Coinbase announced the BitHack v2 Hackathon a few weeks ago. With this Hackathon, the company was trying to get developers to design new applications using Coinbase API.
Anyone from anywhere in the world could submit a Bitcoin project to BitHack v2, as long as it met our simple guidelines. Over 300 teams registered, and we received 84 qualified submissions from twelve different countries. Many of these submissions came from people who were not able to build payment applications before Bitcoin.
Today, Coinbase finally announced the BitHack v2 winners who will collectively receive over $70,000 worth of prizes. The exchange and wallet service revealed the BitHack was very important because it tapped into a core benefit of Bitcoin.
Coinbase acknowledged the major prize winners, who (across multiple platforms and continents) have demonstrated an exceptional level of innovation and technical prowess in the development of their respective Bitcoin apps. True to Bitcoin’s global potential, the five winning projects were built in four different countries, each with a unique economic climate: Pakistan, Philippines, Germany, and the U.S.
First the company dedicated an honorable mention to Streamium, an app that received the highest score by many judges but whose team started work before the BitHack v2 start date, therefore disqualifying them from the formal competition.
Judging Process
The winners were carefully selected from a total of 84 entries. To ensure the judging process was fair, the juri screened all apps for eligibility, according to the BitHack v2 rules. This included confirming that the app hadn’t previously been published and was built during the six-week competition period. Then they split all eligible apps into manageable groups which were each scored by at least two Coinbase judges using a certain evaluation criteria: creativity, usability, and execution.
All judges submitted their scores; all scores were normalized to ensure consistency of scores across judges. The finalists were sent to a team of four external judges, whose scores were once again used to stack rank each app and to assign our top winners.
The Winners
1st Place: Was awarded $10,000* of bitcoin and a place in Boost VC’s bitcoin accelerator class, valued at $50,000 – Mailman
Mailman is an email paywall system which allows you to reward timely replies with bitcoin and filter spam using the blockchain.
2nd Place: Was awarded $5,000* of bitcoin- SatoshiPay
SatoshiPay is a bitcoin nanopayment wall for publishers, which allows you to pay for the section of text that really interests you, make metered payments for streaming video, and make paid downloads with a single click.
3rd Place: Was awarded $3,000* of bitcoin – Rebittance
Rebittance is a remittance aggregator that provides senders with a single place to find and transact with Rebittance cash-out partners around the world.
4th Place: Was awarded $1,500* of bitcoin – BlockchainME
BlockchainME offers a tool for creating verifiable IDs on the Blockchain, promoting the encryption layer of cryptocurrency to help prevent skimming, catfishing, counterfeiting and other fraudulent activity.
5th Place: Was awarded $500* of bitcoin – BitcoinDial
BitcoinDial is a ‘pay phone’ app that accepts bitcoin instead of quarters, allowing users to make affordable international calls.
Many of the developers that participated have enabled new behaviors that weren’t possible before bitcoin. Developers are essential to Bitcoin’s success, by introducing new functionality to people around the world. There is still a lot of work to be done, but BitHack v2 have brought us significant enhancements!
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