Highlights from ETHGlobal Istanbul

ETHGlobal Istanbul is done and dusted after this weekend and with it, the last hackathon of the year turned out to be the biggest event. It shattered all previous records with 2004 attendees including 1350 hackers from 90 countries, 48 Workshops and 427 projects, highlighting immense diversity and new highs of the dev community interest.

Among the submissions, there were impressive and creative dApp usecases on show which generated attention. Dub3_ai was my personal favorite. It’s a new way of incorporating AI onto the blockchain by delivering text-to-speech content which can be transformed into an NFT, all wrapped up into an innovative marketplace concept. The aim is to seamlessly allow users to upload and monetize their voice samples. It utilized the Cartesi execution environment for LLM (Large Language Model) inference, made possible by the Cartesi VM, who can run these libraries out of the box, leveraging their RISC V based architecture booting an entire Linux OS. Once synthesized, the resulting voice is securely uploaded to IPFS. At the same time, an NFT is minted which represents a unique digital asset. Its personally no surpise that it won several bounties.

Check the live demo if this caught your interest: https://ethglobal.com/showcase/dub3-ai-h1riu

The 10 ETHGlobal Istanbul finalists definitely didn't disappoint as well and for anyone curious to see the demos, the recording is up of ETHGlobal YouTube channel. But here's a rundown:

Clade Club - A fair and social governance platform which prioritizes data-driven decision-making. (Winner of the Innovation Pool Prize)

S.C.I - Secure Contract Interactions is an on-chain contract-to-domain verification protocol used to verify smart contracts you are interacting with, validated by the domain owner and prevents scams or phisphing attacks. (Nouns DAO’s 2nd place winner)

BridgeBuddy - Chain abstracted wallet, utilizing Hyperlane Warp Routes and Safe Core, to automate bridging of assets when needed. (Hyperlane's 2nd Best Interchain App and others)

Buddy-Guard - A social & security app for people who leave a group at midnight. They can add their social group as buddy-guards, and then the the buddy guard can help watch their track and provide support when necessary. (Winner of pool prize on Arbitrum and others)

Sarma - Simple primitive to achieve private execution on EVM, even cross-chain. (Winner of Filecoin pool prize and others)

AidDistribute - A mechanism to ensure traceable and accountable channel for direct stablecoin transfers. (Winner of pool prize on Arbitrum and others)

TapTrust - It redefines event experiences with NFC & Ethereum's AA, offering a unique, gasless way to engage. Each tap with your NFC chip signs transactions & maintains privacy with a fresh address. (3rd place winner on ARX and others)

Footy Stars - Onchain fantasy football with real world stakes and provable simulation. (Best on Scroll, pool prize winner on Arbitrum and others)

ZKvote_cc - Using Cartesi to verify the votes zk proofs in a deterministic way, it integrates voting tokens with standard ERC-20 via bridge, processes voting off-chain, and employs ZK proofs for secure L2 state transfer. (Shared pool prize on Cartesi amongst others)

Lens & Frens - Allows you create zero-knowledge proofs to attend events without compromising privacy (2nd place winner on Chiliz amongst others).

Do you usually follow the hackathons of ETHGlobal? Is there anything that caught your attention the most? Have you guys participated in any so far? I’d love to hear everyone's thoughts. They also announced the schedule for the next hackathons of 2024, so hopefully, meeting everyone at one of these locations next year, probably in Europe! Till then, don’t trust, verify, and keep on BUIDLing!

Edits: typos