Think about you are a fresh-faced developer, overvalued and able to construct your first huge mission. You have received not less than 3 RedBulls in your veins, a GitHub repo open, and a dream.
You then see it: a hackathon. Massive names, huge prizes, huge alternative. Sounds… good… proper?
On September 2, Base hosted the Onchain Summer season Awards, a hackathon celebrating essentially the most modern and broadly used client mini-apps within the Base ecosystem. 500+ developer groups joined in to chase a $200,000 prize pool.
Fairly stable deal, props to Base for supporting the neighborhood…
… is one thing I would be saying if this factor wasn’t rigged.
On October 7, Base introduced the winners.
That is when an X consumer named Alanas, co-founder of Ogvio (a world cash switch service), seen one thing… off.
Whereas shopping by means of the High New Shopper Apps class, he realized two of the successful initiatives – owatch (second place) and Opi Commerce (third) – have been hella sus.
In response to his findings, each apps have been mainly AI-generated touchdown pages with no working buttons, no product, and no actual performance.
Additional investigation revealed that a few of these AI-generated shell initiatives have been related to Coinbase staff – the identical firm behind the Base community, and, conveniently, the hackathon’s organizer.
Which is VERY fascinating, to say the least.
Hackathons are alleged to be these thrilling, open occasions the place anybody can showcase their abilities, meet different builders, and perhaps even flip a facet mission right into a funded startup.
However when insiders and AI-generated initiatives win over precise working merchandise, that entire neighborhood empowerment factor begins to sound a bit hole.
And it isn’t simply Base. Builders have been skeptical about hackathons for years.
Throughout boards and social media, folks have complained that many of those occasions are extra about PR and model picture than real innovation.
Some even name them exploitative – getting builders to pour hours into constructing concepts that firms can then use totally free, all beneath the comfortable banner of “neighborhood constructing.”
The listing of hackathon controversies is lengthy, really: CodeX with its underwhelming rewards, Hack the Hill elevating charges on pupil contributors, Salesforce’s “pre-made mission” winner scandal again in 2013…
It is virtually like you’ll be able to’t host a hackathon nowadays with no little bit of drama. So, it makes you surprise: are hackathons even price it?
Possibly the higher reply is: not in the best way we’re instructed they’re.
Hackathons promote the concept of “the very best builders win.”
However in observe, they usually reward connections, presentation abilities, or just being on the within. The judging is opaque, the timelines unrealistic, and the prizes disproportionately small in comparison with the worth firms extract from the publicity and submissions.
That doesn’t imply nobody advantages – simply that it is not often the contributors:
👉 For organizers, a hackathon is affordable advertising and marketing: a burst of social media buzz and free R&D disguised as neighborhood engagement.
👉 For builders, it’s unpaid labor dressed up as alternative.
Certain, you would possibly nonetheless study one thing or meet somebody helpful – however these are unwanted side effects, not the purpose.
So perhaps the query is not “are hackathons price it?”
It is “price it for whom?”
