Polkadot Wink Event

Virtual Conference & Hackathon

Proponent: 727.ventures

TL;DR

The purpose of this proposal is to further bootstrap ink! field and bring more business use cases and new developers to Polkadot. As Gavin mentioned in this CoinDesk article, WebAssembly is the future of smart contracts. Also, as was mentioned in the approved WASM smart contracts bounty currently smart contracts parachains lead the ecosystem in terms of market adoption.

Polkadot Wink is a combined conference and hackathon event aiming to empower existing ink! companies by diving deep into ink! possibilities, broadening business, financial and marketing knowledge, thus helping them launch faster. And also working with Ukrainian middle/big enterprise, bringing new developers and business use cases to the ecosystem.

Context:

With the release of ink! 4.0 the field of Polkadot native smart contracts was bootstrapped. However, according to market data, ink! being a new technology needs further support both tooling and business-wise, helping companies to build, successfully launch and start generating traction.

Proposal:

Polkadot Wink aims to have 3 parts — Conference(online), Hackathon(online and offline + online track) and Pitch Day. It is focused on empowering existing ink! projects and involving new talented developers & business leaders in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Alongside, particularly the 2nd hackathon track aims to unveil blockchain/Polkadot potential to Ukraine’s big/middle enterprises and try to resolve their business problems using blockchain technology. On the 1st hackathon track, we plan to empower existing ink! projects by providing deep technical support, giving product, financial & marketing lectures, and connecting them to VCs on dedicated Pitch Day.

Both conference and hackathon are focused on utilizing Wasm ink! smart contracts and Polkadot's unique technology by empowering existing projects and attracting enterprise from non-web3 world.

Hackathon is organized in partnership with Astar Network, Aleph Zero and Brushfam.

ROI:

With a moderate investment of $147k, we aim for the following returns:

6-10 already existing companies utilizing ink! to get stronger, improve their market fit and funding situation, have tech challenges resolved, and be a few steps closer to deployment, market traction and revenues;
5 Ukrainian big&middle enterprise companies to get to know closely blockchain possibilities, particularly Polkadot technology;
1-2 new companies utilizing ink!/Substrate tech born by solving particular business request from Ukrainian big enterprise;
20-30 new founders and developers are made aware closely of Polkadot capabilities and 5-10 developers become actively engaged into the Polkadot ecosystem.

This event will also promote ink!ubator and this combination will strongly empower businesses in the ecosystem.

Full Proposal:

For full proposal please open this Link.