From Global Remittances to AI-Fueled Credit: Winners of the Bahamut Hackathon

The clacking of keyboards. The excited whispers. The pounding of coffee and Celsius and then more coffee. These are the sounds of innovation, and this was the vibe at the Easy A Consensus Hackathon, in Toronto, where over 1,000 builders sprinted to turn web3 theory into reality.

Many of these builders flocked to stand N2806, which was devoted to building on the Bahamut Blockchain. Why Bahamut? As Pavel Aramyan, Fastex’s Web3 Program Lead, explained in a keynote, Bahamut offers blazing fast speed, increased decentralization and security, a focus on sustainability and innovation, and something truly unique in the entire Web3 ecosystem: Proof of Stake and Activity (PoSA).

Unlike a traditional Proof of Stake mechanism, with PoSA, validators are rewarded based on the activity of the smart contracts they deploy. This encourages a frisky network. This unlocks speed, equity, greater participation, and a “virtuous cycle” where validators are motivated to contribute.

On the Hackathon stage in Toronto, as Pavel Aramyan explained the nuance of Bahamut’s secret sauce, the crowd of builders took notes and took notice. Then they built. The hackathon featured three dedicated Bahamut tracks: AI x Onchain, Cross-Chain Innovation, and a Bonus Bounty. The prize pool totaled $50,000 (see the winners here), delivered via both FTN coins and those oversized, always-delightful checks that are the size of a bathtub.

The builders were smart, thoughtful, lightning-quick coders. Many were young, and they were trying to solve real problems. Take Cole Dermo, at the time a 21-year-old student at the University of Waterloo, who’s something of a hackathon guru. (His X profile notes that he has “7X Hackathon wins.”) Dermo and his partner, a builder who goes by the name “Turk.”

Dermo and Turk wanted to use Bahamut’s speedy and frictionless Layer 1 to crack the problem of international remittances. “Traditional remitter platforms have high fees of 7% to 9%,” Dermo said in the duo’s pitch video. “There’s also [the problem of] slow settlements, typically taking two to five days. Complex user interfaces exclude nontechnical users, and the overall custodial risk ends up with a lot of technical folks not wanting to use them.” Dermo also noted that traditional solutions are unavailable to those who are unbanked — 1.7 billion, or roughly 1 out of every 5 people on the planet.

Theoretically, this could be solved with other Web3 tools but Dermo and Turk are realists. They understand that while solutions like MetaMask wallets, seed phrases, and public and private keys are perfectly fine for the crypto-savvy, they’re often too daunting for “normies.” So they wanted to build something simpler. They wanted to build a buttery-smooth interface using Bahamut that only required a simple phone, a link, and a PIN number.

“The interface was made to be as frictionless as possible for non-crypto people,” said Turk. “Ideally, you should be able to send a link to your mom or to your grandmother with a PIN number, and they can deposit these funds immediately.”

During this hackathon, Dermo and Turk worked their magic and somehow whipped up a demo of their platform, called MilkyPay, which you can watch here. It’s dead simple, it’s quick, it can work for your grandma, and it was built on Bahamut. Dermo and Turk were rewarded with $10,000 for their second-place finish, and in one inspired bout of coding they might have just improved the world of cross-border remittances.

Other teams raced to make Bahamut itself easier to use. No matter what blockchain you’re working with, it can be a headache to manage and type in wallet addresses. If you try to type in something like “Oxkasjhetkl;saseaheetlshaWTF_OMG_ItsTooLong” you sweat bullets or you’ll make a typo. So the hackathon team of Eugene Harin, Danny Nguyen, and Anton Polski had an idea: If you wanted to send FTN coins to your friend Bob, instead of typing that ghastly 37-character string, what if you could just send it to “Bob.ftn”? So they did exactly that. They spun up a solution that lets you send crypto to Bob.ftn, link to websites and NFTs, create unique Web3 profiles (such as avatars), and integrate with wallets and browser plugins. It’s called NameVault, and it won 1st place at the hackathon and a cool $15,000.

Many of the hackathon’s solutions involved AI. Exhibit A: A project called Fast Credit, which worked to provide a credit solution for gig workers and the unbanked. Fast Credit uses AI for income verification, creates a system for staking FTN on Bahamut as loan collateral, and then --through a clever NFT mechanism — provides a decentralized cross-chain standardized credit rating. Fast Credit’s team of Hitarth and Ali won third place and $7,500.

Some of these builders — like the prolific Dermo — will almost certainly compete in more hackathons. It’s a blur, it’s a rush, it’s a jolt to the system. Hackathons run on adrenaline, inspiration, and too much caffeine….and more and more blockchain solutions are run on Bahamut.

Click here to learn more about the Bahamut ecosystem that powered this track of the Consensus Hackathon.