Milestone 3 Report: Polkadot x EasyA Hackathons at Harvard and in London (#60DaysOfPolkadot)

Hey Everyone!

We’re thrilled to announce our successful completion of Milestone 3!

Progress Summary

As an executive summary, we have now successfully achieved Milestone 3 (holding the two in-person Polkadot hackathons in the US and UK) including surpassing our KPIs! As outlined in our Milestone 1 and 2 report, by the end of those two milestones we had collected key feedback from developers and parachain/project teams, and created the challenges to get developers building on them in the EasyA app!

In this milestone, we held two spectacular hackathons at Harvard University (in Boston, USA) and in London (UK) which attracted top developers both from within the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond, with Web3 enthusiasts keen to learn more about Polkadot attending and hacking.

Our #60DaysOfPolkadot campaign (which we’re continuing to run) has to-date brought over 20,000 developers to build in the Polkadot ecosystem via the EasyA in-app crash course. The sheer number of builders meant we were in the fortunate position to be able to select the very best developers to attend our two IRL hackathons. As a result, at the hackathons we had founders backed by a16z and YC, with multiple previous exits under their belts, as well as professional software engineers all coming together to create some of the best projects we’ve ever seen. In addition, we had a strong focus on students too, who came from nearby Harvard, MIT, Yale and Brown, and even as far away as from UChicago, Georgia Tech and Stanford. These students are the key to unlocking the next generation of Web3 builders, and they were inspired by the opportunities unlocked by Polkadot. Many of these brilliant teams are continuing to build on Polkadot after the hackathon.

What did it look like in numbers? In summary:

Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon at Harvard (17-18 June, 2023):

1. Hackers: 300
2. Final projects created: 35
3. Colleges/companies represented: 45
4. Social media impressions: 1.5M+

Check out the final video summary for the hackathon at Harvard here!

Polkadot x EasyA Hackathon in London (24-25 June, 2023):

1. Hackers: 250
2. Final projects created: 36
3. Colleges/companies represented: 38
4. Social media impressions: 1M+

Want to see the lines for the hackathon that stretched all the way down the road? Here’s the wrap-up video for the London hackathon here!

At both hackathons, participants attended world-leading workshops held by Polkadot experts such as Kevin Neilson (Developer Relations at Moonbeam), Dave Bean (COO of Gear), and Kahori Razzell (UX at Astar). They received 24/7 support, both at a code-level and also in preparing for their presentations at the final round of selection!

We were keen to involve as much of the ecosystem as possible, so in addition to the Polkadot parachains and projects whom we got developers building on around the world via the EasyA app, we also had the pleasure of hosting Moonbeam, Gear and Astar in-person. Each of them held their own track at the hackathons too, which was a massive success; this enabled developers to see the strength of the Polkadot ecosystem in-person as well as the vibrant technologies they could leverage beyond just the Polkadot relay chain itself.

In conclusion, the excitement created about Polkadot by these two hackathons was incredible. We put a huge amount of effort into encouraging developers to continue building in the Polkadot ecosystem after the hackathon, and are currently supporting several teams with making connections within the ecosystem so that they can thrive (e.g. get technical expertise, know-how and funding)! This will ensure these two hackathons support the long-term growth of the Polkadot ecosystem!

Full Progress Report

If you want to dive into the details of the hackathons, we’ve put everything together into this full report here!

This includes the projects, budget allocation, pictures and everything else!

Milestone 3 Requested Allocation Breakdown Summary

Demonstrating EasyA’s commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem and respect for treasury spending that fully benefits the community, we have already paid for the costs of hosting these two hackathons ourselves; this was required for them to go ahead as scheduled and to create hype amongst builders in the run-up to Polkadot Decoded.

Once the community has had time to review and discuss our proposal, we will then make a treasury proposal to request reimbursement for our costs in holding the two hackathons of $220,000. As EasyA have already paid for the costs of the hackathons, this is a request for reimbursement, in accordance with the community’s wishes for proposals to achieve their goals first and request reimbursement retrospectively.

Details for this milestone were discussed in our original discussion post here, with the precise milestone and allocation breakdown here. Our first milestone was approved here and our second milestone was approved here. This third milestone is to cover the costs EasyA incurred in hosting the in-person hackathons at Harvard and in London.

If you have any questions at all, please do feel free to comment them here! We were thrilled to host these hackathons for the community, and would love to share more about their success with everyone!

-- Phil, Dom (EasyA Co-Founders) and the EasyA Team!