Maybe you are in charge of marketing and you are trying to win developer's hearts and you heard devs love hackathons.

Maybe you are in a telegram group of DevRels and it's gone too quiet so you ask the age-old question:

HOW DO YOU MEASURE HACKATHON ROI? (Return on Investment for the non biz folks)

As a hackathon anthropologist, dev, and spreader of developer joy, I am here to answer that for you. And of course, this is only just one Dan's opinion, but I come with a swag bag full of experience to my name.

This is a 3 part series, which will become clear why later, since we can't agree if people read articles anymore.

I love to hear everyone's thoughts on this topic to grow as an industry but if you are the "itz just vibez and bounties big dawg!" type, save yourself from typing.

typing.

The classic answer to this question is that "it depends". And what it depends on is where you are as a team.

Teams come into 3 distinct but equally delicious flavors:

Bounty Babes: These are teams just starting to explore the world of sponsoring hackathons. Maybe you have sponsored a few bounties here and there and still wondering what the point of all this is.

Weak Wi-fi Warriors: These are teams who have sponsored 5 or more hackathons. You probably have a meeting every quarter asking yourself "Should we even sponsor hackathons anymore?" or brainstorming sessions on "new" and "innovative" ways to host a hackathon.

Hackathon Heroes: These are teams that sponsor 5 or more hackathons each year. You are so far down the hackathon rabbit hole that you purposely ruin your wifi speeds and skip a few weekly showers just to feel something.

I want to get beyond the vanity metrics of "how many projects submitted". If this is all you measure, 80% of teams will go home disappointed.

You don't want that, I don't want that. Nobody wants that!

Let's start by talking to you - Bounty Babes

Your priority goal is to decrease the amount devs that have never heard of you. This doesn't mean splurging on the best swag (although great swag is a blessing) or having someone hand out flyers to every dev they see.

Quite the opposite.

First, you should focus on your team's awareness of where your project lives in the dev mindshare. Once you have a better understanding of that, dev awareness can be grown more organically. But how can you measure that?

You might have an idea of the usefulness of your project. Forget that for a sec. You need a better understanding of how devs view your project. One way to measure this is simply tracking the amount of conversations your team is having with devs.

These conversations don't have to be deep but you should come out of it with one key data point: what they are planning to build and how.

Why? Let's take the example that you are a decentralized AI network that sponsors a hackathon. They had 20 chats with devs that talked about building an AI product.

Yet on the final day, you get 1 submission. What happened?

Well, they chose an alternative. So we failed? No (well not yet at least).

So you finally recovered from the weeks long jet lag you earned by going to ETH Phuket and you are still feeling down about your 1 submission.

You now have a choice:

1. Take to Twitter and rant about how the dev/crypto community sucks

2. Take to GitHub and investigate ways you can improve your awareness.

3. Quit and start a B2B SaaS before AI takes all of our jobs.

I'm not your mom so I can't tell you what to do but I will speak about option 2.

What did they use? How did they use it? Can your project be used in the same way? How do those projects communicate with devs? Do they have better docs and resources? Do they integrate better with other tools/protocols better?

Investigating missed opportunities will give you a better understanding of where you can improve on your project. This could be a combination of improving the project features, developer experience, marketing messaging and, learning resources.

These insights are valuable outside of the hackathon and a return on you spending a weekend in Phuket locked in a room with some devs.

See you in the next one - Weak Wifi Warriors.

With Joy,

DappaDan ❤

check out the video here:

if you want to check out the content and winners, they are below:

yinka

@geniusyinka

Parallel Execution on The EVM Explained

580

9:34 PM • Jul 19, 2024

EigenLayer AVS ecosystem

Two years ago, the concept of restaking was relatively unknown. At ETHCC this year, two separate restaking events were held on the same day.

https://mirror.xyz

Welcome to Lens

Explore our developer preview to get started.

https://dev-preview.lens.xyz

Uttam

@uttam_singhk

EOF (EVM Object Format): Full Guide

Everything you need to know as a Web3 Builder in 30 mins:
(0:00) Intro
(0:41) Why EOF
(2:20) Current EVM vs EOF EVM
(4:31) EOF example
(10:53) Stack too Deep Error Solved
(13:21) EOF Advantages
(24:50) Disadvantages
…

347

10:40 AM • Sep 2, 2024

Aztec | The Privacy-first Layer 2 on Ethereum

Aztec is a privacy-first L2 on Ethereum, bringing privacy to the decentralized internet of the future.

https://aztec.network

TABASCOweb3

@TABASCOweb3

yesterday, we launched the first chain-agnostic trading platform, UniversalX

chain abstraction is materializing faster than ever now.

this vertical emerged in 2024 and will be one of the most impactful in 2025. 0 doubt

Particle Network

@ParticleNtwrk

Web3 is already decentralized, self-sovereign, and scalable.

Today, we're also making it borderless.

We're releasing UniversalX (universalx.app), the first chain-agnostic trading platform, powered by Universal Accounts.

With it, you’ll never bridge again.

48

7:49 PM • Dec 4, 2024

Keep the maximizing the developer joy and see you all next year!

Defining "Developer Joy" - The report is broken down into 4 sections:

Education - What type of education is being provided to developers? What kind of traction is that content seeing?

Tooling - Are Web3 projects offerings samples built with modern developer tools? What tooling, frameworks and, languages are popular?

Community - Where and how are teams engaging the developer community?

Enablement - How are teams enabling developers to build on their projects through activities like hackathons and grants?

While I know there is a very popular 180-page "Developer Activity Report" out there, the thesis of this report is to see how the areas above influence developer activity.

Disclaimer: Currently this only looks at Ethereum aligned projects. This is my own bias but there is an effort to include other ecosystems in the future.

I received no funding from any of the projects included. This was a "labor of love" and a desire to see this community grow. If you found any of the data useful, please consider collecting this post.

Just for fun, I looked at how each project describes its project and the technology:

Methodology: Going to each project's site and whatever was the first term that appeared in the copy.

DappaDan's Take: I was actually surprised to see "onchain" much lower. All though I called this the "Web3" report, its probably my personal preference to describe our industry and moves away from any negative stigma of Web3.

This category covers how each projects are delivering education via their documentation, YouTube and courses.

I looked at 13 Web2/AI companies docs of medium to small-sized teams to compare. These docs sites have an average of 13 guides on their documentation.

Methodology: Guides are defined as pages in the documentation labeled as "Guides", "Getting Started", "Tutorials" or any page that was enables developers to perform some action to build an application such as "How to send a private transaction".

DappaDan's Take: There is a large gap between beginner guides and what it takes to actually build an app using Web3 tools. Web2 projects are normally driven by customer demand to add more diverse guides. More Web3 projects should lean on hackathon projects to drive new ideas for guides (and not just copying and pasting the repo link).

Description: Can Developers propose or make changes to the documentation?

Methodology: Verified that there was a GH repo where PRs could be made. Excluded if docs only had "thumbs up, thumbs down" type rankings.

DappaDan's Take: I'm not mad it's an even split. From experience, there are only a few teams that handle open source docs really well. In most situations, they are not being managed or there really isn't much community participation/incentives to contribute.

Description: Do developers have the ability to "Chat with the Docs" using LLMs/RAG or do they only offer a standard search.

Methodology: Visiting docs sites and seeing what is available.

DappaDan's Take: Use AI or get left behind. If your docs system doesn't support it, it's probably time to make a change.

Description: Does the project offer a standalone course that is outside of the documentation guides or tutorials?

Methdology: Searching through the project's websites for mentions of a course either internally or externally hosted.

DappaDan's Take: Courses are a great way to onboard new developers to Web3 and your project in one go. I have seen a lot of teams use external services like Encode and DeveloperDAO to do this. I'm not a betting Dan but if I were, I bet we will see more of this in 2025.

Description: The number of subscribers to the project's YouTube Channel

Methodology: Verifying sub count on YouTube

DappaDan's Take - If you have learned software development in the last 12 years, you probably used YT to learn something. Nice to some teams leveraging YT really well but having 14 with less 1,000 subs needs to improve.

Description: How often are projects posting videos to Youtube?

Methodology: Seeing the last developer/technical video that was posted by the project. This excludes videos less than 2 mins long that were marketing related.

DappaDan's Take - Lots of teams post around events (pre or post) and then drop off. Creating a regular content schedule with original content vs recording of workshops would probably boost a lot of channel's growth.

Description: How many views did the project's most popular developer video get?

Methodology: Sort by popular, exclude any videos that were just 1-2 min marketing videos vs for developer education purposes.

DappaDan's Take - The sweet spot seems to be in that less than 10k range. I feel that is aligned well with the amount of active developer audience for Web3 is on Youtube. Would be interesting to see how this changes in the new year.

Description: What Web3 tools, libraries, or services are used in the code samples in the project's documentation?

Methodology: Reviewed code samples and looked at imports and headers to determine the tools.

DappaDan's Take - Was honestly surprised how popular Hardhat and Ethers still are. Although they are some of the OGs, I feel most developer I interact with have moved on to other tools/libraries. Another interesting thing, while the majority of projects offered multiple tools - if they had ethers examples, they were more likely only to use ethers.

Description: What Javascript Frameworks or Libraries are used in the code sameples?

Methodology: Reviewed codes samples, looked at imports and headers to determine the tools .

DappaDan's Take - My two biggest disappointments is that react-native is so low and create-react-app is so high. Many people advocate that the PMF of crypto is mobile but yet there are very little react-native examples. create-react-app has been deprecated for a almost 2 years now so it doesn't show well that these examples are being updated or using modern tools.

Description: What languages are also supported or have code samples for in the project's documentation?

Methodology: Reviewed code samples and looked at code and headers to determine the languages. Excluded Solidity and any Web3-specific DSLs.

DappaDan's Take - The world is not just JavaScript. If we want to onboard more devs, creating code samples in their language of choice is a great way of doing so.

Description: Community is defined in many different ways but on most project's sites it's Discord and Telegram are listed as where the community is.

Methodology: Look at public data/invites for Telegram and Discord groups.

DappaDan's Take - Please purge your Discord's of the bots. The only thing it is helping is your ego but it's hurting developers who are actually looking for support more. I have seen many teams now launch private Discords/Telegram groups to get closer to real developers. This ultimately hurts the community because you need to be in the "Cool Kids Club" to get some support.

Description: How much in Hackathon Bounties were offered by these 55 projects in 2024.

Methodology: Pulled data from ETH Global and other hackathon platforms with the marketed amount in hackathon bounties for each project.

DappaDan's Take - Hackathon's get a lot of hate. Looking at these numbers means on average projects paid $65,000/yr in hackathon bounties. The average salary of a software tester in the US is $92,000/yr. If you think hackathons are all about battle testing your project, that's $30k in outsourced savings! (Let me live in this positive world)

Description: How many projects do developers continue to work on?

Methodology: Looking at the original project's source code that was submitted through the ETH Global showcase portal.

DappaDan's Take - I wanted to get a general snapshot to determine if the meme "nobody works on their projects" was true so I picked ETH Global Finalists as a cohort. I have received lots a feedback on this point in terms of 1) Maybe they renamed the project. 2) But what about other bounties/hacks? 3) I know for a fact the projects built on my thing are always building!

That's fine. Honestly, these numbers were better than expected and I think we should just find more ways to improve it.

Description: Does the project offer some sort of funding to teams in terms of grants, builder programs or startup investments?

Methodology: Looking at the project's site for any mention of a grant type program.

DappaDan's Take - Its great to see so many grants being offered. One area of opportunity would be to be more transparent about these programs. Many projects did not offer any clear explanation on the amount of funding, milestones and length of funding.

I will be the first to admit this report isn't perfect. But hopefully, it gets the conversation going on how we can increase Developer Joy as an industry and gives you a few data points to talk about within your teams.

If you made it this far and found ANY of this data useful, it would mean a lot to me if you collected this post:

This is a list of the Protocols Included in this report. They were selected first through an open call I made on my Twitter profile and secondly, from activity in the industry or by request while at Devcon.

welcome to the 2nd edition of The Protocol Press.

Fortunately for you, i ducked, dived, and dodged all those BD-related tweets to find some gems on the internet.

DappaDan

@DAppaDanDev

It was fun y'all but I choose peace.

17

11:15 PM • Aug 8, 2024

(BD people, please don't come after me plz)

Tools, Products and Frameworks for building a better internet:

Drips

@dripsnetwork

1/10 Today we’re thrilled to unveil the next iteration of Drips

Drips is a decentralized toolkit for funding public goods, that builds on the interdependence of software projects & people.

drips.network

Here’s everything you need to know

207

3:15 PM • Jul 26, 2023

What it is:

You are never building alone on the internet. As builders we are always "standing on the shoulders of giants" and those giants are open source and the people who maintain those projects and tools. Drip Lists are a way to contribute to these projects by being a collection of Github Repos, ETH addresses and, ENS addresses. By funding a list, a percentage of the funds go to each designated contributor:

Why it matters:

Anyone who spent a considerable amount of time working in open source knows that the work can at best thankless and at worst criminal. Major corporations build for-paid products on the back of open source without even much of a strong handshake to the teams building the tools. Closing this gap and making maintainer's and contributor's lives more sustainable is a problem worthy of fixing for a better internet.

My Personal Take:

After hearing about Drips, it reminded me of Tea Protocol. They have recently come under fire as being discovered by Phylum, a software security company, has contributed to an insane amount of spam npm packages.

The high water mark of this increase occurred on 8 April 2024, with over 48,000 packages published to npm. This explosion of packages led us to our first discovery of the perverse incentives of the Tea protocol.

Source: https://blog.phylum.io/the-great-npm-garbage-patch/

Unlike popular Web Dev Youtubers who are ready to cry SCAM the second crypto gets mentioned, I don't blame the protocol itself. Much like I don't blame SMTP for spam emails. But it shows what is at stake when building incentive networks and when things go wrong. As Drips continues to grow it will be interesting to see if it turns into a puddle of despair or an ocean of opportunity for open source.

Tutorials, Articles and Videos for learning how to build a better Internet

Nico | ge⬡metry research

@nico_mnbl

The ZK Jargon Decoder has moved!

It is now hosted at zkjargon.github.io and finally has an appropriate license.

Few more content updates below and many planned to come soon.

All in time for 𝐙𝐊 𝐇𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐞́𝐚𝐥! @__zkhack__

48

5:59 PM • Aug 8, 2024

What it is:

A one-stop shop for not feeling lost in the world of Zero Knowledge terms.

Why it matters:

No one likes to feel dumb and many people feel like to feel smarter by throwing out jargon like all those canvas tote bags left over at crypto conferences. The ZK Jargon Decoder is a great project that will help make the terms and the technology behind it more accessible to more builders.

Last newsletter I shilled you pierogi for ETHWarsaw. Listen, I understand that might not be everyone's thing. So this time, I am shilling you pizza, pasta and privacy at ETHRome (October 4th-6th).

Big shout out to @PG_CDG as well for creating this list of Privacy Issues to inspire hackers to build on. More hackathons should do this if they are interested in having impactful projects:

Piergiorgio Catti De Gasperi

@PG_CDG

We're collecting local #privacy issues (such as censorship resistance in , journalist leaks in , safe comms in occupied territories in ) to be addressed at hackathons worldwide.

Kicking off with @ETHRome
Do u know of any privacy problem in #Italy?

Drop them here:…

44

12:07 PM • Aug 8, 2024

Hackathons, Open Jobs and Grants for Building a Better Internet

Movement Labs is hiring for Developer Relations. There has been a lot of movement over there in growing the dev community. If I were you, I would move myself over to the job application and get a chance to work with Brown Vitalik.

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com

Developer Relations

At Movement Labs, we are leading the way in blockchain technology with an open modular framework for building and deploying Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. We are looking for a Developer Relations Engineer to support the growing developer community of the Movement Network, the fastest and most secure Layer Two on the market.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to subscribe and collect if you enjoyed this:

With love,

DappaDan

Twitter - Youtube - Warpcast

welcome to the first edition of the Protocol Press!

Like any good newsletter intro, I feel the need to explain Why the Protocol Press?

After a very lukewarm ETHCC for me (not just the weather), I decide to live on a farm to disconnect from it all for 2 weeks. Days were filled with ice cream and nights drowned with wine.

DappaDan

@DAppaDanDev

Recharge complete.

Was thinking about just staying on this farm disconnected from it all...

But I'd miss y'all too much

11

6:39 PM • Jul 27, 2024

While it was a relaxing time, I had this nagging feeling that even in just two weeks I was missing out on important news and announcements that could be useful for me.

As people in Web3, we are very online. But even if you are glued to your socials every day, you can still miss out.

To help with this, I created The Protocol Press - News for Builders of a Better Internet -your weekly update on news to build with, learn from and earn from.

Enjoy:

Tools, Products and Frameworks for building a better internet:

Modular Cloud 👀

@modularcloud1

We are launching @chopinframework, a framework that converts regular web2 apps into application-specific rollups with @CelestiaOrg underneath.

This is the first step toward our goal of moving the entire World Wide Web onchain.

104

6:00 PM • Aug 1, 2024

What it is:

A way to make creating Blockchain applications feel less like an obstacle course and more like the street we take home every day. You can create NextJS like usual and use Chopin to convert them to application specific rollups. This is done by running client-side scripts that "Web3ify" the requests.

Why it matters:

Talking about "onboarding Web2 Developers" is cheap and easy. Doing it takes focus and familiar tooling. Chopin seems to offer a good level of abstraction that allows developers to just build. Similar to how Vercel made deploying to the cloud easier, Chopin can do the same for blockchain applications without a doctorate in Web3.

My Personal Take

You probably won't be using Chopin at your next hackathon unless got some VC money recently ($299/mo). tbh it is sort of refreshing for a Web3 tool/service to come out of the gate with a paid-only tier though. Shows they are confident in the quality at least. I do love their audience specific documentation pages. That is an indicator more devs will be jamming to Chopin in the future. Definitely one to watch out for.

ScrollPix 📜

@scroll_pix

The Magic Board is ready!

Join us on this exciting journey and be part of the Scrollpix revolution. Together we can create, innovate and celebrate the endless possibilities of digital art.

Exclusive x2 points bonus for the first week!

canvas.scrollpix.art

The…

28

5:40 PM • Aug 3, 2024

What it is:

The crypto version of r/place. A community artboard meets monopoly board. Users can own and sell pixels of 250,000 pixel artboard.

Why it matters:

A fun way to demo the power of smart contracts and digital artworks without saying 'NFT'. If the crypto user base is to grow, it will be based on something fun and not using what is now triggering buzzwords for many.

My Personal Take

It's fun. It also shows the limits of traditional crypto UX via connecting wallets, switching networks, and signing transactions (you know the rest). Building a smoother version of this as my next hackathon project? We shall see.

Uniswap Labs 🦄

@Uniswap

Uniswap Extension has automatic network switching, so you don't need to manually change what chain you're on

Swap, send, and receive crypto directly from your browser's sidebar, without ever losing your place on the web

chromewebstore.google.com

Uniswap Extension - Chrome Web Store

The Uniswap Extension is a self-custody crypto wallet that's built for swapping.

193

4:11 PM • Jul 23, 2024

What it is:

No one likes getting the "Wrong Network" error message. AI can do my job but you are telling me my wallet can auto detect what network to be on? The Uniswap extension fixes this.

Why it matters:

Multichain should not mean multipain. Anything thing to reduce the friction and even make it delightful to live, work, and play across different chains is much needed.

My Personal Take

"I need another crypto chrome extension" - said no one ever. Honestly, its not that bad but I got a lot of extensions collecting digital dust already. This one seems useful though so might just need to clean up house a bit to make room.

Tutorials, Articles and Videos for learning how to build a better Internet

Eda

@edatweets_

Actively Validated Services are the most exciting part of the @eigenlayer ecosystem & the unique value EigenLayer brings.

This post is an overview of the EigenLayer AVS landscape. With an introduction to what an AVS even is & what people are building

mirror.xyz

EigenLayer AVS ecosystem

Two years ago, the concept of restaking was relatively unknown. At ETHCC this year, two separate restaking events were held on the same day.

131

2:09 PM • Jul 29, 2024

The EigenLayer AVS ecosystem is hotter than a grill in Dubai right now. But with so much going on, you can feel stranded in a flood of information. Like your Uber driver that you requested to get to the next side event, Eda provides great direction to the AVS promised land.

https://www.youtube.com/

Think Like a Circom Circuit with OxMilica, ZK Educator

House ZeR0, Belgrade by RISC Zero Belgrade, Serbia 2024 OxMilica, ZK Educator Learn the basics of designing and implementing your first zero-knowledge circuit, and discover how to harness this powerful cryptographic tool.

Have you ever been to a workshop where the speaker handed out paper to draw things? 0xMilica takes hands-on to another level while explaining core concepts around Circom circuits. Worth a watch (and bring your own paper!)

There are so many good talks at ETHCC that I will probably be milking the playlist for a few weeks. Up first is a talk by Sasha and Daniel on creating good Developer Experience. For anyone confused about where to start designing a pleasurable DX, look no further than this talk.

Do you love pierogi? Have not had a pierogi before? Don't even know what a pierogi is?

Well you can meet your pierogi dreams and build a better internet at ETH Warsaw from September 5th-8th for both the conference and hackathon!

Hackathons, Open Jobs and Grants for Building a Better Internet

ar.io network

@ar_io_network

There is a new learning module in conjunction with @Developer_DAO around ar.io gateway hosting!

Get some $CODE to do this module & increase your EXPerience by completing the quests on @zealy_io!

Start or continue your quest today!

zealy.io

Join AR.IO EXPerience

Level up for the IO token mainnet airdrop! Engage in quests with the AR.IO Network to gain Experience Points (EXP) - onchain tokens that represent potential eligibility for the AR.IO airdrop.

29

8:13 PM • Aug 1, 2024

Would this be a DappaDan newsletter without at least one Developer DAO mention? The Arweave 201 course created by Editor extraordinaire K is now released. You can earn $CODE by completing it.

Aptos

@Aptos

#CodeCollision is live!

The hackathon has started, but there's still time to join the action.

Registrations are open—be part of the revolution and compete for your share of the $500K prize pool.

Ready to hack your way to the top? Register now:
aptosfoundation.org/events/code-co…

145

5:00 PM • Aug 1, 2024

Code Collision sounds like every time I open up VSCode. It is also the name of the Aptos Hackathon that started August 1st. The bounties are pretty juicy so know that I will be there.

Inco

@inconetwork

Hiring marketers

- Discord Mod (DM @PareenL)
- Community Manager
- Content Marketer

Also looking for people who can host workshops / meetups in their cities/communities.

inco.bamboohr.com

Current Openings

Take a look at the current openings at Inco

123

5:11 PM • Jul 26, 2024

Inco Network has a variety of Engineering and Marketing jobs opening including Cult Leader for those with that type of experience. Good opportunity to get in on the fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) wave.

----

Thats it for the first edition, thanks for reading!

Got interesting news to share? Feel free to submit content to this newsletter.

Don't forget to:

With love,

DappaDan

Twitter - Youtube - Warpcast