Think about you are a fresh-faced developer, overestimated and able to construct your first massive undertaking. You’ve got acquired a minimum of 3 RedBulls in your veins, a GitHub repo open, and a dream.
Then you definitely see it: a hackathon. Large names, massive prizes, massive alternative. Sounds… good… proper?
On September 2, Base hosted the Onchain Summer season Awards, a hackathon celebrating essentially the most modern and broadly used client mini-apps within the Base ecosystem. 500+ developer groups joined in to chase a $200,000 prize pool.
Fairly stable deal, props to Base for supporting the neighborhood…
… is one thing I might be saying if this factor wasn’t rigged.
On October 7, Base introduced the winners.
That is when an X consumer named Alanas, co-founder of Ogvio (a world cash switch service), observed one thing… off.
Whereas looking via the High New Client Apps class, he realized two of the profitable tasks – owatch (second place) and Opi Commerce (third) – have been hella sus.
In response to his findings, each apps have been principally AI-generated touchdown pages with no working buttons, no product, and no actual performance.
Additional investigation revealed that a few of these AI-generated shell tasks have been related to Coinbase workers – the identical firm behind the Base community, and, conveniently, the hackathon’s organizer.
Which is VERY fascinating, to say the least.
Hackathons are purported to be these thrilling, open occasions the place anybody can showcase their expertise, meet different builders, and possibly even flip a facet undertaking right into a funded startup.
However when insiders and AI-generated tasks win over precise working merchandise, that complete neighborhood empowerment factor begins to sound a bit hole.
And it is not simply Base. Builders have been skeptical about hackathons for years.
Throughout boards and social media, folks have complained that many of those occasions are extra about PR and model picture than real innovation.
Some even name them exploitative – getting builders to pour hours into constructing concepts that corporations can then use without cost, all below the comfortable banner of “neighborhood constructing.”
The record of hackathon controversies is lengthy, really: CodeX with its underwhelming rewards, Hack the Hill elevating charges on scholar contributors, Salesforce’s “pre-made undertaking” winner scandal again in 2013…
It is nearly like you possibly can’t host a hackathon today with no little bit of drama. So, it makes you marvel: are hackathons even price it?
Perhaps the higher reply is: not in the way in which we’re instructed they’re.
Hackathons promote the concept of “one of the best builders win.”
However in follow, they typically reward connections, presentation expertise, or just being on the within. The judging is opaque, the timelines unrealistic, and the prizes disproportionately small in comparison with the worth corporations extract from the publicity and submissions.
That doesn’t imply nobody advantages – simply that it is not often the contributors:
👉 For organizers, a hackathon is affordable advertising: a burst of social media buzz and free R&D disguised as neighborhood engagement.
👉 For builders, it’s unpaid labor dressed up as alternative.
Positive, you would possibly nonetheless be taught one thing or meet somebody helpful – however these are unwanted side effects, not the purpose.
So possibly the query is not “are hackathons price it?”
It is “price it for whom?”
