Oasis Network Invites the Community to Join the Sapphire Hackathon

Oasis Network has invited its community members, as well as anyone else who might be interested, to join the Sapphire Hackathon — a new event that just started yesterday, September 14th. A month-long event scheduled to end on October 14th of this year, the Sapphire Hackathon’s main idea is to build the first-ever confidential dApp in Ethereum’s programming language, Solidity.

The future is here… 🔵 👀

Build the next generation of web3 dApps on Sapphire TestNet & win big!

Sapphire — the first confidential EVM for web3 — combines privacy-preserving technology with EVM compatibility for familiar user-facing and developer tools

Join the hackathon 👇

— Oasis Foundation (@OasisProtocol) September 14, 2022

Why Sapphire?

Sapphire itself is the Confidential EVM ParaTime, which allows users to use familiar tools for building confidential dApps and smart contracts. It is the very first confidential EVM for Web3, and it combines EVM compatibility with privacy-preserving technology.

Oasis Network sees this as an opportunity to build the next generation of Web3 decentralized applications using the Sapphire TestNet. Of course, there will also be prizes for those who are declared winners of the event. Naturally, the project relies on Solidity due to the fact that so many developers are quite familiar with it, after operating on Ethereum for as long as 7 years now, in some cases.

Building on Sapphire also brings a number of perks, such as enjoying the confidential state, meaning end-to-end encryption, as well as confidential randomness. Then, there is easy integration with other EVM-based products, including dApps, NFTs, metaverse, DeFi, GameFi, and more.

Unlike Ethereum, Sapphire also doesn’t suffer from low scalability nor from high transaction costs. In fact, the fees for performing transactions on Sapphire are 99%+ lower than Ethereum, on average. Finally, Sapphire has a strong focus on interoperability, which is why it will be able to offer a cross-chain bridge for the products built on top of it. Granted, this is still a feature that has yet to arrive, but it is well on its way already.

What is there to know about the Hackathon?

As mentioned, the Hackathon started yesterday, September 14th, and it will last until October 14th of this year. It will offer prizes for the top 3 creations. Each of the top 3 places will be rewarded in Oasis Network’s native token, ROSE. The first place will be rewarded with $5,000 in ROSE tokens, the second place will ger $2,500 in ROSE, and the third place $1,500 in ROSE.

The project is also aware that the developers might need a bit of inspiration when it comes to what to build, which is why it posted a few ideas on its official Sapphire Hackathon page. These include applications with sensitive data, confidential DeFi projects (MEV-proof DEX, private or undercollateralized lending, and alike), gaming projects, confidential NFTs, decentralized Society and Soulbound tokens, and Decentralized identity (DID) projects.

As for what they need to submit, developers are required to send a short summary of the project, including a description of what it is and how they imagined it to evolve, a link to their code repository (for testing and judging), which, of course, indicates that the code must be open-sourced, as well as a publicly posted (YouTube, Vimeo, and alike) video that is up to 5 minutes in length, and lastly — smart contract deployment links.

To learn more about Oasis Network, visit our Investing in Oasis Network guide.