Imagine visiting a hackathon. Hundreds of people hacking the future, solving critical challenges, and bringing world to the more democratic state. Sounds like a Computer Chaos Club camp in Germany, but surely not like typical crypto hackathon.

ETHGlobal hackathon with $700K prizes. Privacy-focused bounties covered not more than 5% of the total pot. Scalability, hyper-financialization and LLMs occupy hackathon game. So no surprise that next-gen hackathon projects can fix crypto-toxic image within so-called web2 world.

Possible solution - crafting a next-gen of builders that will have cypherpunk values at core mixed with playful vibes of the youth. Let’s examine our patient more closely!

Have you ever visited Ethereum hackathon? It’s a place of lots of young developers in search of friends, fun, money and future opportunities. They aren’t Snowden alike figures, not even Wikileaks anon-army. They are young and want to have fun.

Where fun stands for

• the general event enjoyment

• meeting with cool people

• developing meaningful things (they do believe in this!)

• compete for nice financial prizes & fame etc.

Here hackathon is like a computer game populated with bunch of characters, bosses and final rewards. So it shouldn’t surprise you that merch, communication and devrel team of many protocols look as if they are part of Anime fair curating holiday for otaku. It’s called “cultural fit”. Mascots capture emotional connection, plush toys facilitate belonging, and memecoins fill introvert-lack of social bonding-void.

Design of their dapps even look different from traditional colleagues from web2 world!

And now imagine what happens when those people build, for example, decentralized voting solutions without practice of IRL voting, lack of alternative voting mechanisms enabling (example: assemblies).

Summarising

• developers just want to have fun

• Gen Z has different cultural attributes (comparing to OG hackers from 90s)

Majority of the crypto hackathons are capitalist rat games. Money pot is at the centre of hacking. As if hackers aren’t a social classes that can challenge authority, but a labor class serving surveillance capitalism (including transparent chain - surveillance). They don’t argue much what “decentralisation” stands for. They just know that it’s sorta easy to get into crypto-development game, find friends, enjoy time & earn easy money.

There are many smart people touring hackathons & just “mining” bounties as if it’s a part of the lifestyle:

The result? Thousands of dead post-hackathon repos. A cemetery of open-source code, half of which is clunky (you know that majority of the hackathon demos doesn’t work well & need further bug fixing).

Summarising

• overfocus on bounties enforces greed

• “hackathon tourism” produce “dead code”

Homework: try to find out how many privacy-focused post-hackathon projects survived and evolved for at least 1 year after being coded?

A few post-hackathon survivors: Fluidkey x ETHRome, Web3Privacy now Explorer x ETHRome, Brume x ETHBrno.

People are here, money too, but privacy-projects have low impact once devs are experimenting with hackathon projects. Why so?

Lack of curation from hackathon managers, mentors &/or bounty givers.



Lots of devs are “shooting at the stars” trying to tackle world-global problems like “Turkish elections” (real example from hackathon and MACI implementation). What’s the chance that these devs will shape the state of Turkish electoral progress? Low. Maybe they can focus on so-called low-hanging fruits like micro-communities, crypto-savvy people. It’s an echo-chamber, small reach, but “demo” can quickly be turned into usable product.



Someone from orgs should limit devs imagination for better.

Lots of use-cases aren’t applicable to daily life.



2025, people still complaining that crypto has not a single use-case for web2 people. It’s partially true. Especially, when you look at the hackathon projects - many demos are zombies that no one would use. In privacy landscape they usually tackle hyper-scenarios that can’t be solved with existing team of 2-3-4 people, or try to “fix Big Tech” (example: private feedback on employees aka “Let’s redefine Glassdoor once again”).



Hacker hackathon journey example

Current bounty giver + tech mentors approach lacks personas or people in need of privacy-enhancing tech (including extra functionality that has privacy features, but isn’t perceived as “just privacy tooling”, think og the “fog of war” in Starcraft 2 as a privacy feature).

Tor personas research is an excellent example of people in need of privacy in relation to their tech literacy, internet accessibility etc.

Democracy or decentralisations are political notions, but they aren’t teached at hackathons.

So we are in the situation when thousands of people have thousand different understanding of decentralisation, and privacy too. It was evident for cypherpunks of the first generation that governments and corporations can abuse power against people. They aren’t necessary your friends, especially when elections can change influencers in power and their agenda. But hackathon devs are politically ignorant. Rarely you would hear a radical or bold statement behind the demo (a few post-Tornado Cash demos only prove general trend).

Developers need extensive education: cypherpunk basics, End-to-end encryption, ethical cryptography, privacy, surveillance capitalism, hacktivism, you name it. Only then they would be able to craft real privacy-enhancing tech for the daily use.

Demo is enough for success (spoiler: it’s not!)



Demos need additional polishing as mentioned above. Not just bug fixing, but custdev, front-end updates, integrations support, extra documentation, copy, business development… Yes, startup or product-approach. Where goal isn’t to deploy demo to github, so it will die there, but find “privacy-market-fit” (audience that use product and help to achieve sustainable financial model). Here financial model can vary from subscription & fees to donations and “personal time investment”.

“There aren’t even hackers. They hijacked “hacker” culture!”, - quote of the OG hacker after visiting another Ethereum hackathon.

Lets try to highlight potential transition from “hacker imposter” to “Cypherpunk hacker 2.0” within the crypto hackathon landscape:

The whole “stack” approach is more complex, but devs could start somewhere & become more mature social justice contributors over time.

Matching with practical change or imagining Cypherpunk hackathon of tomorrow.

We highlighted potential transition from Starter cypherpunk to Practitioner in our article here

Pre-hackathon privacy-personas research

Facilitate quantitative or qualitative analysis, talk to people, present profiles in need of privacy now.

Privacy builder flywheel

Provide builders with frameworks that can help ideate around privacy solutions in a playful way.

Match with diverse mentors and speakers

Some devs are tackling whistleblower platforms that just are bad versions of existing tooling. Connect them with experts like GlobaLeaks - share stories behind real activist products and potential enhancement (maybe there’s a ZK-potential for Whistleblower platforms!).

Shape interdisciplinary teams

Help to shape a good balance between technical & non-technical skills. Designers, researchers, marketing, copywriters, custdev pros - everyone matters in a long run. Free demos from technocracy - open-up to unexpected takes on dev hours, scope of work, & MVP.

Pitch social justice in a playful way

Find creative approach to shape responsibility & ethics behind privacy builders. Try to appeal to their cultural norms from use of memes in comms to appealing to their mundane life (example: privacy embedded into quadratic funding with memecoins - real ETHBucharest project).

Lets be honest: it’s hard to teach social justice someone within a hackathon weekend “usual 48 hours”. But it’s worth creating a highly-conscious space with asymmetrical positive impact:

• peer-scaling - more mature cypherpunk developers lead by example newcomers (example: Nym’s devrel Max, who participates in hackathons, can share horizontal activism stories, impact, and ideology)

• mentor-scaling* - *experienced professionals represent not just tech stack, but ethical & activist excellency ready to share solidarity practices for change (Paul-Dylan Ennis can share “hackers as a social class meets Ethereum social layer” stories)

• environment-scaling* - *imagine a space where the “walls are talking” about social justice, useful guides, videos, lectures are all over the place - just plug’n’play into knowledge of transformation

Post-hackathon journey example

Come to Web3Privacy now Careathon & make a difference - 13-15 June, Berlin.

Imagine visiting a hackathon. Hundreds of people hacking the future, solving critical challenges, and bringing world to the more democratic state. Sounds like a Computer Chaos Club camp in Germany, but surely not like typical crypto hackathon.

ETHGlobal hackathon with $700K prizes. Privacy-focused bounties covered not more than 5% of the total pot. Scalability, hyper-financialization and LLMs occupy hackathon game. So no surprise that next-gen hackathon projects can fix crypto-toxic image within so-called web2 world.

Possible solution - crafting a next-gen of builders that will have cypherpunk values at core mixed with playful vibes of the youth. Let’s examine our patient more closely!

Have you ever visited Ethereum hackathon? It’s a place of lots of young developers in search of friends, fun, money and future opportunities. They aren’t Snowden alike figures, not even Wikileaks anon-army. They are young and want to have fun.

Where fun stands for

• the general event enjoyment

• meeting with cool people

• developing meaningful things (they do believe in this!)

• compete for nice financial prizes & fame etc.

Here hackathon is like a computer game populated with bunch of characters, bosses and final rewards. So it shouldn’t surprise you that merch, communication and devrel team of many protocols look as if they are part of Anime fair curating holiday for otaku. It’s called “cultural fit”. Mascots capture emotional connection, plush toys facilitate belonging, and memecoins fill introvert-lack of social bonding-void.

Design of their dapps even look different from traditional colleagues from web2 world!

And now imagine what happens when those people build, for example, decentralized voting solutions without practice of IRL voting, lack of alternative voting mechanisms enabling (example: assemblies).

Summarising

• developers just want to have fun

• Gen Z has different cultural attributes (comparing to OG hackers from 90s)

Majority of the crypto hackathons are capitalist rat games. Money pot is at the centre of hacking. As if hackers aren’t a social classes that can challenge authority, but a labor class serving surveillance capitalism (including transparent chain - surveillance). They don’t argue much what “decentralisation” stands for. They just know that it’s sorta easy to get into crypto-development game, find friends, enjoy time & earn easy money.

There are many smart people touring hackathons & just “mining” bounties as if it’s a part of the lifestyle:

The result? Thousands of dead post-hackathon repos. A cemetery of open-source code, half of which is clunky (you know that majority of the hackathon demos doesn’t work well & need further bug fixing).

Summarising

• overfocus on bounties enforces greed

• “hackathon tourism” produce “dead code”

Homework: try to find out how many privacy-focused post-hackathon projects survived and evolved for at least 1 year after being coded?

A few post-hackathon survivors: Fluidkey x ETHRome, Web3Privacy now Explorer x ETHRome, Brume x ETHBrno.

People are here, money too, but privacy-projects have low impact once devs are experimenting with hackathon projects. Why so?

Lack of curation from hackathon managers, mentors &/or bounty givers.



Lots of devs are “shooting at the stars” trying to tackle world-global problems like “Turkish elections” (real example from hackathon and MACI implementation). What’s the chance that these devs will shape the state of Turkish electoral progress? Low. Maybe they can focus on so-called low-hanging fruits like micro-communities, crypto-savvy people. It’s an echo-chamber, small reach, but “demo” can quickly be turned into usable product.



Someone from orgs should limit devs imagination for better.

Lots of use-cases aren’t applicable to daily life.



2025, people still complaining that crypto has not a single use-case for web2 people. It’s partially true. Especially, when you look at the hackathon projects - many demos are zombies that no one would use. In privacy landscape they usually tackle hyper-scenarios that can’t be solved with existing team of 2-3-4 people, or try to “fix Big Tech” (example: private feedback on employees aka “Let’s redefine Glassdoor once again”).



Hacker hackathon journey example

Current bounty giver + tech mentors approach lacks personas or people in need of privacy-enhancing tech (including extra functionality that has privacy features, but isn’t perceived as “just privacy tooling”, think og the “fog of war” in Starcraft 2 as a privacy feature).

Tor personas research is an excellent example of people in need of privacy in relation to their tech literacy, internet accessibility etc.

Democracy or decentralisations are political notions, but they aren’t teached at hackathons.

So we are in the situation when thousands of people have thousand different understanding of decentralisation, and privacy too. It was evident for cypherpunks of the first generation that governments and corporations can abuse power against people. They aren’t necessary your friends, especially when elections can change influencers in power and their agenda. But hackathon devs are politically ignorant. Rarely you would hear a radical or bold statement behind the demo (a few post-Tornado Cash demos only prove general trend).

Developers need extensive education: cypherpunk basics, End-to-end encryption, ethical cryptography, privacy, surveillance capitalism, hacktivism, you name it. Only then they would be able to craft real privacy-enhancing tech for the daily use.

Demo is enough for success (spoiler: it’s not!)



Demos need additional polishing as mentioned above. Not just bug fixing, but custdev, front-end updates, integrations support, extra documentation, copy, business development… Yes, startup or product-approach. Where goal isn’t to deploy demo to github, so it will die there, but find “privacy-market-fit” (audience that use product and help to achieve sustainable financial model). Here financial model can vary from subscription & fees to donations and “personal time investment”.

“There aren’t even hackers. They hijacked “hacker” culture!”, - quote of the OG hacker after visiting another Ethereum hackathon.

Lets try to highlight potential transition from “hacker imposter” to “Cypherpunk hacker 2.0” within the crypto hackathon landscape:

The whole “stack” approach is more complex, but devs could start somewhere & become more mature social justice contributors over time.

Matching with practical change or imagining Cypherpunk hackathon of tomorrow.

We highlighted potential transition from Starter cypherpunk to Practitioner in our article here

Pre-hackathon privacy-personas research

Facilitate quantitative or qualitative analysis, talk to people, present profiles in need of privacy now.

Privacy builder flywheel

Provide builders with frameworks that can help ideate around privacy solutions in a playful way.

Match with diverse mentors and speakers

Some devs are tackling whistleblower platforms that just are bad versions of existing tooling. Connect them with experts like GlobaLeaks - share stories behind real activist products and potential enhancement (maybe there’s a ZK-potential for Whistleblower platforms!).

Shape interdisciplinary teams

Help to shape a good balance between technical & non-technical skills. Designers, researchers, marketing, copywriters, custdev pros - everyone matters in a long run. Free demos from technocracy - open-up to unexpected takes on dev hours, scope of work, & MVP.

Pitch social justice in a playful way

Find creative approach to shape responsibility & ethics behind privacy builders. Try to appeal to their cultural norms from use of memes in comms to appealing to their mundane life (example: privacy embedded into quadratic funding with memecoins - real ETHBucharest project).

Lets be honest: it’s hard to teach social justice someone within a hackathon weekend “usual 48 hours”. But it’s worth creating a highly-conscious space with asymmetrical positive impact:

• peer-scaling - more mature cypherpunk developers lead by example newcomers (example: Nym’s devrel Max, who participates in hackathons, can share horizontal activism stories, impact, and ideology)

• mentor-scaling* - *experienced professionals represent not just tech stack, but ethical & activist excellency ready to share solidarity practices for change (Paul-Dylan Ennis can share “hackers as a social class meets Ethereum social layer” stories)

• environment-scaling* - *imagine a space where the “walls are talking” about social justice, useful guides, videos, lectures are all over the place - just plug’n’play into knowledge of transformation

Post-hackathon journey example

Come to Web3Privacy now Careathon & make a difference - 13-15 June, Berlin.