Neo has announced the winners of the Polaris Launchpad Hackathon event, awarding prizes from a US $500,000 pool. Five grand prizes were available across five Polaris Launchpad categories, in addition to 14 excellence awards and one special mention award.
Each grand prize-winning project will receive $35,000 in NEO tokens. Further, each winning team will receive a custom-tailored set of post-hackathon incubation opportunities through participation in the Neo Global Development EcoBoost program. EcoBoost is designed to enhance the Neo ecosystem by offering end-to-end lifecycle support for small and medium-sized teams who develop on or are looking to integrate with or migrate to the Neo blockchain.
Excellence and special award winners will receive $8,000 in NEO tokens and customized consultation time with the NGD EcoGrowth team regarding their projects.
All winning projects that received a multiplier award during the Planathon phase will also have their prizes multiplied by a factor ranging from 1.1 to 1.5x.
The third and final phase of the Polaris Launchpad, Polaris Plus, begins June 8 and runs through June 21. This portion of the event will take place on the DoraHacks platform. The Neo community will contribute GAS to their favorite projects which Neo will then match through quadratic funding from a minimum $57,500 pool.
Quadratic funding encourages users to fund proposals by amplifying smaller donations made by the general community. The amount of GAS each user donates is then matched from a grant pool, equal to the square of the sum of the square roots of contributions received minus the actual contribution.
The Polaris Launchpad winners can be found below:
Best DeFi Project
Pumpkin Swap
Pumpkin Swap is a Uniswap-like DEX that allows users to create liquidity pools, provide liquidity, and launch an LP with minimal fees. The platform will also enable users to stake LP tokens on Flamingo and potentially non-custodial exchanges on other blockchains. The platform offers swapping, pooling, and other utility (i.e., create NEP-17 token, create LP, lock/unlock liquidity).
“‘I chose the Neo N3 network as the easiest and most complete solution for my ideas. My true passion for creating and bringing ideas to life starts right here with Neo. I’m honored and grateful to be able to work on developing and bringing my ideas into reality through Polaris Launchpad. The Neo Polaris Launchpad hackathon has been a perfect opportunity to show my idea. My passions are coding and bringing my ideas to life. This has given me a chance to share my work and passion with the Neo community. I can only say a big thank you. This has been an amazing experience.” – Sky
Best Metaverse and NFT Project
DogeRift
Dogerift is a GameFi app built on Neo. Players use their NFTs as playable characters to earn tokens that can be used in-game to improve a player’s gameplay or be traded for profit. Players use their NEO wallets as game accounts to log in to the game and can use NFTs as playable characters and items.
“We are very grateful for the Neo team for recognizing our project and for all the help and feedback from the community. We are going to do our best to make this project a great game that will attract many new users to the N3 blockchain. We’ve been passionate gaming developers for years now, and the acknowledgment from the Neo team means a lot to us. Our team is very excited for the future of DogeRift development. We have followed the Neo blockchain development for years, and as game developers we saw this as a perfect opportunity to make our ideas possible. As passionate game developers, we hope DogeRift will become a very fun and exciting way for players on the Neo blockchain to play to earn. We are very happy to make this project come to life! Thank you all for the support!” – Zoxyi
Best General Project
Bamboo
Bamboo is a social media platform that seeks to integrate Web2 and Web3 by attaching users’ social media accounts to character NFTs. The platform uses a native graph network (Bamboo Graph) to store the data in the back-end, and the user homepage will feature an NFT gallery, messaging, friend list, and other functions.
“Thanks to every team member for the two months of brainstorming and development. And thanks to Neo for providing such a good platform and strong technical support. John introduced Neo technology to us, and after evaluating many different blockchain capabilities, we found that many other blockchains could not fully realize our vision. We have gotten a lot of quick and constructive help from the Neo community. We love the vibe of the Neo community so much. Thanks to everyone who has helped with this project!” – Moumou
Best Middleware Project incorporating NeoFS and native Oracle networks
Greenfinch
Greenfinch is a decentralized Dropbox-like application which utilizes NeoFS on the back-end for storing data and information. Greenfinch allows users with an N3 wallet address to upload and download content through a user-friendly GUI and desktop application.
“We are ecstatic about winning the Grand Prize for Best Middleware Project Incorporating NeoFS/Oracle. We set out to build a product that will ultimately benefit the community, but also show the world the incredible functionality of Neo and NeoFS. We cannot wait to see where we go next with Greenfinch. The upcoming incubation support will really help us take Greenfinch to the next level. We believe in the technology Neo offers, and the Polaris Launchpad hackathon offered us an opportunity to share this belief with a wider audience. It gave us the incentive we needed to work on something that will demonstrate that Neo is a serious contender in the decentralized space.” – Alex Walker
Best DAO Project
NeoDao
NeoDao is a toolkit and client-side Javascript library. The toolkit offers a package consisting of the typical operations a blockchain requires, reducing the necessity for a developer’s expertise in blockchain programming. The library allows web developers to integrate a DAO module into a website and utilizes the Greenfinch API built on NeoFS.
“The Polaris Launchpad hackathon was my chance to work with some of the most talented people in the blockchain industry and possibly earn the chance to take my ideas to completion to the world at large. To my delight, I have been given that opportunity, and I believe all of us will look back at this hackathon as the moment Neo N3 finally took flight. The best thing about winning in the Polaris Launchpad is knowing that I have a chance to play an important role in helping people discover, use, and learn to love the most powerful and innovative blockchain platform in the world.” – Robert Oschler
Additional Award Winners
Dao Cake
DAO Cake brings DAO technology to communities and startups. It solves conflict and distrust of profit distribution in a dApp where members’ claims are posted, voted, and approved in a simple, fun way. Its mission is to make founder contributions easy.
Feedio
Feedio is designed to be a decentralized, reliable price feed system that would provide crypto and other asset prices via a smart contract interface that can be consumed by other smart contracts in a cost-effective manner.
Findtruman
Findtruman is a crowd-sourced, whodunit-style game, where players search for clues in a 3D hotel environment to find Truman, the mysterious killer. Players can vote on the plot’s direction by using FindTruman Genesis NFTs.
Neo-Effisend
Neo-Effisend is a Neo-based mobile dApp and wallet that improves cash-out processes and integrates with Rapyd to improve financial inclusion in Mexico and Latin America.
SOMNIUMWAVE
SOMNIUMWAVE is an open-world 3D blockchain game designed to reward users for holding NFTs and competing in matchmaking. Players may buy and sell lands, vehicles, and weapons using the NEP-17 token $SOM.
Space War Alpha
Space War Alpha is a space-shooter game with upgradable NFTs.
Gitter.network
gitter.network is a decentralized automation protocol built on Neo N3. It allows a reliable automatic execution of arbitrary smart contract logic with the help of a decentralized execution infrastructure.
Neo-artistic.com
Neo-artistic.com is an NFT marketplace on NEO to mint, buy, sell and auction for NFTs, integrated with NeoFS.
Student Data System
Student Data System is a data storage platform using NeoFS, students’ data can be saved in the Neo network for permanent storage without any inconvenience to users.
Bowerbird
Bowerbird is a decentralized and collateralized lending protocol aiming to provide sustainably high yields by capturing the intrinsic yields of collateral assets.
LatchBox
LatchBox is a fully decentralized token lock and vesting platform on Neo N3 Blockchain. LatchBox aims to protect every cryptocurrency community from rug pulls and unscrupulous advisors.
Forthewin Network
Forthewin network is a platform that helps to kick-start crypto projects such as minting, listing, trading, staking and voting.
CaaS for Neo3
CassS for Neo3 is a compiler as a service (CaaS) project using the Neo N3 infrastructure.
NeoDashboard
NeoDashboard is a website providing access to data regarding the Neo ecosystem. A Twitter bot is also deployed to allow people to discover events such as whale alerts, deployment of new contracts, and candidacies for the Neo Council.
Special Mention Winner: SUPERSON Solution
An additional award category was added during the judging phase. The Special Mention Award was given for a submission that did not yet have a coding element but did an excellent job of building a strong business case and shows great potential for project implementation in a valued area of the Neo ecosystem.
SUPERSON Solution received the Special Mention Award. Superson will be a stablecoin for Neo.
About The Author: Dylan Grabowski
Dylan is a reformed urban planner with a passion for covering the Neo ecosystem. His objective as a writer for Neo News Today is to report news in an objective, fact-based, non-sensational manner. When not behind a computer screen, he can be found in the mountains rock climbing. Find Dylan on Twitter (@GrabowskiDylan).
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