Think about you are a fresh-faced developer, puffed up and able to construct your first massive mission. You have obtained at the least 3 RedBulls in your veins, a GitHub repo open, and a dream.
Then you definitely see it: a hackathon. Large names, massive prizes, massive alternative. Sounds… excellent… proper?
On September 2, Base hosted the Onchain Summer season Awards, a hackathon celebrating probably the most progressive and extensively used shopper mini-apps within the Base ecosystem. 500+ developer groups joined in to chase a $200,000 prize pool.
Fairly strong deal, props to Base for supporting the neighborhood…
… is one thing I might be saying if this factor wasn’t rigged.
On October 7, Base introduced the winners.
That is when an X person named Alanas, co-founder of Ogvio (a global cash switch service), observed one thing… off.
Whereas looking by way of the High New Shopper Apps class, he realized two of the profitable initiatives – owatch (second place) and Opi Commerce (third) – had been hella sus.
In accordance with his findings, each apps had 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 had been related to Coinbase workers – the identical firm behind the Base community, and, conveniently, the hackathon’s organizer.
Which is VERY attention-grabbing, to say the least.
Hackathons are presupposed to be these thrilling, open occasions the place anybody can showcase their abilities, meet different builders, and perhaps even flip a aspect 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 corporations can then use totally free, all beneath the comfortable banner of “neighborhood constructing.”
The record of hackathon controversies is lengthy, truly: 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 nearly like you possibly can’t host a hackathon as of late with no little bit of drama. So, it makes you surprise: are hackathons even price it?
Perhaps the higher reply is: not in the way in which we’re instructed they’re.
Hackathons promote the thought of “the most effective builders win.”
However in follow, 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 corporations extract from the publicity and submissions.
That doesn’t imply nobody advantages – simply that it is hardly ever the contributors:
👉 For organizers, a hackathon is reasonable advertising: 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 may nonetheless study one thing or meet somebody helpful – however these are negative effects, not the purpose.
So perhaps the query is not “are hackathons price it?”
It is “price it for whom?”
