An online hackathon bringing together 12 countries, 34 teams and 140 participants to work on some of BLING’s biggest challenges
Adri Wischmann – Blockchain Lab Drenthe, Renske Stumpel – Gemeente Groningen.
BLING’s BLINGathon hackathon was held over the weekend of 13 & 14 November 2021. This was the biggest hackathon BLING had organised, with 34 teams and over 140 participants from 12 countries picking their brains for the 30 hour-long event to come up with the best solutions for 4 challenges set by the BLING partnership. There were prizes for Best Overall proposal, Best Design, and Most Impact.
BLINGathon was a “Hybrid Online” hackathon – teams organized a local place to work together, but communicated online with the hackathon organisers via a Discord server. In some locations workspace was provided to the teams by BLING’s project partners. BLINGathon live-streamed the hackathon on our YouTube channel.
There were several workshops during the event on topics like “Ideation” and “Pitching” to help the teams develop their ideas and fine tune their presentations. On the Saturday evening in the middle of the event there was a Pubquiz, and during the event there was a serious gaming track where every team could earn points. The winning teams from the Pubquiz and the gaming-track got to choose their preferred position in the pitching list for the international jury.
The BLINGathon Challenges
BLING’s partners set the teams 4 challenges – on energy, transport, e-voting and on secure delivery of electronic documents. The hackathon was overseen by an international jury – Nena Dukozov/Slovenian Government, Peter Verkoulen/ Dutch Blockchain Coalition, Mr Panizo/ Innovation Project Manager at FNMT-RCM, and Adnan Imeri/Technical Lead at Infrachain.
Track 1 – 6 teams – Energy and microgrids
Track 2 – 6 teams – Transportation and logistics
Track 3 – 5 teams – e-Voting
Track 4 – 6 teams – Secure document transfer
Spotlight: the transport challenge
The Problem
Increasing numbers of containers are taken incorrectly – either mistakenly or on purpose
The Challenge
How can ports solve this problem with trailer inventory and security?
BLINGathon Results
The expert jury had a tough job deciding who were the winners in the four prize categories – best overall, best design, most impact, and the audience prize.
Best overall: Team Greasy Monkey from the transport track
Greasy Monkey’s ‘Harbour assist utility’ solves the transport challenge with a website and app which uses blockchain for user identification and data storage. Truck drivers request collection slots on the app website, and then identify themselves using self-sovereign identity to gain entry to the harbour. RFID equipped containers are scanned by the truck driver’s app, which makes sure that the driver has picked the correct container. A system with QR codes at loading bays is used to manage free spots, and data on bay usage is stored on the blockchain. This means everyone will know when loading slots are available, and everyone who uses the dApp can locate containers. This combination of identity and data collection approaches should prevent drivers from collecting the wrong container and stop thieves from stealing cargo.
Best design: Team Beevoters from the e-voting track
The best design award went to Beevoters, for their passionate presentation that “e-voting is the future” proposing we move from expensive, un-sustainable paper voting to online voting via their ‘BeeVoter’ app.
Most impact: Team Oldennoobs from the e-voting track
Oldennoobs’ mission is to make online elections possible by making them secure, transparent and verifiable.
Oldenboobs proposed a hybrid system of online and in-person voting – building on national e-ID infrastructures – that does not link your ID with your vote. Their IOTA Streams structure is built like the ‘real-life’ structure of voting districts.
Audience prize: Team Titan X from the secure document track
Titan X proposed a secure electronic document and messaging system, that made it possible for people and organisations to send classified files over the internet and then verify these files through hash comparison using a decentralised system.
Impact
BLINGathon was a high impact event, with substantial interest in the event and our results and participation from teams all around the world – not just in the North Sea Region! More than 500 people watched the final results live, and the BLINGathon videos have been watched or streamed more than 2000 times. There were over 8,000 visits and 16,000 page views at the BLINGathon website.
The event wrap-up video can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03m__dFMULc