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@ DoraHacks
2025-03-18 14:19:19The Evolution of Hackathons: From Offline to Online, Powering Frontier Innovation Worldwide
Throughout the history of open-source platform technology, hackathons have been the launchpads for innovation—fueling breakthroughs, incubating the next generation of startups, and serving as the proving ground for builders. Over the past decade, DoraHacks has led the charge, driving the hacker movement and open-source revolution. We didn’t just witness the evolution of hackathons—we architected it.
The Online Revolution of Hackathons
Before 2020, hackathons were largely stuck in the physical world—you had to be in the room to participate. The idea of a fully online, global hackathon was a pipe dream. Then, DoraHacks.io changed everything. Suddenly, a developer in Africa could win funding from a hackathon hosted by a Silicon Valley company. Geographic barriers collapsed. Today, over 95% of hackathons happen online.
The Infrastructure Revolution: Making Hackathons 10x More Effective
DoraHacks relentlessly iterated on the hackathon model. We built BUIDL pages for real-time project showcases, a world-class hackathon organizer dashboard, MACI-powered decentralized privacy governance, and Grant DAOs that provide ongoing funding. The result? DoraHacks became the ultimate launchpad for hackers and early-stage builders.
The Ecosystem Revolution: Supercharging Open Innovation
DoraHacks became the backbone of Web3 innovation—from Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain to the next wave of blockchains like Aptos, Cosmos, Injective, TON, and Sonic. Since 2023, hackathons have expanded beyond crypto—quantum computing, commercial space tech, and AI-driven innovations are now being built on DoraHacks.
Rolling Hackathons and Uninterrupted BUIDLing - the New Standard for Ecosystem Growth
BUIDLs can be created spontaneously at any time. Hosting Hackathons as short-term events held only once or twice a year is not conducive to attracting outstanding Hackers and high-quality projects to join the ecosystem and drive innovation in the long term. To remediate this, Hackathons should be continuous and uninterrupted, serving as a long-term driving force within the developer ecosystem.
Historically, the high organizational costs and substantial resource investments associated with frequent Hackathons meant that most emerging ecosystems couldn't afford to host them regularly. As a result, Hackathons became rare, annual spectacles, and for some projects, an unaffordable luxury. This model severely restricted developers' chances to participate and hindered the ecosystem's ability to innovate consistently. Let's imagine what would happen if an ecosystem held 12 or more Hackathons each year?
- Developers have a clear loyalty incentive: They would know that the ecosystem is committed to supporting and funding excellent developers and projects continuously, which would encourage them to make long-term investments and contribute regularly.
- Missing out is no longer an issue: Even if a developer couldn't attend a particular Hackathon, there would be another one soon, increasing accessibility.
- Accelerated ecosystem innovation: Frequent Hackathons would accelerate ecosystem innovation. Developers would be constantly pushed to explore new directions, significantly boosting the growth rate of the technological ecosystem.
Previously, due to the limitations of costs and organizational difficulties, frequent Hackathons were almost unthinkable. Only ecosystems with sufficient funds like Google and Amazon could afford rolling Hackathons. But now, DoraHacks' upcoming BUIDL AI platform tools are set to change the game. These tools make it possible to organize 12 Hackathons in a year, and even go a step further by enabling the simultaneous hosting of multiple differently-themed Hackathons. This will help emerging ecosystems effectively incentivise developers, expand their technological influence, and increase the number of exceptional BUIDLs (projects) in their ecosystems.
The majority of BUIDLs come about continuously and spontaneously and should be recognized and incentivized promptly, rather than having to wait for the single annual Hackathon.
As the saying goes, "He who wins over developers wins the world." In the highly competitive Web3 space, Hackathons are an effective means of attracting developers, and rolling Hackathons are the best way to achieve this. For an ecosystem to stay competitive, it must ensure that developers always have opportunities to engage and create.
The AI Era of Hackathons: A 10x Opportunity, A 10x Challenge
AI Turns Everyone Into a Hacker
AI has obliterated repetitive work. Building is faster than ever. Anyone, from anywhere, can hack, ship, and scale with AI tools that accelerate ideation, development, and execution. The potential of hackathons in this AI-powered era is 10x bigger than ever before.
But Hackathon Infrastructure Is Stuck in the Past
Despite this massive opportunity, organizing hackathons remains painfully inefficient:
- Most organizations don’t know how to run hackathons effectively.
- Even those who do lack time and resources to do it frequently.
- Ecosystem builders who have the resources can only host one hackathon per year.
The result?
- Hackathons are underutilized, slowing innovation.
- Ecosystem growth is bottlenecked by developer relations (DevRel) teams.
- Many ecosystems fail to maximize the potential of hackathons.
- Low-frequency hackathons waste hacker potential—builders sit idle when they could be shipping.
BUIDL AI: Unlocking the Infinite Potential of Hackathons
We refuse to let inefficiency limit innovation. BUIDL AI is our answer.
DoraHacks is launching BUIDL AI, the AI-powered Hackathon Co-Pilot that automates, scales, and supercharges hackathon organization.
BUIDL AI: The Game-Changing Features
1. Edit and Launch: One-Click Hackathon Deployment
Organizers can now launch a hackathon in minutes by filling in basic details (prizes, themes, workshops, judges, etc.). No tedious manual setup.
2. BUIDL Review: Submission Evaluation (10x Faster)
Traditional hackathons get hundreds of submissions—judging takes hundreds of hours. BUIDL AI changes the game. It automatically scores projects based on completeness, originality, and theme relevance—filtering out low-quality submissions 10x faster than before.
3. Automated Marketing: Instant Hackathon Reports
After the hackathon ends, BUIDL AI auto-generates a full post-event report—highlighting winners, standout projects, and key takeaways—boosting visibility and impact.
4. Seamless Interaction: Smarter Collaboration, No Bottlenecks
BUIDL AI will interact with hackathon organizers to keep organizers in sync, alerting them about new submissions, pending approvals, and participant inquiries in real time. No more dropped balls.
5. Multi-Hackathon Management: Scaling Innovation Without Limits
Before BUIDL AI, running multiple hackathons at once was a logistical nightmare. Now, ecosystem builders can launch and manage multiple hackathons seamlessly, boosting innovation frequency exponentially
The full BUIDL AI Beta version will release on April 15th, but multiple free BUIDL AI features have already been available on DoraHacks.io!
BUIDL AI: The Next Great Leap in Open Innovation
Hackathons aren’t just competitions. They are the birthplace of the next trillion-dollar innovations.
With BUIDL AI, hackathons enter a new era—automated, intelligent, and infinitely scalable. This means more hackers, more builders, and more breakthrough projects than ever before.
At DoraHacks, we believe in an open, hacker-driven future. BUIDL AI is the rocket fuel for that future.