’s Github repository. 

The only thing you need to start working on Bitcoin Cash applications with Pandacash is a docker container and NodeJS installed — The personal blockchain can be started from a command line tool.

BCH Devcon Amsterdam panel

Weekend of Innovation

Many participants described BCH Devcon as a success, telling news.Bitcoin.com that there was plenty of innovation on display throughout the weekend. Other BCH-based projects included Honeystream, a paid-streaming service that uses bitcoin cash. There was also a permissioned token project, a proof-of-picture concept, an hourly virtual private network service powered by BCH payments, and a reputation system that uses the BCH protocol. One team even showed off an idea that sold event tickets using bitcoin cash, while another project, Blurry, allows people to sell blurry pictures that become clear after a BCH payment is processed.

Attendees at the Amsterdam BCH Devcon event told news.Bitcoin.com that the hackathon was a blast.

The next BCH Devcon events will be hosted by Permissionless Ventures in Israel, Japan, South Korea, and India. The official BCH Devcon page provides information on how people can participate, as well as resources on some of the open-source programs that contestants can use during the challenges.

Check out a video of the Pandacash proof of concept below. 

What do you think about the BCH Devcon event in Amsterdam? Let us know in the comments section below.

Disclaimer: Bitcoin.com is an official sponsor of the BCH Devcon series. 

Images via Shutterstock, Gabriel Cardona, Medium, Pandacash, and Permissionless Ventures.

At news.Bitcoin.com all comments containing links are automatically held up for moderation in the Disqus system. That means an editor has to take a look at the comment to approve it. This is due to the many, repetitive, spam and scam links people post under our articles. We do not censor any comment content based on politics or personal opinions. So, please be patient. Your comment will be published.