ETH Boston 2019 was an amazing weekend for the Torus Team as we went over to Harvard’s gorgeous campus in Boston, USA. The weekend in-person hackathon registered over 400 attendees who formed 55 teams to tackle issues that they were passionate about. We saw several newcomers to the ecosystem with 21% polling that they were beginners and 13% of the participants stating that they were new to Ethereum.
At the hackathon, Torus proved useful for introducing both new developers and users to the decentralised ecosystem while registering one of the most integrations by the project teams.
Throughout the weekend, our team conducted workshops, debugged code alongside other developers, hosted API prizes, met with the community and sent ETH to Google accounts via Torus.
Hackathon Workshop: Increasing Your DApp Userbase with Torus
Zhen conducted a workshop for developers curious about making their DApps easily accessible to mainstream audiences. Torus proved to be an easy integration, which was essential amongst the developers who had to work within a short time-frame to finish their projects.
Our name resolver caught traction as Zhen sent ETH to a developer’s Google account email live during the workshop. Public keys are mapped to Google account IDs on the Torus network allowing users to send ETH to a Google account regardless of whether they have logged in to Torus before.
First-time users that have had ETH sent to their Google account could log into the Torus wallet and start using the ETH in their wallets without having to register for a wallet with Torus prior. This is especially useful for new users who have yet to learn about public keys and gives them and gentler learning curve into the decentralised ecosystem.
Our team saw several impressive use cases that were built with our name resolver during this hackathon. On top of Torus, developers also integrated complementary platforms and layer 2 solutions like Skale, Offchain Labs, Aragon, Aztec Protocol, Enigma, and Taxa Network.
Meet the Torus Winners of ETH Boston 2019
Out of the total 55 project submissions, 20 teams integrated Torus into their builds to streamline the login process for their users. Our developers had to go through many amazing solutions to select the winners for our API Prizes, several of whom were ETH Boston 2019 Finalists as well.
We awarded US$6,000 worth of API Prizes to 5 competent teams who built fantastic DApps using Torus. Congratulations to the following teams that powered through sleepless nights to build amazing prize-winning DApps!
We included links to projects that have made their demos available for our readers to test them out, read on to discover what our prize winners built!
Grand Prize for the DApp that Integrated Torus: Shine
Shine brought Shopify’s novel internal corporate social platform to the blockchain. The platform allows employees within the organization to create and vote on posts about outstanding and altruistic actions of fellow colleagues. This would give the company an overview of how their employees are contributing towards the company in other social metrics, and reward them accordingly.
Shine built their own relayer from Dfuse’s recently released Ethereum service to stream their data and integrated Torus as the log-in mechanism. Torus gleams in this solution as it provides easy onboarding for any employee, and they are able to get rewards into their company Gsuite account without any prior registration.
With our API Prize, Dfuse plans to further develop the platform and launch it on their company’s intranet, using the funds won to finance the pool to reward good karma within their company. With the success that Shopify has seen with their system, we look forward to Shine producing a commercial corporate social platform for other companies to utilize.
Team Shine was made up of a team of programmers from Dfuse, a platform that allows lightning-fast streaming searches on EOSIO and Ethereum.
DApp that Best Fulfills an Industry Need: SkipID
SkipID developed a technologically fancier way to get carded at bars and events; with your Google account as your identifier. SkipID generates an identifier QR code from the user’s public key when they log in with Torus. The person is then able to generate an event ticket or age identifier to prove that the person is who they say they are or are as old as they say they are with the DApp. With SkipID, participants or patrons can still retain their private data while verifying their identity at events.
SkipID integrated enigma with their build alongside Torus to run and secure their deployed contracts, which added a privacy layer to their computation.
We see a potential real-world use case with SkipID, and they could possibly set the new standards for identification verification at events and venues with the relevant support from the government. We’re excited to see Team SkipID polish their build and pursue this new verification method.
DApp with the Most Seamless and Intuitive User Onboarding: Fancy Lobster Auction
Fancy Lobster Auction built a proof-of-concept auctioning system for users to bid on imaginary goodies, with the potential to run a real-world online auction house.
The team from DSF Protocol built a beautiful user login experience with Torus and brings the user straight to their DApp in a quick two-click process. Fancy Lobster Auction managed to modify and merge two other complementary technologies, Taxa Network and Offchain Labs, into a seamless DApp for users.
Fancy Lobster Auction’s user-flow detaches them from the notion that they are interacting with a decentralised blockchain application and is aligned with where the industry is headed to. The harmonious synergy between Torus, Taxa and Offchain labs built by the team foretells the pragmatism of the bridge between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 that Torus is building for developers and users of the ecosystem.
DApp with the Best Overall User Experience: AnonHero
One of ETH Boston 2019’s Finalist and a hackathon favourite, AnonHero built an extremely polished product as a solution to an issue they were passionate about.
Misinformation campaigns can cause great unrest and disruption to the public population, as seen in the recent happenings in Hong Kong. AnonHero developed a platform that allows anyone to participate in real-world events that are at risk of media censorship, tell their story, and unequivocally prove it on the blockchain while masking their identity.
AnonHero incorporated complementary platforms alongside Torus to establish a robust solution. They connected Torus to Skale and signed smart contracts with Torus. To process and classify the images of events that users submit, the team trained an image verification algorithm with a Keras dataset and processed it with Skale’s Machine Learning. The team also integrated Enigma Protocol as a privacy layer to protect the identity of the users.
We are eager to see the team push out a commercially ready product for the users in jurisdictions that need it the most.
DApp with the Best Creative Design for Implementing Torus: Credao
Team Credao developed a platform with Aragon to onboard contributors using familiar workflows and tools like GitHub to ease their transition into Web 3.0.
They generated a mapping between GitHub IDs and sourcecred contribution scores and linked them to the public keys pegged to their Google accounts with Torus. The team also built an Airdrop distribution mechanism to easily send tokens or “cred” to a set group of community members based on the mappings.
Credao’s integration with Torus allows GitHub contributors who may not necessarily have an Ethereum wallet prior to receive the rewards from their contributions to the community. This lowers the barriers of entry for contributors and motivates them to explore Web 3.0 with tokens.
Torus is currently integrating GitHub as another authenticator for our logins, this would streamline this use-case and provides GitHub contributors with public keys mapped to their GitHub ID.
Credao’s integration with Aragon and Torus produced a beautiful and functional user interface that proved easy for new users to adopt.
Next Steps for Torus: Torus4Everyone 2019
The Torus Team will be heading to Seoul next for Korea Blockchain Week 2019 to co-host a hackathon with Binance Labs and host our own community meet-up as well.
Our team has seen many impressive projects built within the hackathon weekend, and we are encouraging the teams to further refine their builds at our online hackathon. Torus4Everyone 2019 is now open to all Ethereum DApps till the 30th of September.
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