Web3athon, an annual hackathon event hosted by CoinDesk with partners Alchemy University and HackerEarth, has announced its latest cohort of winners. Six teams building in five blockchain ecosystems will take home over $200,000 in grants to help fund further protocol development. The six-week virtual event, which ran April to June this year, is focused on bringing more developers into Web3 through partner grant programs. The Web3athon grants were funded by organizations representing the Solana, Polkadot, XDC, OKT Chain and Coreum blockchains. “[T]he industry needs more developers learning and building in Web3,” Garrett Skrovina, senior audience partnerships manager for CoinDesk’s Consensus event, said in an announcement. “Each protocol approaches ecosystem development differently, so the Web3athon provided a platform to showcase the various developer relations initiatives of our partner protocols and foundations.” “We love Web3athon because it is multichain in nature, connected to Consensus, and attracts top talent across the ecosystem,” a representative for Web3 identity project Civic told CoinDesk. Civic was one of several secondary sponsors, as well as wallet giant Ledger, gender-equality-focused community H.E.R. DAO and Hexens, a Web3 and novel cryptography auditor. With over 6,400 participants, the winners were selected from over 160 final submissions. The winning projects addressed a wide range of needs around protocol infrastructure and applications, including network privacy, zero-code development and e-commerce. Nearly half of applicants were building on Solana and XDC, with the next most popular networks being Polkadot and the Ethereum and Cosmos-compatible OKT Chain (OKTC). While not every project takes home funding, previous Web3athons have seen several participants continue to build their applications after the event. Mike Hale, who was building the first version of Vanward – a tool that helps manage and verify professional certifications – on Solana, plans to continue the work through the ongoing Encode x Solana Summer hackathon. “I didn't go into Web3athon expecting to win a prize. Instead, I used it as a deadline and motivation to get the first version developed,” Hale said. While hackathons are only one step in creating a diverse and sustainable software industry, they are designed to get people into the ring, and to start building. They play a critical role in incubating innovation, spurring open-source development and building communities. Read more about the winners here. – D.K. @danielgkuhn daniel@coindesk.com | 