Solana Ignition event revealed as global hackathon

After a weekend of anticipation and cryptic tweets, Solana Capital unveiled its mysterious ignition event – a global hackathon aimed at catalysing new platforms on the ecosystem.

Solana revealed the hackathon will run until October 8 with $5m in prizes and seed funding up for grabs in an effort to drive innovation and ecosystem growth.

The Ignition hackathon is open to development teams from around the globe and will feature live events in select cities aiming to draw talent and ideas to Solana.

This is the fourth Solana hackathon, and follows past successes such as the Solana season hackathon (13,000 participants and 326 projects), the DeFi hackathon (3,000 participants and 82 projects), and the first ever SOL hackathon – the Wormhole hackathon last year (1,000 participants and 66 projects).

Companies from across the crypto industry including Serum, Mango, Pyth network, Raydium, Solend, Stardust, and Wormhole network are offering $30k prizes each for the best project integration, with a $5k prize also being offered by Chainlink.

SOL surges ahead of announcement

The speculation and buzz surrounding the cryptic announcement on Twitter last Friday of a vague new Solana project called ‘Ignition’ drove a significant rally for the network’s native SOL token over the weekend, with the asset pushing new heights at a remarkable $120.

Bubbling investor interest drove the 30% rally up to the new all-time high of $119.67 – double the previous ATH from May.

While the incredible saw new heights for SOL, the market seems to have responded with a slight air of disappointed and anti-climax following the anticipation and hype.

Today, SOL was trading 1.15% down at $109 – a decline since the revelation.

However, all is not lost – the rally still pushed Solana’s market cap to an impressive $32B – meaning it is now the eighth biggest crypto asset behind Dogecoin (DOGE).

Four hackathon categories

Web3 has been sponsored as a track by Microsoft with $120k in prizes. The focus is on the creation of new dApps, DAOs, and other infrastructure to cut the middleman out of popular Web2 platforms utilising Solana.

The DeFi track is being jointly sponsored by Jump Capital and Standard Chartered. This aims to encourage DEX innovations specifically and will be keenly watched by the likes of Mango Markets (the leading SOL DEX has donated $30k to the prize pot), and with a whopping $180k in prizes available this will be a hotly contested hackathon category.

Another track being offered in the competition is focused on gaming, with $105k being offered to encourage developers with exciting ideas to help deliver blockchain-based video games to the platform. This carries a particular emphasis on this year’s P2P NFT market – with NFT connectivity expected to feature as a significant component of competition.

The final track of the hackathon takes aim at the exploding NFT markets, with exciting entries aimed at shaking up the creative space welcomed by an attractive $120k prize fund.

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