Hacker Guide to ETHWaterloo

SKALE is proud to sponsor ETHWaterloo alongside offering 8 hackathon bounties. SKALE Co-Founder Jack O’Holleran and VP of Solutions Engineering Christine Perry will also be speaking at the event.

Here is the overview of SKALE bounties and the coolest hacks from over 50 phenomenal submissions that were built on SKALE Network stack in the biggest Ethereum hackathons this year.

SKALE Bounties

Eight (8) prizes are prepared for ETHWaterloo submissions to SKALE, as follows:

• 2 x $1000 in DAI for special prize winners
• 6 x $500 in DAI
  

The SKALE bounties will go to the best dApps deployed to SKALE or using capabilities of SKALE's decentralized stack, which will be judged based on the quality of ideas and UX.

Members of the SKALE team will be available for hacker support on site and on the SKALE Developer Discord channel.

Past Hacks

Over a series of hackathons since just early this year, SKALE has become a favorite second-layer scaling solution among developers, with hackers describing it as like being on the Ethereum mainnet, but faster.

SKALE is honored by the growing interest from devs, who have submitted creative and innovative implementations in past hackathons, such as for an app that tracks what impact a donor’s money makes, at ETHDenver; a paywall that you can add to any website, at ETHParis; a turn-based game at ETHNewYork; a protocol for migrating legal contracts onto the blockchain at ETHBerlin; a platform for sharing and proving one’s participation in real-life events at ETHBoston; and a lending platform at the Ethereal Blocks Hackathon.

It’s amazing what SKALE enables when wielded by talented hands. Imagine what it can do in yours.

What is SKALE?

SKALE is a Layer 2 Proof-of-Stake network of fast and configurable SKALE Chain that are comparable to Layer 1 in terms of security and as dev-friendly as traditional sidechains, all without compromising decentralization.

Innovations include a modified EVM that allows SKALE Chains to run full-state smart contracts while providing greater computational capacity and cheaper on-chain FileStorage, an improved BFT Consensus for near-instant finality, and the ability to run machine learning in a smart contract.

SKALE is fully compatible with Ethereum and supports all the developer tools (Web3.js, Web3.py, Truffle, etc.), key wallets (Portis, Bitsky, Metamask), and major token standards and stablecoins (ETH, Dai, ERC20, ERC721). Deploying to SKALE involves changing only a few lines of code in your Truffle script—exponentially improving the performance of a dApp could not have been easier!

SKALE at ETHWaterloo

ETHWaterloo 2019 is a 3-day Ethereum blockchain hackathon that will take place from November 8 to 10 at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Canada, “where it all began” (Fun Trivia: Vitalik Buterin dropped out of the University of Waterloo to work on Ethereum).

Day 1 | November 8 (Friday) | Making dApps feel like apps: Best practices for using SKALE Chains

Hacking formally begins at 8:30 pm. SKALE VP Solutions Engineering Christine Perry will give a workshop on utilizing SKALE chains at 10:30 pm in the Napolean Room.

Day 2 | November 9 (Saturday) | Architecture Session: Using Elastic Blockchain Networks as an execution layer for Ethereum

SKALE CEO Jack O’Holleran will hold an interactive tech discussion on the security, incentives, and economic design of the SKALE Network from the perspective of dApp developers and validators at 1 pm in the Napolean Room.

Day 3 | November 10 (Sunday) | Deadline for submission

More dApp Ideas

If you are still looking for ideas to pursue for the hackathon, we have previously shared several dApp ideas across a number of articles, many of which are yet to be picked up. There are surely enough to spark inspiration. These hack ideas typically fall under two categories:

Computation: which leverages SKALE’s larger blocks and high gasLimit that enable more complex smart contracts and computationally-intensive operations.

Examples:

• Decentralized Kaggle Competitions
• Sorting microservice for use by other Ethereum dApps
  

Microtransactions: which leverage SKALE’s subsecond blocktimes and gasless tx costs

Examples:

• An alarm clock that penalizes snoozing to gamify waking up at the actual set time
• IoT payment applications
• Automated micro-auctions
• Free-To-Play (F2P) games / Direct Ads
• Pay-Per-Minute Movie/Live Streaming Service
• Pay-Per-Use Photo Marketplace
  

Along these lines, it would also make sense to build:

• A loyalty program point system where e.g. many mileage programs can be combined to afford an expensive trip
• A platform to transfer and trade immutable assets even in bulk across apps/games
  
  

The high volume of transactions would be served well by SKALE’s speed and low costs.

What makes the decentralized space so exciting is the seemingly limitless avenue for creativity and innovation that it presents, which makes for a perfect match for all the enthusiasm and talent that pervade the scene. We can’t wait to see what ingenious hacks will come out of ETHWaterloo!

See you at ETHWaterloo!

If you are interested in trying out SKALE Chainns, make sure to join the SKALE community on Discord and visit the Developer Documentation. Also, feel free to check out SKALE’s Technical Overview and Consensus Overview for a deeper dive into how SKALE works and is able to provide 20,000 TPS.