I’m proud to announce that I have launched the Global Hackathon League (GHL)! The Global Hackathon League plans to be the platform and nexus where builders congregate, team-up, and battle it out for #1 and prize-pools of hackathons. A builder can be any one. A community builder, designer, marketer, businessperson, or developer. We’ll have hackathons flavored for the challenge to test everyone’s skills and grow the ecosystem.

For our builders, we’ll help you get noticed to find a job, make a statement about your amazing idea and creation, earn money from competing, get funding opportunities, visibility, and find teammates across the industry.

We already have a course platform that has all lightning payment capabilities powered by ZBD. Now where do you put those skills to the test?

Why Build a Hackathon Platform, Santos?

Hackathons have guided my career from the very beginning of my entry into engineering and product development. I had tested my skills by competing in hackathons when I was an aspiring self-taught developer and entrepreneur.

I have competed in hackathons for the purpose of charity helping nonprofits get features they badly needed, developed a project at TechStars Surprise StartUp Hackathon.

They showed me how much I didn’t know, what I could become, and then they showed me how far I had come. I made many friends and expanded my network far beyond the reaches that I ever thought possible. I met mentors that believed in me and guided me along my career. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

I had the privilege of giving back as a educator and mentor at SATSx organized by PlebLab. There I met Gary Leland again (whom I met once before but only briefly), who asked me for help with his NIP-05 (nostr identity) for Gary@BitBlockBoom.com and Nostr Paid Nostr Relay for the BitBlockBoom Conference. I happily obliged and was honored to help.

I was fortunate and priviledged enough that I got to go to Cubo+ in El Salvador by The Bitcoin Office and Fulgur Ventures. If you don’t know, Cubo+ is the premiere bitcoin developer bootcamp. I participated as an educator, mentor, and judge of their hackathon. I met a lot of amazing students who were incredibly passionate about Bitcoin and they shipped a ton of amazing projects.

I hired one of the students, Edgar, who joined ZBD as an intern delivered incredible work, and continued to work for me at emeralize. Also, Alan who stood out to me for his passion nostr and his incredible ecommerce project that uses Shopify to sell merchandise and process payments using Lightning.

After that, I officially organized my first hackathon event with Car Gonzalez of PlebLab.com . We had an incredible set of builders such as SuperTestnet, Benthecarman, and more. My great friends Michael Tidwell, Andre Neves, Brian Atchue, and myself judged the hackathon projects. We were absolutely blown away by their projects. See hackathon pitches here.

A week later, I organized an internal company hackathon at ZBD, where we all grew, developed incredibly innovative ideas, and bonded. Ridiculously good product ideas that are being worked on to this day came out of this hackathon.

As you can see, hackathons have been a way for me to grow and giveback. They’re impactful in many contexts. Whether you’re a company innovating internally, helping students get a job, or helping companies get noticed by Venture Capitalist Firms.

The only problem is that they require an enormous amount of resources generally to facilitate a hackathon from the operations and prize-pool.

This is why I founded the Global Hackathon League. The Global Hackathon league is a platform that allows hackathon organizers to facilitate hackathons with the features for the users to complete team creation, team invitations and requests, registering for a hackathon, and submitting their project.

The hackathon organizer can also add judges, sponsors, and hackathon details easily through a user interface provided by the platform. Judges can then score and evaluate the project easily for all the submitted projects.

The hackathon administration can then proceed to the teams by top score and review the judge’s notes to make a determination of the winner objectively. Once that’s settled, we can award Nostr Badges as a symbol of the users triumph which they can proudly display on any platform and since we use Login with ZBD that has money capabilities, we can pay out the winners of the hackathon directly with very low payment processing fees.

Long-term, I have a vision for hackathons to be as fun and gamified as competitive esports. There’s a huge thrill involved and you’re even matched for your skill-level, a perfect blend for mastery based learning and growth. I also needed a hackathon platform that could be open for organizers to easily setup all of the operations for the hackathon information, team’s, registration, project submission, managing judges, judge evaluations, scoring, and payments to the winners.

We can automate many of the marketing efforts or make it really easy to manage all of the operations involved with getting folks to participate. Strategically, we can form partnerships that help individuals get jobs, raise funding from venture capitals, or get an open source grant. The sky really is the limit.

Gary Leland, who I admire and respect a ton asked me to organize and host a Buildathon at the longest running bitcoin conference, BitBlockBoom.com. First the premiere Bitcoin developer education conference by my great friend Michael Tidwell and now Gary? I still have to pinch myself to make sure this is real life.

More about the Buildathon 👇 https://twitter.com/bitblockboom/status/1744805392872525885?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1744805392872525885%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=notion%3A%2F%2Fwww.notion.so%2Fzebedeeio%2FDRAFT-GHL-Announcement-54fd49c6e3364c498475ed53644972a7

The BitBlockBoom Buildathon

The BitBlockBoom’s Lightning and Nostr themed Buildathon the very first conference event sponsor! The hackathon will take place online remotely for 21 days between 3/18/24 and 4/8/24. On April 8th, the judges will evaluate the projects and select 6 semifinalists to present Main Stage on Conference Day at BitBlockBoom.

The conference will take place from April 11th through April 14th, 2024. You can use code Zantoshi to save 10% on your BitBlockBoom ticket. I’m also organizing workshop day for Lightning Network and Nostr 🙂. Buy the ticket here.

You’ll have 10 minutes to make the case for the crowd favorite and win the favor of the judges.

Awesome, Santos! What are the goals of the BitBlockBoom Buildathon you’re organizing?

The event will take place during BitBlockBoom which will have an action packed day of workshops related to Nostr and Lightning.

We have several categories anyone can compete in. Whether you’re a business person sheding light on how to make this a sustainable business, a marketer to help the network grow through virality and fun, a developer making the best nostr chat client, or community builder for community initiatives for applications.

The semi-finalists will get the opportunity to compete for the $800 prize-pool and main-stage time to pitch their projects on conference day. If you’re interested in contributing to the prize pool, reach out on our Sponsor form.

The Global Hackathon League Beta

The two students I mentioned earlier at Cubo+? They helped me build this project. It is entirely open source and free to use. Thank you Edgar and Alan!

I would also like to thank my wife, Heidi, who helped me created this amazing platform for me and helped me tirelessly across all of my projects with being my therapist, brand designer, and social media marketer. I seriously wouldn’t have been about to do it without you and all of your support. Thank you.

Here’s a demo and walkthrough of the platform: https://www.loom.com/share/c863c34c42884c858d1ebda802ef981e

How can I get involved?

Sign-up to compete in the BitBlockBoom Buildathon!

It’s remote and you can get the opportunity to present your project on the Main Stage of BitBlockBoom and win the prize pool!

But wait there’s more

We’re also honored to share that we are partnered with Bitcoin Talent Co, a premier recruitment agency for Bitcoin companies. Andy Thompson will be a judge for the BitBlockBoom Buildathon and will be engaged in our project. If you're a company looking to hire great Bitcoin talent, use Bitcoin Talent Co.

This also complements our educational platform, emeralize.app very well. You can learn, grow, get paid to learn, and then test your might in hackathon events! LFG.

What a virtuous cycle.

Edgar’s Editorial

Perhaps to summarize a bit about my journey through the rabbit hole, I first delved into studying what Bitcoin is, how it functions at a deeper level, and how it could present a significant opportunity for the country economically and technologically. All of this came into focus thanks to the CUBO+ project, which was launched as an initiative to learn about the technologies behind Bitcoin and why future developers in El Salvador should take the initiative to understand and apply this technology to their future projects and companies.

Subsequently, I had the fortune to participate in a two-week boot camp held in El Zonte, La Libertad. I felt incredibly fortunate to receive instruction from experts in the field, focusing on lightning network management in combination with various frameworks. During the boot camp's final three days, we conducted a hackathon, my team using ZBD technology to create a lightning network remittance services. It was during this event that I met Santos, a highly talented individual who imparted valuable knowledge about software management and APIs.

Upon completing the boot camp, we were tasked with choosing a company for our internships. For me, the choice was clear: ZBD was where I wanted to further my knowledge of framework management and lightning network utilization, while honing my skills as a systems engineer and software developer. After some time, Santos reached out to arrange tests for the internship. time passing, I spent two months at ZBD, learning from incredibly talented individuals about data analysis, business intelligence, software testing(QA), framework coordination, and utilizing various tools to enhance software management. It was an enriching experience, resolving real-world problems and engaging socially with people from diverse backgrounds.

Following my internship with ZBD, Santos reached out again, expressing satisfaction with my performance and offering me a position at his company, emeralize. Now, I find myself working in a field I love, creating applications such as The Global Hackathon League platform, alongside my coworker Alan. Our goal is to facilitate hackathons in the future and empower future developers to excel, providing them with greater opportunities for professional and personal growth, leveraging the endless possibilities presented by Bitcoin.

Alan’s Editorial

Since I had the opportunity to join this wonderful world of Bitcoin thanks to CUBO+, I have realized how important hackathons are and how much they helped me grow as a programmer.

Hackathons have become an important part of my life, a place where I can test my skills, see the results of my proof of work and demonstrate what I am capable of.

It all started with a small hackathon at the CUBO+ bootcamp, and ended with a victory in the Legends of Lightning adopting bitcoin 2023 hackathon, taking first place in the competition with my team.

Participating in these competitions has been like a key that opened the doors to great opportunities, like working for a bitcoin company like Alby and now for emeralize.

I want to encourage anyone who doesn't feel confident about participating in a hackathon, it can be a life-changing opportunity. For this reason I love working for emeralize and above all, having worked at GHL will be a tool that will help more people enter this wonderful world of which fortunately I am already a part of it.

What’s Next?

• Private Company hackathons as a service.
• Participate in our Buildathon at BitBlockBoom.
• Beginner and Pro Leagues.
• Reputation.
• More social features around DMs and forums using Nostr.
• Seeking sponsors.
• Seeking volunteers.
• Get our 501C3 in the United States to give participating organizations tax-deduction benefits for their donations.

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Interested in sponsoring or organizing a hackathon?

Reach out to us using the ghl.gg ‘s sponsor form or contact form 🙂.

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More on my hackathon background

If you’re interested in learning more about my hackathon background, you can watch the following video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B82ruoeEsVM