Filecoin & IPFS Hackathon Judging Criteria

<aside> ℹ️ Thank you for building on Filecoin and/or IPFS! This document should help answer most questions you would have around judging of projects submitted to hackathons. Please feel free to reach out to us on our public Discord or Slack channels, or support channel specific to the hackathon you’re participating in if you would like to clarify anything.

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Judging Criteria*

🤩 Novelty/Creativity: Does it have unique and novel features or combine features of other products or services in a unique and novel way? Does it solve a new problem? Is it creative and puts a smile on people’s faces?
🚀 Potential Impact: Does it fill a gap in the universe, and have the potential to be used frequently by a large, growing and diverse audience or market? Is it
🤖 Technical Accomplishment: Is the code elegant, clean, and technically interesting? Is the project complete?
🪄 PL Tech Stack Implementation: How critically does the project use one or more projects or tools listed in the Protocol Labs Tech Stack (complete list below on the page)?
✨Design: How is the UX/UI/DX? Is it easy to use? If targeting developers, is the experience smooth and intuitive? Does the visual design delight you?

*Event-specific deviations may be possible. Contact the IPFS/Filecoin hackathons team with questions, if any.

Submission Guidelines

At a minimum submissions for prizes should include the following items:

1. Project Description

The name and summary of the project
Names/pseudonyms of team members and contact info (e.g., GitHub handle, email address, or other)
How the project uses to IPFS and/or Filecoin and/or decentralized storage services that build on top of either (like NFT.Storage & web3.Storage) with explicit links to files & functions in code where these technologies are used.

2. Link to the publicly visible source code repository

Provide comprehensive README, incl. a clear description of the work and mention of how our tech is used in the Technologies Used section of README.
Include a link to the working demo or provide a testing guide
To ensure the judges don’t miss it, include an explicit link to the file + functions where Filecoin / IPFS / other tools are used in your codebase.

3. Showcase

Short (typically 2-3 minute) video that presents the idea, including a brief demo that demonstrates the use of IPFS and/or Filecoin or anything that builds on top of them
If applicable, select the appropriate track when submitting the project.

Eligibility Criteria for Prizes

Submitting the same project across multiple hackathons will lead to disqualification.
Projects that have been awarded Filecoin grants will not be awarded a Hackathon prize, after their grant has been approved.
Only projects or features (preferably in separate branch) built specifically for the respective hackathon will be considered for prizes.
Broken links may disqualify the project from the judging process.
Using an IPFS HTTP gateway (ie fetching a CID through a gateway) doesn’t count as building on top of IPFS. Exclusively basing a project submission on this does not make you eligible for prizes
We have instituted policies to confirm payment disbursements are compliant with legally required sanctions. A list of sanctioned and otherwise restricted countries include, without limitation: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, the Crimea region of Ukraine, the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. Depending on which country a team resides, they may not be eligible to participate in our events and/or receive prize payments. We may request teams provide relevant information as necessary, and will process payments once cleared by our legal team.

Examples of qualifying tooling

<aside> ⚠️ Non-exhaustive list; always ask Filecoin / IPFS support channels or mentors if unsure.

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<aside> 🚀 If you manage to use more than one of the qualifying tools, your submissions will likely rank higher in the categories of ‘technical accomplishment’ and ‘IPFS & Filecoin implementation’.

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Dev Tool	High-level description	May usage of tool in isolation be enough to qualify?	Level of difficulty
Filecoin SDKs and libs	Persistent data storage protocol	Yes	High
Libp2p SDKs and libs	p2p networking protocol	Yes	Moderate
IPFS SDKs and client libs	Content-addressed file network	Yes	Easy - moderate (see proto.school for tips)
FVM SDKs and libs	Out-of-the-box EVM to FVM to compute over stored data on Filecoin network	Yes	Moderate
OrbitDB	Decentralized database	Yes	Moderate
Textile (i.e., Powergate, ETH.storage Bridge, Buckets, Tableland)	Toolkit to connect and extend Libp2p, IPFS, and Filecoin	Yes	Moderate
Ceramic	Decentralized data network with multiple applications	Yes	Moderate
Chainsafe Storage	Decentralized storage service	Yes	Moderate
NFT.Storage, web3.storage, estuary.tech or Lighthouse	Easy-to-use persistent data storage services	Only if storing and retrieving from code (i.e., uploading to the website or e.g., NFTUp alone is not sufficient)	Easy
Other storage solutions (e.g., Filebase)	Easy-to-use data storage services	Only if storing and retrieving to IPFS and/or Filecoin from code (i.e., uploading to the website alone is not sufficient)
Moralis IPFS API	Decentralized storage and retrieval service	Only if ‘saveIPFS’ -function is called (i.e., retrieval via http-gateway alone is not sufficient)	Easy
Pinning services (e.g., Pinata, Infura, Temporal)	IPFS pinning services	Only if storing and retrieving to IPFS from code (retrieval only does not qualify)	As per IPFS SDKs
Livepeer	Video streaming and encoding	Only if the project’s assets are exported to IPFS	As per IPFS SDKs
Fleek	Website hosting	Only if using the Fleek js-client lib/sdk (”Space SDK”) to upload objects to IPFS (deployment only does not qualify - though is encouraged!)	As per IPFS SDKs
Others (e.g., Spheron)		Other tools may qualify. If you’re unsure about whether your solution qualifies, please contact the Filecoin/IPFS mentors in the relevant support channels.

This page is subject to change; please refer to the latest version of this page for questions