Tldr; The ETHGlobal Waterloo hackathon is happening from June 23–25, and UMA is sponsoring the event. The prize pool for builders totals $225,000, with UMA donating $10,000 to the best projects built using UMA. Applications are open to builders now.
Key takeaways:
UMA is sponsoring the upcoming ETHGlobal Waterloo hackathon.
Hackers are invited to submit their ideas for ways to build on UMA, with $10,000 in prizes available for the best entries.
The event runs from June 23–25 and applications are open now.
The UMA and Across teams recently returned from a fruitful offsite where we mapped out the role we intend to play in Web3’s future, and before long we’ll be hitting the road again for ETHGlobal Waterloo.
Our recent travels land off the back of a packed first half of 2023. Our long-awaited UMA 2.0 upgrade introduced $UMA staking and the OOv3, and we launched a tool that enables Optimistic Snapshot Execution for DAOs, oSnap.
But we’ve also found time to attend some of the key dates in the hackathon calendar. We’ve sponsored a string of ETHGlobal events this year and seen many killer project submissions. Talented builders have presented ideas covering everything from decentralized flight insurance to sports betting platforms, leveraging the optimistic oracle’s flexibility to power their projects.
Now, we’re inviting hackers to build on UMA at ETHGlobal Waterloo. Join us in Canada and contribute to the future of the Web3 ecosystem.
UMA heads to ETHGlobal Waterloo
Hackathons are where Web3’s brightest new ideas come to life. ETHGlobal’s events are always some of the standout dates in hackathon season, serving as the birthplace for new projects that accelerate the Ethereum ecosystem.
ETHGlobal Waterloo will see project teams, mentors, builders, and other members of the community come together to share their ideas on how to advance the Web3 space. Other teams sponsoring the event alongside UMA include The Graph and Polygon, while Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin will be returning to Ontario to deliver a keynote speech.
UMA core team members will also be on hand to provide support and guidance to hackers throughout the three-day event. We’ll judge all project entries that use UMA or Across Protocol and select the best ideas as prize winners. Builders have a chance to win from a prize pool worth $225,000, with $10,000 of that sum donated from UMA.
The full breakdown for the $10,000 prize, to be paid in $UMA, is as follows:
First place: $5,000
Second place: $2,000
Pool prize: $3,000
ETHGlobal Waterloo runs from June 23–25, and applications for builders are still open at the time of writing. Submit your application to build something amazing here.
What can you build with UMA?
UMA is Web3’s optimistic oracle. It acts as a decentralized truth machine, serving data to smart contracts and allowing for any kind of verifiable truth to be recorded on the blockchain. Any statement can be proposed as true in UMA’s oracle system, and economic incentives ensure that most statements are accepted as true. In rare dispute cases, $UMA tokenholders vote to solve the dispute and get rewarded for voting correctly. The OO is “optimistic” as the game theoretical mechanism ensures that dispute cases are rare.
Today, UMA powers projects like the cross-chain bridge Across Protocol, the on-chain prediction market Polymarket, and the decentralized cover projects Sherlock and Cozy Finance. oSnap, an UMA-powered solution that uses Snapshot and Safe, is also helping several leading DAOs remove centralization from their governance process.
Recent hackathon highlights
The scope for what can be built with UMA is limitless. Recent hackathon highlights include a Zero Knowledge-powered data browsing indexing tool that uses the OO to ensure applications do not misuse data, a flight insurance protocol where the OO delivers flight cancellation details to trigger payouts, and a sports betting platform for making event predictions where the OO verifies the predictions and settles disputes.
Hackers are welcome to submit ideas that use the OO or Across Protocol, with UMA team members set to select the prize winners. Below are some examples of possible use cases for the OO:
A betting escrow platform.
UMA already powers prediction markets and betting platforms, but it could have wider use in the space in the future. A betting escrow service could use the OO to settle a bet between two parties and distribute the funds to the winner. For example, when Balaji Srinivasan bet that Bitcoin would hit $1 million by June 2023, the OO could have been used to verify the price at the deadline and trigger a payout to the individual on the other side of the bet.
A service for taking out loans against real-world assets.
DeFi has long been researching ways to make use of “real-world assets.” Many argue that crypto will not reach its potential until RWAs can be brought on-chain. The OO could help here, as it could be used to verify assets when they’re posted as collateral. We can imagine a world where an RWA platform asks users to collateralize their Picasso paintings or Rolex watches, using the OO to verify the transaction and help the users take out a $USDC loan against their holdings.
An event insurance platform.
The OO helps power Sherlock and Cozy Finance, two cover protocols designed to help DeFi users get protection against their holdings. As it can verify any kind of information and record it on-chain, it could also be used to provide cover for many different types of real-world events. One example is issuing payouts to ticket holders in the event of a cancellation. If Taylor Swift cancels her concert, a fan holding a $400 ticket could file a claim via the platform. The OO could ask whether the concert was cancelled and then issue a payout.
Final call for ETHGlobal Waterloo
Hackathons provide a great opportunity to connect with the community and build for the future and we’re excited to see the ideas that come out of ETHGlobal Waterloo.
If you have a smart idea on how to use UMA or Across Protocol and you’re interested in hacking at the event, visit our developer docs to get started and get in touch with us here. You can also say hi at integrations@uma.xyz, drop us a DM on Discord or Twitter, or come and find us at the hackathon.
ETHGlobal Waterloo runs from June 23–25 and winners of the $10,000 UMA prize will be announced over the course of the event. Submit your application here and we look forward to checking out your projects soon.
Words by @dreamsofdefi
