Chicago — December 20, 2021 — Project Serum, a decentralized exchange and platform that provides the underlying liquidity infrastructure for protocols built on Solana’s fast and censorship-resistant blockchain, and Wormhole, a decentralized token and data bridge protocol that connects to multiple chains including Ethereum, Solana, Terra, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche and Oasis, today announced co-sponsorship of a cross-chain, DeFi focused, global online hackathon, Convergence.
The hackathon aims to attract web2 and web3 developers building on the Solana blockchain to leverage Serum’s decentralized exchange and liquidity infrastructure, Wormhole’s cross-chain bridge, as well as technology from the other sponsors, including PsyOptions, Terra, and Atrix. The Convergence sponsors, including Jump Crypto, have committed $5M in prizes and seed round capital to be invested into hackathon participants.
Project submissions can be made from January 5, 2022, to January 31, 2022, and must include a video that properly demos the project, while also detailing the project’s vision and value proposition. Projects can compete for a total of eight different prize tracks and each will have its own submission requirements that must be met.
In addition to the prize track guidelines, judges will be looking at if the submitted projects fill a need within the Solana ecosystem in an economically efficient manner, if it betters the ecosystem of each sponsoring partner, if the project has a clean code base with proper documentation, and if the accompanying video provides detailed insight into the project.
JHL, contributor to Project Serum, commented on today’s news, “The Serum protocol is designed to supply users with the underlying infrastructure needed to quickly and efficiently build projects and Convergence provides the next generation of crypto developers with an opportunity to showcase those innovative projects. Past hackathons have incubated some of the most well-known and successful DeFi programs and our community is looking forward to seeing what developers come up with.”
The submitted projects will be judged by members of the DeFi and CeFi community including, but not limited to, Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX, Raj Gokal from Solana Labs, Kyle Samani from Multicoin Capital, Matthew Graham from Sino Global, Dan Matuszewski from CMS, Paul Veradittakit from Pantera Capital and Chris McCann from Race Capital. Winners will be announced via the hackathon webpage on February 8, 2021.
Evan Gray, developer at Jump Crypto, continued, “DeFi has seen explosive growth over the past year and a half. There are still many hurdles to adoption as liquidity is fragmented across ecosystems and trading remains expensive on many chains. There is an opportunity to build efficient and powerful tools for financial applications by using Wormhole’s flexible messaging layer to connect multiple ecosystems to Serum’s full order book.”
For more on the hackathon visit: https://serum-wormhole-hackathon.com
Main Prize
- All submitted projects are considered for this award.
- Five total projects will win a prize:
- The winning project will receive $100,000
- The runner up will receive $60,000
- Third place will win $30,000
- Fourth will be given $20,000
- Fifth will win $15,000
Community Choice Award
- All submitted projects will be able to win this award.
- Instead of the judges, the whole community will be able to vote through the hackathon website.
- One project will win the award
- Winner will get $30,000
Serum Award
- To compete for this category, developers must build innovative solutions on the Serum liquidity infrastructure and the newly released Serum Core.
- The project should increase trade volume and provide better liquidity to the greater Solana ecosystem.
- Two projects will win a prize:
- First place will receive $50,000
- Runner up will win $30,000
Wormhole Award
- Projects seeking to win a prize in this category must utilize Wormhole’s message-passing protocol to build cross-chain solutions that extend the DeFi use-cases in the Solana ecosystem.
- Two projects will win a prize:
- First place will receive $50,000
- Runner up will win $30,000
Pyth Network Award
- To win the prize in this category, projects must utilize Pyth’s data infrastructure to build new solutions that solve problems in the DeFi space.
- The project needs to appeal to institutional traders while being intuitive enough for a retail audience.
- There will be one winner:
- The winner will receive $30,000
Atrix Award
- In order to win the prize for this category, projects will need to successfully integrate Atrix’s features, including liquidity pools and yield farms.
- One project will win a prize:
- Winning project will receive $30,000
PsyOptions Award
- For this category, projects must actively contribute to the Psy ecosystem and PSY DAO.
- The category will have two winners:
- First place will win $50,000.
- Runner up will receive $30,000
Terra Award
- Projects vying to win the Terra award must support the adoption of Terra’s UST stablecoin.
- Projects must increase usage of UST and create additional use cases for DeFi within the TerraLuna ecosystem.
- Only one project will win the Terra award:
- Winner will receive $30,000
About Project Serum
Project Serum is a decentralized exchange and liquidity infrastructure platform for DeFi protocols built on the Solana blockchain. It offers an on-chain central limit order book (CLOB) that gives developers access to matching services and shared liquidity across all protocols built on Serum.
For more on Project Serum, visit: https://www.projectserum.com/
About Wormhole
Wormhole is a decentralized token and data bridge protocol that connects to multiple chains including Ethereum, Solana, Terra, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche and Oasis.
Wormhole offers two features built on top of the generic message-passing protocol including:
A token bridge that allows users to seamlessly bridge wrapped assets between supported chains.
An NFT bridge that allows ERC721 and SPL NFTs to be transferred between Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and Solana.