We submitted Megamint to the Mantle Global Hackathon with five seconds left on the clock. That wasn’t part of the plan, but building under pressure rarely is. Working with Mantle, HackQuest, and OpenBuild, we learned how to prioritize features that matter, how to sideline everything else, and how quickly clarity arrives when time runs out. So in this article we're gonna talk about how Mantle got on our radar, and our experience being a part of the hackathon.

Megamint is a blockchain-native lottery & giveaways platform, built around one simple idea; making games of chance transparent, fair and verifiable. Historically, lotteries and giveaways have been characterized by a lack of transparency. And the best example of this is the McDonalds Mcmillions lottery from the '90s, where operators rigged the lottery in their favor and unsuspecting players who thought they had a shot realized later on that they didn't. I decided to build Megamint after watching this documentary.

How Mantle got on our radar

I started learning about web3 development in the summer of last year, and at that point in time I thought I'd build Megamint and deploy it onto Ethereum(Mainnet) and Solana, since these are the flagship blockchain networks. I got on Cyfrin Updraft and started learning, thinking all I'll need is solidity. I soon realized how costly deploying to the mainnet is and pivoted to L2s, and started with Base. I also realized that Solana is nothing like Ethereum, I couldn't plug & play, I had to learn Rust and Anchor.

After some research, I came across Hackquest, they had a pretty good and beginner-friendly Solana Basics course. I started the course in late December, and I was done with it over the holidays.

While browsing their hackathons page, I saw one that peaked my interest and added registering for it to my calendar. While browsing right after registering for it, I decided to read more on the Mantle hackathon. After quickly skimming through the overview, I immediately registered with about 2 weeks to go. Having been building since October, we clearly fit the requirements for a participant. And it was off to the races, we had 2 weeks to publish.

Our Experience participating in the hackathon

With roughly 2 weeks to ship, I had to switch gears and start working like there was a deadline to meet. I also had to decide what to prioritize(I made some tough calls). I'd been writing code for the giveaways feature which was meant to be rolled out by the second week of January, but had to put that on hold so that I could focus on what was most important.

Having launched our beta, I needed to finalize work on a major update to the contracts and also make modifications which would make our protocol compatible with the Mantle network. The fact that Mantle is evm-compatible made things much easier, I probably wouldn't have participated if that wasn't the case. A caveat to this is the fact that the network uses MNT and not ETH, our protocol was built to work with ETH, this meant that I had to customize some of the numbers we're using so as to account for the difference in value between ETH and MNT. These changes extended to the front-end, where I also had to make changes in order to accommodate the MNT token.

I had 15-hour work days trying to make sure everything was ready before the 15th, but I ended up working til literally the last minute. Then came the final day, the 15th of January, I wasn't done yet. I worked all day, and started deploying the contracts with about 2 hours to go. I didn't have any MNT though, so I tried bridging ETH on Mantle's website, and they gave us WETH instead of MNT. I had to think on my feet because time was running out! I got on bungee and bought 1 MNT, so that I can use it for fees to swap the WETH for MNT. After swapping the MNT, I tried deploying contracts again and this time it worked, and now we were officially in the race because we couldn't submit our project without a contract address. I deployed all the contracts needed for the protocol to work, and once I was done I had 11 minutes to record a demo video, upload it and submit.

I quickly recorded the video, choosing to launch a lottery on the testnet simply because I didn't have the time to add the contracts to the application and record the video. I recorded a nearly 2 minute video, where I launched a lottery and bought a ticket. With 9 minutes to go, I started filling in the submission form while simultaneously uploading the video since I couldn't submit without atleast 1 video. I filled in the form and then watched the video being uploaded, from 10% all the way to 100%. The moment it hit 100%, I saved the changes and submitted the project. With 5 seconds to spare.

That was our first hackathon submission of 2026—a whirlwind of thrill, panic, and excitement. Here are the lessons:

• *Show up. Out of 2000+ participants, only 519 submitted a project. So, shoutout to everyone who submitted their project.

• Don't quit early. I'd have simply said that we couldn't have something ready for submission in 2 weeks, but believing I could do it and putting in the work made it a reality.

• Celebrate your wins. Submitting our project was a win, and so is finding and fixing a bug, celebrate them all.

What's next for Megamint

The hackathon was a milestone, but not the finish line. We launched on Mantle in record time, and now we wait. A demo day is just around the corner and winners will be announced on the 7 of Feb. We're excited and look forward to being rewarded for the work we've put in. In the meantime, we continue building, our giveaways feature which was was put on hold for the hackathon now takes center stage.

Big thanks to Mantle, Hackquest and OpenBuild for putting this together, it truly helped bring the best out of builders. And we're looking forward to more hackathons of this nature.

We launched a lottery on Mantle for the hackathon and would love to see you win, so get your tickets here and be part of a great story.

We submitted Megamint to the Mantle Global Hackathon with five seconds left on the clock. That wasn’t part of the plan, but building under pressure rarely is. Working with Mantle, HackQuest, and OpenBuild, we learned how to prioritize features that matter, how to sideline everything else, and how quickly clarity arrives when time runs out. So in this article we're gonna talk about how Mantle got on our radar, and our experience being a part of the hackathon.

Megamint is a blockchain-native lottery & giveaways platform, built around one simple idea; making games of chance transparent, fair and verifiable. Historically, lotteries and giveaways have been characterized by a lack of transparency. And the best example of this is the McDonalds Mcmillions lottery from the '90s, where operators rigged the lottery in their favor and unsuspecting players who thought they had a shot realized later on that they didn't. I decided to build Megamint after watching this documentary.

How Mantle got on our radar

I started learning about web3 development in the summer of last year, and at that point in time I thought I'd build Megamint and deploy it onto Ethereum(Mainnet) and Solana, since these are the flagship blockchain networks. I got on Cyfrin Updraft and started learning, thinking all I'll need is solidity. I soon realized how costly deploying to the mainnet is and pivoted to L2s, and started with Base. I also realized that Solana is nothing like Ethereum, I couldn't plug & play, I had to learn Rust and Anchor.

After some research, I came across Hackquest, they had a pretty good and beginner-friendly Solana Basics course. I started the course in late December, and I was done with it over the holidays.

While browsing their hackathons page, I saw one that peaked my interest and added registering for it to my calendar. While browsing right after registering for it, I decided to read more on the Mantle hackathon. After quickly skimming through the overview, I immediately registered with about 2 weeks to go. Having been building since October, we clearly fit the requirements for a participant. And it was off to the races, we had 2 weeks to publish.

Our Experience participating in the hackathon

With roughly 2 weeks to ship, I had to switch gears and start working like there was a deadline to meet. I also had to decide what to prioritize(I made some tough calls). I'd been writing code for the giveaways feature which was meant to be rolled out by the second week of January, but had to put that on hold so that I could focus on what was most important.

Having launched our beta, I needed to finalize work on a major update to the contracts and also make modifications which would make our protocol compatible with the Mantle network. The fact that Mantle is evm-compatible made things much easier, I probably wouldn't have participated if that wasn't the case. A caveat to this is the fact that the network uses MNT and not ETH, our protocol was built to work with ETH, this meant that I had to customize some of the numbers we're using so as to account for the difference in value between ETH and MNT. These changes extended to the front-end, where I also had to make changes in order to accommodate the MNT token.

I had 15-hour work days trying to make sure everything was ready before the 15th, but I ended up working til literally the last minute. Then came the final day, the 15th of January, I wasn't done yet. I worked all day, and started deploying the contracts with about 2 hours to go. I didn't have any MNT though, so I tried bridging ETH on Mantle's website, and they gave us WETH instead of MNT. I had to think on my feet because time was running out! I got on bungee and bought 1 MNT, so that I can use it for fees to swap the WETH for MNT. After swapping the MNT, I tried deploying contracts again and this time it worked, and now we were officially in the race because we couldn't submit our project without a contract address. I deployed all the contracts needed for the protocol to work, and once I was done I had 11 minutes to record a demo video, upload it and submit.

I quickly recorded the video, choosing to launch a lottery on the testnet simply because I didn't have the time to add the contracts to the application and record the video. I recorded a nearly 2 minute video, where I launched a lottery and bought a ticket. With 9 minutes to go, I started filling in the submission form while simultaneously uploading the video since I couldn't submit without atleast 1 video. I filled in the form and then watched the video being uploaded, from 10% all the way to 100%. The moment it hit 100%, I saved the changes and submitted the project. With 5 seconds to spare.

That was our first hackathon submission of 2026—a whirlwind of thrill, panic, and excitement. Here are the lessons:

• *Show up. Out of 2000+ participants, only 519 submitted a project. So, shoutout to everyone who submitted their project.

• Don't quit early. I'd have simply said that we couldn't have something ready for submission in 2 weeks, but believing I could do it and putting in the work made it a reality.

• Celebrate your wins. Submitting our project was a win, and so is finding and fixing a bug, celebrate them all.

What's next for Megamint

The hackathon was a milestone, but not the finish line. We launched on Mantle in record time, and now we wait. A demo day is just around the corner and winners will be announced on the 7 of Feb. We're excited and look forward to being rewarded for the work we've put in. In the meantime, we continue building, our giveaways feature which was was put on hold for the hackathon now takes center stage.

Big thanks to Mantle, Hackquest and OpenBuild for putting this together, it truly helped bring the best out of builders. And we're looking forward to more hackathons of this nature.

We launched a lottery on Mantle for the hackathon and would love to see you win, so get your tickets here and be part of a great story.