The NEO Global Development team has recently announced an upcoming NEO blockchain challenge event, which will occur in the Ariake district of Tokyo, Japan. The specific event location has yet to be determined, but it will run from Friday 24th until Sunday 26th of August.

The competition has been designed to encourage the community to get together and become involved with the development side of NEO’s ecosystem. Entry to the event is completely free, and there are several prizes up for grabs for individuals or teams that successfully tackle the various challenges. A total prize pool of ‎JP¥2,000,000 will be awarded in its GAS equivalent. There are three challenge tiers available for community developers to complete, each with its own reward pool and difficulty level. These challenge tiers are as follows:

Elementary

Developers are required to query the balance of a specified address at a specified block height. Those that pass this challenge will receive an event souvenir, and only individuals may participate.

Intermediate A

Teams must retrieve a list of NEO balances for all addresses at a specified block height, with an execution time limit of less than 2 hours. Participants are recommended to synchronize the block height prior to the challenge using neo-cli or neo-gui. The first place prize is the GAS equivalent of JP¥100,000. Second place and third place teams will receive ‎JP¥60,000 and ‎JP¥40,000 respectively.

Intermediate B

NEO uses a UTXO model for asset storage, so each Transaction Output must be verified whenever a transfer is made to prevent double-spending. For this challenge, developers need to design a database system to store all Transaction Outputs, and record the spending status of each as spent or unspent. Teams will receive an offline synchronization package, as live blockchain data would potentially change during the event and lead to a mismatch with the intended results. The time spent on the data-import for this challenge is limited to three hours, and the total query time is limited to 20 minutes. Winners are decided by whichever teams use the least amount of time on their query and produce a correct result. The prizes for this challenge are the same as the previous intermediate challenge.

Advanced

Teams are required to find an application where GAS could be used, and to design a system for it. The requirements are as follows:

  1. GAS must be used as a circulation tool to solve problems in specific areas
  2. A model must be created to earn income from the system, and the income should be predicted
  3. Teams should design both a user interface and logo for the system
  4. A working prototype should be developed that can be run, exhibited and submitted to GitHub

For the advanced challenge tier, the first place prize is JP¥1,000,000. The second place team will receive JP¥400,000, and the third place team will be awarded JP¥200,000. It should be noted that projects that have participated in other competitions are not allowed to participate in this challenge.

All of the event participants are advised to bring their own computers to the challenge. Mac users will need to pre-install a Linux or Windows virtual machine. Those that win the challenges will be required to submit the project source code to GitHub, and explain the design ideas to other participants.

For the full challenge rules, judge profiles and additional details, you can visit the GitHub announcement page.

Written by Brett Rhodes

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