Last month, Mumbai hosted its Ethereum hackathon: ETHMumbai 2026.
Here’s a quick tour, no bus required :P

Built in motion

Over the years, we have been hosting ETHIndia, bringing builders from across the country together. Now, we’re seeing more teams, more cities, and more communities step up and carry this forward.

We were super excited to see ETHMumbai kick off in 2024 and push things even further this year. What once felt centralised is now expanding into a decentralised set of nodes, with new hubs taking shape and building their own momentum.

With Devcon set to arrive in India, this year already feels like an inflection point. In many ways, it’s a moment that’s been a long time coming,

Chapter 0: Mumbai in Progress (MIPs)

Every great event has a pre-story. ETHMumbai’s was the MIPs.

Mumbai In Progress meetups happened before the main event: small, community-led sessions where builders across the city came together to talk, build, and figure out what ETHMumbai could be.

Chapter १: The Start

The conference kicked off with a Dhol Tasha performance, a traditional drum ensemble that got the energy going from the first beat.

From there, the day unfolded across multiple formats: Double Deck for keynotes and core talks, Single Deck for workshops, and Open Deck, where parallel sessions ran through headphones.

A key moment was the Devcon announcement, where the team introduced the Road to Devcon and broader ecosystem programs, connecting India to the global Ethereum community.

The ETHMumbai App tied everything together, making it easy to navigate sessions and stay in sync throughout the day.

Chapter २: The Build

The next day, we moved to the World Trade Centre for the hackathon.

With 200+ hackers on the floor, the energy was instant, teams forming, ideas moving fast, and the buildathon kicking off.

Mentors and organisers kept the energy tight, workshops ran in parallel, giving builders the depth they needed to sharpen their approach. Over the next 36 hours, teams built across tracks from sponsors including Base, ENS, HeyElsa, Fileverse & BitGo.

Interval

The team also organised a guided bus tour across the city as a short break during the hackathon.

Scheduled in the evening, it wound through South Mumbai, past CST, the Gateway of India, and the Taj. For a couple of hours, the laptops stayed shut, and the city took over.

Cameo: Kaali-Peeli, Camera & Action

In between all of this, we managed to pull off something we're pretty proud of. In collaboration with Devcon and ETHIndia, we sat down with some prominent web3 figures for a series of interviews, filmed inside Mumbai's iconic kaali-peeli taxi.

The conversations captured builders’ stories, their journeys, and how they found their way into the Ethereum ecosystem.

It was a fun format, and honestly, a fitting one for the city.

Chapter ३:The Final Stretch

As the hackathon entered its final stretch, the focus shifted to refining ideas, debugging relentlessly, and pushing projects toward submission.

The result ...

With over 80 projects built and a prize pool exceeding $10K, the stakes were clear, and the energy stayed high until the very end.

The hackathon brought together a strong lineup of judges and mentors to evaluate and engage with the work on display, including Denver Dsouza from Devfolio, who was there helping guide and evaluate the projects being presented.

Here are the builds that turned heads:

1. penumbra
2. ppn.fi
3. MeshSearch

Beyond the hackathon …

All around, ETHMumbai was an experience of its own, from how the events were designed to the builder mindset, everything carried a distinct pinch of Mumbai.

And when hackers left the venue, they didn’t just leave with experience; they carried a small piece of the city with them.

With Devcon set to be hosted in Mumbai later this year, we’re excited to see the city bring that energy back on an even bigger stage.

A big thank you to all the volunteers, hackers, and partners who made this experience what it was. We can’t wait to share what we have in store for November.

Till then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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We had a chance to host Build India Hackathon in partnership with Anthropic, Replit and Lightspeed in Bengaluru on 15th February 2026.

For a long time, building meant writing logic, connecting APIs, designing interfaces, and hoping users would adapt to the product. Now, intelligence is part of the foundation. Small teams can build things that once required serious scale That shift is still unfolding, and no one has fully figured it out yet. And that’s what makes the present interesting.

Build India was a focused sprint with dedicated hours to think clearly, build seriously, and ship something real using Claude and Replit. It was about building something beyond a mockup, something that functionally works.

What followed was an 7 hour hackathon of teams working with AI to build something for India and from India.

Setting the Stage

Starting from builders showing up at 8:00 AM for registration, the day kicked off with a fireside chat featuring Irina Ghose (Managing Director, Anthropic India), Jeff Burke (Replit), and Hemant Mohapatra (Partner, Lightspeed India).

Their keynote went beyond generic AI hype: they discussed how Anthropic and Replit are collapsing the gap between ideas and production software, what it really takes to move from chatbots to reliable agents, the metrics that predict whether an AI product will stick, and why India’s developer ecosystem is now central to that future.

They also shared their views on where AI is still too brittle to be trusted without human oversight, and what would make a weekend hack at Build India feel like the seed of a real company rather than just a clever demo and just after few session from Anthropic and Replit the hackathon started.

The Build Hours

As the opening wrapped and the timer began, ideas went up on a shared tracking board. Teams posted what they were building and updated their progress in real time.

Then laptops flipped open, Idea board filled up, and the entire venue settled into deep focus. Builders locked in fast. From solo devs with laser-sharp prototypes to full teams debugging across three terminals, the room was alive with intent.

People of Build India

Team members from Anthropic and Replit were present throughout the day, helping teams troubleshoot, refine prompts, and push their builds further. Credits from both platforms were provided so participants could fully experiment without constraint.

The feedback was direct and practical, often sparking the kind of small insight that completely changes a product’s direction.

Prize Breakdown

The prize pool was divided between cash awards and platform credits.

🥇 First Prize
- Cash Prize: $2,500
- Credits from Anthropic: $7,000 worth
- Credits from Replit: $7,000 worth

🥈 Second Prize
- Cash Prize: $1,500
- Credits from Anthropic: $5,000 worth
- Credits from Replit: $5,000 worth

🥉 Third Prize
- Cash Prize: $1,000
- Credits from Anthropic: $3,000 worth
- Credits from Replit: $3,000 worth

Winning Projects

🥇 Grand Prize ($16,500) - Chat2cash by @swayyaam
Millions of small businesses rely on WhatsApp for sales, but most still manage orders manually. Chat2Cash helps them turn chats into invoices, tracked payments, and recovered revenue.

🥈 First Runner-Up ($11,500) - Claude clip by @adithya_s_k and @spratyey
ClaudeClip is a video editor where AI and humans co-edit together: you describe the video you want, Claude assembles a first cut from your footage with text, clips, and graphics, and you fine‑tune it on a familiar timeline.

🥉 Second Runner-Up ($7,000) - AI Battle Royale by @ArshanKaudinya
AI Battle Royale is a competitive arena where LLM agents fight to survive, exposing their real-time strategic reasoning under pressure. It transforms response speed, spatial tactics, and survival decisions into a live, interpretable benchmark for multi-agent AI behavior.

Check out the rest of the projects here → buildindia2026.devfolio.co/projects

👀 What’s Next

📸 Photos!
The full event gallery can be found here: Build India 2026
And the BTS will be dropping soon on Devfolio’s X.

Relive the energy, spot your team, and share your favorite moments!

Keep Building

Build India 2026 ran on energy you could feel in the room. The focus, the last minute pivots, the random sparks of clarity. It all added up to something special.

Maybe you shipped something you are proud of. Maybe you hit a wall and learned more than you expected. Either way, that momentum is real. The ideas you started here do not have to end here.

Keep iterating. Keep testing. Keep talking to the people you met this weekend. The best part of any hackathon is not just what gets submitted. It is what keeps growing after everyone goes home.

When the next Build India opens, you will hear from us first. Until then, we will keep sharing updates, builder spotlights, and new opportunities to jump into. If you are already thinking about your next challenge, explore what is live on Devfolio at devfolio.co/discover.

If you built something during the hackathon, post it on X and tag us. We would love to see what you shipped.

Until next time,
Never Stop Building

P.S. - We’d like to give a special shoutout to all the contributors for helping make Build India 2026 a smooth and seamless experience.

Nobody would have believed us if we'd just told them. So we showed them instead.

For months, we'd been wrestling with a question that kept us up at night: What if we could create an environment where builders didn't have to hunt down mentors in forest-sized venues, where meaningful conversations didn't get lost between networking sessions, where the experience itself became the ROI?

The answer, as it turns out, was a 36-hour train ride from Bengaluru to New Delhi. Well one of the answer was this. 😛

Welcome to BlockTrain. On-chain, on-train. 🚂

Trying out something NEW!

The traditional hackathon format works. Invite builders to a venue, provide resources, announce prizes, everyone goes home. Rinse, repeat.

But here's what we noticed: builders rarely get enough time exploring and making the most out of hackathons while working on their projects. Mentors become scattered resources you need to track down. And that fundamental question -"What did I actually get out of this?" - often doesn't have a satisfying answer beyond a prize or a project submission. While on the other side, organizers think, plan and curate for a wholesome experience for everyone which only a fraction of people are able to enjoy or take part in.

We realized that despite all the effort that goes into organizing large-scale events with workspace, mentors, food, and talent, measuring the real fruitfulness of such gatherings is surprisingly difficult. The infrastructure is there, but the depth of connection? That's harder to guarantee.

So we asked ourselves: What if the venue itself forced valuable conversations? What if builders and mentors were locked in together - literally and metaphorically - with nowhere to go but deeper into their conversations and their code?

Inspired by Jagriti Yatra and The Hack Zypher, we had an idea: a blockchain hackathon on a moving train - Blocktrain!

Once we hit publish on the announcement, we honestly weren't sure what to expect. A hackathon on a moving train? It sounded either genius or completely unhinged - possibly both.

The announcemenet on twitter blew up with builders from everywhere asking how they could get on board. Creators like Caleb shared the initiative, and his reel on instagram crossed 900K impressions. For something that started as a wild idea scribbled during a late-night call, seeing it resonate like this felt surreal.

The People: Who We Had On Board

5,000+ applications. 120 shortlisted. 45 brave builders to rewrite the history of building on train!

This was our first experiment, and we had exactly one bogie on train to work with. The selection was intentional - we wanted builders who understood that this wasn't just about shipping a project. It was about being part of something unrepeatable.

Really glad we had sponsors including Base, Noice and Geode with whose help we were able to manage all the logistics for BlockTrain.

Alongside the builders, we had:

A handpicked crew of mentors who weren't just experienced—they'd walked the path. Folks who'd built proof of work at places like Noice.so, polynomial.fi, rath.finance, and BuidlGuidl. They weren't there to lecture. They were there to rotate through berths, sit down with teams, and actually jam on ideas.

Four creators roaming free across compartments, tasked with capturing this entire experiment through their lenses. Not assigned to any specific group, just there to document the beautiful chaos as it unfolded. The content they put out on Twitter? People absolutely loved it.

A train full of people who cared about building.

The Logistics (Or: How We Pulled Off Something Technically Hard)

With crazy ideas come crazy challenges. Sorry, Spiderman. 🦸 😬

Internet at 120 km/h

This was the big one. You can't exactly rely on mobile hotspots when you're barreling through railway tracks in India. So we set up an intranet system on BlockTrain with a simple concept: store all the npm packages locally and let builders chat with an onboard LLM to pull what they need for building up their projects.

Food that you love :D

It's crazy to go back and see how we co-ordinated across our vendors from stations to have food available to all the builders on train. While we did have IRCTC catering, we were recommend to order the famous idli, vada and sambhar from a beloved local spot from Hyderabad, with snacks and dinner from Bikanerwala at Nagpur junction. Three different sources, three different vibes, all of which people loved the food from all three locations

Permissions (The Bureaucratic Boss Battle)

As anyone would have guessed - hosting a hackathon on train would require good amount of permissions from the government bodies.

Getting bulk ticket bookings for builders? Manageable. Booking extra emergency tickets in case teams needed space to code in peace? Doable. Getting official permissions from railway authorities to run a full-blown hackathon on a moving train? That required trips from New Delhi to Bengaluru railways and back again. But we pulled through. Special thanks to our fren @Amogh - who helped us out in the planning and ops for the whole BlockTrain initiative. Couldn’t thank him enough. 🤝

A thoughtfully curated swag list

We realize swag is an important inclusion in any of the events we host.  For blocktrain - a ride worth 33 hours, We thought about what builders would genuinely need on a 36-hour train ride and thus had the following in the pipeline:

• T-shirts (obviously)
• Eye masks (for those who actually wanted to sleep)
• Dental kits (hygiene is not negotiable)
• Sponsor branded N95 Mask
• A portable table specifically designed for coding on the train!
• Sticker sheets (because builders love stickers)
• An exclusive BlockTrain-branded keychain
• And a memento for everyone who built on the train
• Tote bags (to fit all of the above)

Initially we didn’t think we would have this many items but eventually the items made their way into the bag and I love the fact that people LOVED this and shared their love over social media about the swag bag!

The Opening: Setting the Stage

Before anyone boarded, we held an opening ceremony at PVR Yeshwanthpur - Vaishnavi Sapphire. Cinema hall. Big screen. The ADGM Deputy Railways Bengaluru joined us.

We briefed all 45 builders on what to expect: the format, the challenges, the vibe. Then we assembled everyone, lined them up, and marched them to the railway station together.

One line. One train. One shared experience about to begin.

Day 1: Departure and Immediate Chaos (The Good Kind)

What we planned: Keep the first night light. Let people settle in. No pressure to code immediately.

What actually happened: The train hadn't even left the platform before laptops started opening.

We thought builders would want to rest, ease into things, maybe chat and get comfortable. Instead, the moment the train departed Bengaluru, screens lit up across compartments where the IDEs launched terminals started and the builders fired up to code on train. Honestly, the energy was electric.

You just had to be there to see it. Builders weren't waiting for permission or a formal kickoff - they were already locked in.

The theme to build on train was open: build anything on-chain. No restrictions. No prescribed problem statements. It was just pure builder autonomy.

Day 2: A whole day on the Train!

If Day 1 was about finding rhythm, Day 2 was about controlled chaos turning into a really magical experience.

Morning: The Grind

Mentors began their rotations after the morning idli sambhar from Hyderabad, moving from berth to berth to discuss ideas, validate assumptions, and pressure-test early prototypes. It was quite fun to see everyone engaged in discussing their ideas and projects they were gonna build.

Teams dug deeper into their builds. We had two special tracks running in parallel:

Ethereum Speedrun Challenge sponsored by BuidlGuidl which required builders to Complete a Prediction Markets challenge for a shot at $300 prize pool.

The other prize was for the first three teams mentored by JesseGPT who posted on social media won $20 each.

Quadratic Voting with Anon Aadhar: A $1,500 prize pool where the community decided who deserved recognition. Every team that submitted a functional project on-train earned $20 per team member. You can check the leaderboard at https://blocktrain.devfolio.co/quadratic-voting.

Night: This was Crazyyy!

Here's where things got beautifully absurd.

Picture this: One compartment has builders hunched over keyboards, translating their thoughts into code or maybe debugging, well it goes in parallel at 11 PM. The next compartment? A full DJ setup with music projected onto the train's windows, people vibing to beats as the countryside blurs past. The compartment after that? A intense game of mafia where teams are trying to identify the murderer while murdering their own sleep schedules.

All of this. Simultaneously. In the same bogie.

Apart from this, we had our engineers engage Some folks broke into spontaneous on-train antakshri. Coffee was served at odd hours. Old-age cartoons played on someone's screen. The entire bogie had become a living, breathing organism of focused work and joyful chaos.

This was the night people would remember.

Day 3: Arrival and the Proof

8:00 AM sharp. New Delhi.

The train pulled into the station right on time. Everyone gathered for photos but before that we handed out mementos to every builder who'd completed the journey. Not for winning. Not for ranking. For doing it. For building something functional while traveling at 120 km/h. For being part of the world's first Ethereum train hackathon.

We had 21 submitted projects. Read that again. In 36 hours, on a moving train, with limited internet, builders shipped real functional work.

We waved goodbye to the creators and builders as they dispersed into Delhi, carrying momentum into the week ahead. BlockTrain being the prologue - the caravan that set everything in motion.

On-Chain, On-Train, On to the Next

BlockTrain happened. It was real, chaotic, and it was everything we hoped it would be.

To the 45 builders who took the leap: you're now part of something that didn't exist before. To the creators who captured it: your work made sure no one will forget. To the mentors who gave their time and wisdom in transit: you made this more than just a gimmick.

This was the ceremonial start to a week where Ethereum in India took center stage. But more than that, it was proof that the best gatherings aren't always the biggest ones - sometimes they're the ones where you can't escape each other, and you wouldn't want to anyway.

The train has reached its destination. But the journey? That's just getting started.

Quick links here:

We tried to capture everything in this post, but some things just spill over. If you want to go deeper:

• Submitted projects - 45 teams, 33 hours, one moving train
• Photo album - All the moments from the train journey

And here's the thing - so many people posted about BlockTrain that we couldn't possibly include it all above. Builders sharing their experience, strangers hyping us up, honest takes from everyone who was there (and many who wished they were).

We've gathered some of our favorites here:

• https://x.com/devfolio/status/1964994554651943133
• https://x.com/denverjude/status/1969403674561822949
• https://x.com/aazim_anish/status/1969599351602495935
• https://x.com/Ayussheth/status/1969709347295912157
• https://x.com/devfolio/status/1969712742052565451
• https://x.com/DholakiaJaydeep/status/1969752065695166644
• https://x.com/heettike/status/1969811115694563667
• https://x.com/aazim_anish/status/1971156499566297449

For more updates on our initiatives at Devfolio, checkout our socials at:

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Our mission for 2025 was clear: We are doing things differently this time.

ETHIndia came back with a new version this year, ETHIndiaVilla.  

A tighter circle of Ethereum builders, a more intentional format, and an experience designed for real collaboration.

This edition brought together a team of selected builders for a format built around depth. Teams will work in groups of three or four, and every team will be joined by a Super Hacker. We received 2,045 applications this year, out of which we shortlisted 52 of the best hackers in India to work with Super Hackers in this edition.

Super Hacker - The wild card of every team.

Why shift the format? We want to create a space where builders can think sharply and learn faster. Every team is paired with a Super Hacker who brings real-world insights from the products they work on every day.

Super Hackers are the past mentors and judges you have seen guiding ETHIndia in previous editions, but this time, they were building inside the same team. The concept of Super Hackers was chosen from our community feedback and our intrinsic motivation to shift focus on the quality of mentorship and project outcomes of ETHIndia.

Super Hackers were professionals at their work from Base, Crossmint, Caddy Finance, Polygon Labs, Arbitrum, KelpDAO, Lucidly Finance, StarkWare & Privy

The role of a Super Hacker is a middle ground between mentor and hacker; they are advisors but also part of the team:

• Super Hackers have extensive experience in Ethereum, professionally & as past ETHIndia attendees. This increases the bar for each team with improved mentorship and creativity.
• Super Hackers being part of the team also means they are motivated to double down their efforts in making their team win. This is difficult to achieve in traditional mentorship, where you are assigned to all or a set of teams.

The result...

17 Solid Projects from 17 Teams, each paired with their own Super Hacker

The purpose of Super Hacker was not just technical expertise; it was also the industry experience and bringing together veterans with future builders.

Here's what Super Hackers felt about the new format of mentorship

Big Boss wants you to play

We have run the standard hackathon format many times over the years, so this year we wanted to bring something fresh for everyone. And it was not just hacking. The villa had activities planned that made the overall experience richer, more engaging, and a lot more fun.

We inserted three games to add a vibeathon spirit for the IRL hacking phase.

1. Fastest Pani Puri First: Test your Ethereum ecosystem and technical knowledge, but instead of a buzzer, you have to make and have a pani puri.
2. SpaghETHi Marshmellow: Midnight break from hacking (and potential snacking) by creating a structure using only Spaghetti and Marshmallows.
3. Proof of Pool: Post submissions, hackers compete for swag by scoring the most by tossing into the floating hoops.

Prizes for these games were equally rewarding. We had Hardware Ledges & exclusive ETHIndia Swag on the line just to play these games and give everyone a great time.

Reward more than just bounties

We wanted our hackers to be rewarded with something you cannot put a price on, a Connection with industry's best. Spending 24 hours with Super Hackers at the Villa allowed these hackers to bond at a greater level than mentors at a traditional hackathon.

This resulted in a deeper connection that butterfly effects into networks as the builder continues their journey in the Ethereum ecosystem. "We met for the first time at ETHIndia" is a traditional experience witnessed by many developers in India.

Quadratic Voting so everyone wins

We continued doubling down on the benefit of Quadratic Voting to fairly reward the best projects. On top of QV, Anon Aadhar makes it possible for every eligible Indian (with a valid AADHAR card) to participate in QV without identity disclosure.

This means hackers are incentivized to advocate for their projects.

More advocacy = More votes = More share of the prize pool.

Turns out, doing things differently works

We are proud and honored that we got to try new formats this year. From running BlockTrain, the World's first Ethereum hackathon on a moving Train to ETHIndiaVilla. The recognition and love from hackers, sponsors, and communities tell us that our efforts are in the right direction and towards what builders and problem solvers also want.

Cheers to a lot more building, good times, and experiments in 2026.

Quick Links of ETHIndiaVilla:

• ETHIndiaVilla Projects
• Photo Album
• Villa Stories

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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Never Stop Building & a Happy New Year :D

Hi, I'm Ashwin. I am the head of community at Devfolio and I just completed a year here! Let me take you through what I did over the last year.

Hackathons aren't new to me, I used to ~hate~ code (ever coded on MS-DOS? You'll probably relate).

Hackathons Are for Learners, Not Just Students

Contrary to the popular assumption that hackathons are for "hackers", hackathons makes the most sense for (relative) beginners. If you want to learn a new technology, tool or even understand the hype everyone's talking on Twitter, picking a hackathon is the best way to understand it without sacrificing money, time or work/school.

Build Teams Beyond Your Circle

Frankly, for me, some of the best career friends came out of hackathons. The ones where I chose to form a team instead of bringing one. This eventually led to a butterfly effect that got me into international conferences, great career options and cool friendships in new towns when moving.

Team formation is a core area many hackers ignore as they like to bring their friends who they are comfortable in communicating with. Unfortunately, in professional spaces, you may not know everyone and learning how to communicate is a core software engineering skill (Way more important than any JS framework).

Putting yourself in the uncomfortable space of team formation does a few things

• Encourages you to sell yourself (with your experience & motivation) to others.
• Holds you accountable for your duties in a team for the sake of reputation.

When you are hacking with a bunch of good-ol' friends, it's very easy to bail out, take up tasks or even build the project cause you may end up spending more time hanging-out than hacking, which can be distraction.

In a new team, you are bound to show progress for the sake of maintaining that new connection with the team mate who may know more than you one certain skill-level. Conversly, same happens to them as they find a skill you are better at.

Shared struggles solve better problems

I know you want to solve that one problem in the ecosystem, but when you pick a problem everyone relates to, you motivate everyone to join you.

The concept of shared struggles applies to all forms of bonding. Apply it to team formation and you get a super-solid team that  believes in the same cause. Apply it to your project and you'll impress the judges who had a relatable problem.

Ideation is the least invested area of a hackathon. Most hackers try to procrastinate the ideation to the start of the hackathon or pick the problem from the sponsored tracks (not a bad idea but everyone's going to be solving them).

This concept also applies to your professional life, whether you are building a product or the next big SaaS. Solving a shared problem over a personal one will grab more attention and in-turn, more opportunities for you.

Hackathons are free, your time isn't

Sometime down the line, you might get hooked into hackathons. Learn to draw the line and look for bigger fish.

I have organized, participated in, mentored, and judged at countless hackathons. What was important to learn is how vastly the audience and its behavior can change across ecosystems. Student, Web2 & Web3 communities behave in different ways outside the hackathon days which impacts each ecosystem's career and skill pipeline via hackathons.

• If you learned a skill, share it by writing a blog or video tutorial. Day 1 for you is Day 0 for someone else. Sharing any knowledge helps (and builds your reputation online)
• Participated in 5+ hackathons? Try judging, mentoring, or volunteering next. It builds very different skills as a professional and organizers recognize you.
• Working professional? Hackathons are a great place to explore technology outside your domain and not miss office hours. (pick any weekend hacks)

It's important to understand that hackathons are an event format for developer education based on ‘learning by doing.’. It's not the end goal.

You will find bounty hunters who go from hackathon-to-hackathon making a living out of it. This isn't a bad path but it also restricts you from solving bigger ideas (that need more than 24 hours) and growing beyond the scope of four-person devs.

You must have fun.

Super important.

Fun is subjective, so you need to ensure you are having fun in your own ways. Karaoke with teammates or swag-run to all sponsor booths, If it's the organizers' duty to line-up ice-breakers and fun sessions for you, then it's your opportunity to join in and make some memories.

As an organizer, it is worth flexing that we have the most fun in organizing hackathons at Devfolio.

Never Stop Building

This is our motto, and it's also an advice for your career.

Staying technical is important.

A strong hackathon team comprises great devs, a designer, and a presenter. But each should understand (even a little) what’s going on in their project.

Fast forward to your next full-time gig. You may be a product manager, a designer, or a community manager.. It's still relevant to stay technical with your product and ecosystem. This gives you an edge over other non-technical members (more non-tech members, the better you stand out)

Now with LLMs, anyone can vibe-code, might as well use them to learn a little bit of what's happening in your codebase.

I try to participate in hackathons or vibe-code a personal project, when I’ve had a week full of community work..

Oh..and there's one more thing. Flex.

You've got to talk about your hackathon achievements. Not just wins.

Here are some of my wins. In this one year at Devfolio:

• Organized ETHIndia 2024, ETHDenver 2025, Warpspeed 2025
• Organized BlockTrain: world's first Ethereum Hackathon on Train 🚂
• Organized Interfaces 2025 @ IIT Delhi.
• Won StoryAI Hackathon.
• Joined Network School for a month (I'm writing this from there!)
• Became a Devconnect Scholar (See you in Buenos Aires! 🇦🇷)
• Became Head of Community at Devfolio.
• Shipped JesseGPT, Devfolio Week of Shipping
• Ran Organizer101 Show.
• Ran 2586Labs Everyday Essentials Series.
• Running Student Hackathon Grants with AWS

See you at the next hackathon 👋🏻.

🛠 ️Never Stop Building 🛠

Hackathons are where the boldest ideas take shape. Over a single weekend, students come together, form teams, and bring new products into the world. For many, these events are the first taste of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and the thrill of shipping fast.

At Devfolio, we’ve seen first-hand how hackathons can spark lifelong journeys. But we also know the challenges that come with organizing one: funds, resources, and the right support system to bring it all together. That’s where our newest initiative steps in.

Introducing: Devfolio Student Hackathon Grants in association with AWS ✨

Together with AWS, we’re launching a grant program to empower student organizers across India to host world-class hackathons on their campuses.

💰 Grant Amount: Up to USD 500 per hackathon (tailored to scale & needs)

🎓 Who can apply: Student Organizers at universities and colleges across India hosting hackathon between October 2025 and December 2025. (Hackathon not within these dates? Submit interest for 2026 here.

⚡ What’s included: Direct funding support, access to AWS resources and credits, and of course, the Devfolio platfom to streamline applications and project submissions.

But the best part? Organizers and participants will get to tap into the AWS Builder Center: A hub of tools, resources, and learning content designed to supercharge projects. The Builder Center will give every hacker the chance to take their ideas to the next level.

How it works? 🛠️

1. Get Hackathon verified on Devfolio - Get your hackathon set up and verified on Devfolio. Our verification process is thorough and allows us to ensure all the details are available for hackers before your hackathon is announced.
2. Apply for the grant – Fill out the grant application explaining about your hackathon mission, why you want to host it, and how you’ll use the grant.
   Only one representative from the hackathon team should apply to the grant.
3. Get shortlisted – Our team will evaluate applications based on vision, scale, student impact and support scope for your hackathon. We may reach out to get more details.
4. Receive funding & support – If selected, you’ll be onboarded to our grant program which will include sponsorship + support from AWS team during your hackathon.
5. Host your hackathon – Build the event you’ve always dreamed of, with all the resources you need in place.
6. Read the FAQs - We answer most of your questions related to the program in the FAQ, please go through all of them before applying to the program.

There should be no conflict of interest when applying for the grants.

Why this matters 💡

With thousands of students across India building the future, hackathons are the beating heart of the developer ecosystem. By lowering the barrier to organizing them, we’re giving more students the chance to host meaningful events and inspire their peers to build.

AWS brings global expertise and infrastructure to the table. Devfolio brings a decade of hackathon know-how. Together, we want to make it easier for the next generation of student leaders to create experiences that launch ideas, careers, and communities.

Ready to host your hackathon? 🚂

Applications for the Student Hackathon Grants powered by AWS are open now.

👉 Apply to Hackathon Grants here

Let’s make your campus the birthplace of the next big idea.

Warpspeed 2025 landed in Bengaluru on June 21–22. What followed was 24 hours of agentic AI ambition, prototypes that pushed practical boundaries, and a builder frenzy felt from start to finish.

🚀 Flying at Warpspeed

From the first early-morning check-ins to the adrenaline-charged final minutes, Warpspeed 2025 set a new benchmark for intensity and innovation. The energy in the room was palpable. Participants wasted no time diving into ideation, whiteboarding, and rapid prototyping. Fueled by endless cups of coffee and the thrill of competition, teams shipped an impressive spectrum of projects: from voice-based agents that could understand and respond in multiple Indian languages, to developer-centric tools designed to streamline workflow, and robust multi-agent orchestration systems capable of automating complex tasks. What set this year apart was the focus on longevity, since many teams architected their solutions to be more than just weekend hacks, aiming for real-world deployment and scalability.

🎙 Speaker Showstopper Moments

The hackathon’s creative chaos was anchored by a lineup of visionary speakers who brought clarity and inspiration to the builder marathon. Vivek Raghavan (Co-founder, Sarvam AI) and Hemant Mohapatra (Partner, Lightspeed India) delivered a compelling keynote on the future of voice-first, vernacular-friendly AI, emphasizing the need for inclusive technology that bridges India’s linguistic diversity.

Vivek shared behind-the-scenes stories from Sarvam AI’s journey, offering practical advice for teams building for Bharat, while Hemant provided a macro perspective on scaling agentic innovation in India and the unique challenges of building AI for a billion users.

In addition, we also had a fireside chat between Garvit Juniwal from Glean, and Ishan Preet Singh from Lightspeed, where they discussed about the future of agentic AI and what current enterprise workloads can be offloaded to agents.

🛠️ Builders Be Buildin’

As the opening ceremony wrapped and the clock started ticking, something shifted. Laptops flipped open, whiteboards filled up, and the entire venue settled into that unmistakable hum of deep focus. Builders locked in fast. Some paced as they dictated prompts to agents-in-progress, others clustered around tables sketching out multi-agent flows with markers and chai in hand. From solo devs with laser-sharp prototypes to full teams debugging across three terminals, the room was alive with intent.

Even the sharpest minds need a breather. Between models training and bugs squashed, hackers took breaks to rally it out over table tennis and intense foosball showdowns. The rec zone wasn’t just a breakroom. It was where spontaneous doubles tournaments broke out, and rival teams became fast friends over a spin shot. It was proof that great builds don’t just come from code, but from moments of release, laughter, and a bit of healthy competition.

The clack of paddles and the whir of the foosball rods became the soundtrack to new friendships and unexpected collaborations. In between matches, strategies for both games and code were exchanged, and the boundaries between teams blurred as everyone cheered each other on.

The rec zone became a microcosm of the hackathon spirit: fast-paced, energetic, and full of surprises. Here, the pressure of deadlines melted away, replaced by high-fives, playful banter, and the shared thrill of a well-placed shot. In these moments, the community was strengthened, reminding everyone that innovation thrives not just in front of a screen, but in the spaces where people connect, recharge, and inspire one another.

🧠 Mentor Magic

Mentorship at Warpspeed 2025 was more than just guidance, it was true collaboration. Our mentors, drawn from the ranks of senior engineers, startup founders, and venture capitalists at Sarvam AI, Google Cloud, AWS, Magicpin, Base, and Bhindi AI, rolled up their sleeves and got hands-on with teams. They debugged code, brainstormed architecture, and even jumped in for impromptu demos.

Besides the partner mentors, builders also received mentorship from industry stalwarts like Suhas from Localhost, Caleb from Backstage with Millionaires, Tushar from TrueNetwork (also a Warpspeed 2023 Grand Prize winner), and Himanshu from Upsurge Labs. Their feedback was candid and constructive, often sparking pivotal pivots and “aha!” moments that took projects from good to great.

💰 Prize Pot & Partner Bounties

The stakes this year were higher than ever, with over $12,000 in main prizes up for grabs, including Grand Prize, First and Second Runner-Up awards. Explains why everyone was locked in.

But the excitement didn’t stop there - our partners brought their own challenges and bounties:

• Bhindi AI’s “Best Bhindi Usecase”: Recognizing creative applications of agent tooling, five teams each took home $200 for pushing the boundaries of what Bhindi’s platform can do.
• Magicpin, Base, and others issued real-world, product-led challenges spanning retail, logistics, and Web3 interfaces, encouraging teams to tackle tangible industry problems.
• AWS & Google Cloud provided cloud credits, empowering teams to deploy full-stack, production-ready builds without infrastructure limitations.
• Sarvam AI offered access to their multilingual APIs and voice-first frameworks, enabling teams to build conversational agents tailored for India’s diverse user base.

🏆 Winners & Wonders

🥇 Grand Prize ($2,500) - DreamOps
Let AI handle your on-call duties, so that engineers can hit snooze while it saves the day.

🥈 First Runner-Up ($1,500) - PragyanAI
Your multilingual learning buddy, turning complex concepts into fun, interactive experiences.

🥉 Second Runner-Up ($1,000) - PlushieOS
Your sentient emotional AI companion! It provides support and manages daily tasks, all while understanding your unique life context, bundled in the form of a soft toy that can be interacted with.

Check out the rest of the projects here → warpspeed2025.devfolio.co/projects

👀 What’s Next

📸 Photos!
The Warpspeed crew captured every moment - from heads-down hacking to spontaneous snack breaks. The full event gallery can be found here → https://www.playbook.com/s/devfolio/warpspeed-2025 And the BTS will be dropping soon on Devfolio’s X. Relive the energy, spot your team, and share your favorite moments!

🔔 Cheer Livestream: Don’t miss our upcoming Devfolio cheer stream, where we’ll spotlight standout builds and reward contributors. Make sure your wallet is connected so you can claim your well-earned cheers and join the celebration. Crypto cheer guide →

💡 Final Flutter: Forge On

Warpspeed 2025 was powered by sheer passion, creativity, and relentless drive. Every line of code, every late-night brainstorm, and every breakthrough contributed to an unforgettable experience.

Whether you shipped a showstopper or took a strategic pause, remember: the journey doesn’t end here. Keep refining your ideas, keep experimenting, and keep connecting with this vibrant community. The lessons, friendships, and momentum you gained this weekend are just the beginning.

When the next Warpspeed launches, you’ll be the first to know. Until then, stay tuned for updates, showcases, and more opportunities to build the future. You can also check out your next hackathon on Devfolio here: devfolio.co/discover

P.S. - We’d like to give a special shoutout to the team at WeWork Galaxy (especially to Oshin and her team) for helping make Warpspeed 2025 a smooth and seamless experience.

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

🐦 Twitter                                      📞 Telegram                                    🎮 Discord

Until then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

Back then, I was co-running The SCRIPT Group, a tech club with friends in college — I loved writing code, but what really pulled me in was the community angle. I applied to Devfolio for a Frontend + Community role, but got slotted into Community. Funny how things work out.

Fast forward to today: I’m the Chief of Staff at Devfolio, working across everything from community and operations to marketing, product, and people ops. Here’s how that happened.

🧩 How I Accidentally Started a Career

In November 2020, I volunteered at InOut 7.0.

While everyone else was grinding LeetCode, I was chasing speakers, figuring out Discord bots, and soaking in the energy of people building things they truly cared about.

In December, I was offered an internship under Community & Ops. By July 2021, I was full-time for the same role. The "just trying it out" phase quickly turned into something much bigger.

🛠️ Tried Everything, Became Something

When I joined, I wasn’t a master of anything. But Devfolio had other plans. I was thrown into the deep end — onboarding University Hackathons onto our platform, maintaining our schwag stock and shipping them, emceeing at hackathons, writing tweets and hacker emails, reporting bugs, and handling support requests.

It was a lot to take in, but like clay on a potter’s wheel, I kept adapting, reshaping, and figuring things out as I went.

In Feb 2022, I became Community Lead. My tech background — though I wasn’t actively coding — became a superpower. My initial tasks at Devfolio involved automating a lot of the manual work that came with being a small team. I built systems for generating MoUs, printing shipment labels, and even Discord bots for online hackathon ops.

These eventually evolved into productised features within our platform — working proofs of concept that turned into real tools.

🌍 From Hacker House to Global Stage

When I joined, the team had just moved from the OG 2586 space into OldCRC — a bungalow that felt like home the moment I stepped into it. Total hacker house vibes. We later moved to our current 2586Labs HQ, and I’ve watched the company evolve with each wall we outgrew.

That sense of momentum wasn’t limited to our spaces. Our events started growing too. ETHIndia 2022 and 2023 became the world’s largest Ethereum hackathons. We also started helping other ecosystem builders run theirs — and that took me to Denver, San Francisco, Vietnam, and Kuala Lumpur.

🎯 The Time We Said 'Yes' to Everything (And Pulled It Off Like Pros)

Second half of 2024 was... intense.

• Gen AI Exchange Hackathon by Google
• Base Around The World
• Sahamati BuildAAthon
• ETHIndia 2024

All of these were happening in parallel — with a 12-member company. While one initiative is under execution, we're already charting out the plan for the next one.

Was it hard? Absolutely. But it was a calculated stretch — and we planned for it. Loads of coordination, deep ownership, and a shared drive to make it happen.

Startups are wild like that. You sign up to build something cool and end up running four nationwide and global initiatives at one go.

👥 Chief of Staff: A Role Shaped by Context

This wasn’t an overnight change — over time, I naturally took on the onus of working across teams and stepping in wherever needed.

With 4.5 years of context, I’d built enough familiarity with how we operate that I could jump in and move things forward without second-guessing every step. I’m working towards becoming everyone’s +1 — the person they can rely on when they’re blocked, stuck, or just need a quick reality check. While I’ve only recently stepped into the role officially, my aim is to be that safety net for the team and support the CEO in keeping things moving.

That trust wasn’t handed out — it was built slowly, and I’m grateful that Devfolio sees me as someone who can hold that responsibility.

🕊️ Remembering Shakti

As Nash — our Co-founder and Head of Design at Fold — put it beautifully during the ETHIndia 2022 opening ceremony:
"Not only is it important that we keep the people we're building for in mind, but it's also important that we keep in mind the people who built for us."

That line stuck with me. It made me think of Shakti Goap (1992–2021), Devfolio’s Founder & CEO, and the first person who truly took a bet on me. I only worked with him for six months, but those months laid the groundwork for how I show up every day.

There’s a Slack message he once sent me to celebrate a tiny win — I’ve held on to it since. A small moment that reminds me to honour progress, however minor it seems.

"Never Stop Building" wasn’t just a motto for Shakti. It was how he moved through the world. That energy continues to guide everything we do.

🤝 The People Who Made This Journey Worth It

Denver — who was Community Lead when I joined and is now our CEO — his growth has mirrored mine, and he’s been a major force in shaping how I work.

Akash, the Co-Founder and CEO of Fold, is the calm in the chaos — the person I go to when I need perspective.

And the rest of the Devfolio team? Chaotic, passionate, talented, meme-fueled, high-output machines. Wouldn’t trade this crew for anything.

🚀 Why Startups Hit Different

There’s no better playground than a startup if you want to learn, build, and break stuff (in a good way).

I’ve written copy, made platform changes, built Notion dashboards, managed projects — sometimes all in one day. No red tape. No "that’s not your job."

Even a single Telegram reply can spark something meaningful. Every little action counts. That’s what I love most about startup energy.

🔮 We're Just Getting Started

Devfolio’s mission is to redefine economic opportunities for builders — and we’re only just getting warmed up.

Everything we’ve built so far has been the foundation. There’s so much more we want to do — better tools, wider access, deeper impact. And the same hustle that got us here is going to take us further.

This isn’t a look back. It’s a gear-up-for-what’s-next.

🔚 Closing

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading my story. It’s been a wild 4.5 years — and we’re nowhere close to done.

Whether you're a student, a builder, or someone still figuring it out — I hope this gave you a glimpse of what’s possible when you just keep showing up.

Never Stop Building 🛠️
Say hi: @AniketRaj314 | aniketraj.me

What do you get when you bring together thousands of builders across the globe, a vibrant ecosystem of mentors and partners, a playful AI alter-ego of Jesse Pollak, and a demo day with $1M on the line? You get Base Batches 2025.

Let’s take a look back at how builders from six continents showed up, built fast, and built for impact.

Enter the Batches 🌀

The Base Batches Global Buildathon kicked off on 25th April 2025 as a bold experiment in decentralized acceleration.

Each builder joined one of six regional Batches: India, Africa, Southeast Asia, LatAm, Europe, and North America. The goal? To build the next onchain killer app using tools from Base and their incredible partner ecosystem.

Thousands joined in to push the envelope of of what’s possible onchain. To signal commitment. To build the next big thing.

The result? More than 1200 projects from close to 3000 builders across the globe.

Not a One-Off Hackathon, It’s a Full-On Builder Journey 🗺️

Here’s how it played out:

1. Stage 1: Buildathon → Join a global wave of builders and ship your best onchain idea
2. Stage 2: Incubase → Get selected as a track or regional winner and placed into a post-buildathon incubator, courtesy of Hashed Emergent (Africa, APAC and India regions) and Odisea (Europe, North America and LatAm regions)
3. Stage 3: Demo Day → Pitch your project to top names from Base, Coinbase, and beyond for a shot at up to $1M in funding

During the buildathon, builders also got:

• The opportunity to forge connections with some of the most prolific Base builders in your region, with direct access to the Base team.
• The chance to attend any workshop amongst the 50+ hosted across the world, including official workshops on tech like Minikit and Smart Wallet.
• A chance at online glory by getting featured on Base and Devfolio’s X and Farcaster accounts.

JesseGPT: AI Co-founder, Judging Critic, and Meme Lord 🤖

While Base Batches was underway, we felt the FOMO and built something ourselves!

We built JesseGPT, a fine-tuned AI inspired by Jesse Pollak himself.

Builders could pitch their ideas to JesseGPT and receive a rating, advice, or even a roast. If you convinced JesseGPT in critical mode, you could mint your pitch as an ‘ideacoin’.

Some builders used JesseGPT to brainstorm; others went head-to-head for some of the funniest and sharpest interactions you could have with an AI chatbot.

JesseGPT was a judge, mentor, vibe-checker, and a surprisingly philosophical chatbot. RIP to everyone who asked it to "build a Superchain DAO with vibes."

Tracks and Vibes 🎯

This edition of Base Batches featured dedicated tracks supported by ecosystem leaders:

• AI
• Stablecoins
• Mini-apps
• Consumer
• Showcase
• DeFi
• Vibe Coding

Every track had a 1 ETH top prize, with winners going on to receive mentorship, visibility on Base channels, and an invite to Demo Day, where projects can secure up to $1M in funding.

Gather Around: Mentorship & Office Hours 🛠️

Through mid-hackathon check-ins, builders unlocked priority access to mentorship, leading to intimate group sessions on Gather. Each region had dedicated mentors from the Base DevRel team, track sponsors, and leading devs.

No fluff. Just five minutes of high-intensity feedback per team, back-to-back. Builders got to troubleshoot blockers, refine their scope, and gain insight into what makes a submission demo-day worthy.

Projects, Submissions, and Global Energy 🌍

Builders had three weeks to ideate, build, test, and ship. We saw:

• Hundreds of projects submitted across regions
• Infra to social apps, DeFi to AI agents
• Memecoins and mission-driven tools sitting side-by-side

The Devfolio dashboard was buzzing with activity, and the Discord was chaos - in the best possible way.

Even after the deadline, builders continued refining, sharing, and helping each other debug.

🏁 And Now, The Victors

Hundreds of projects. Dozens of ideas worth backing. After weeks of building across the globe, we’ve got our winners — and let’s just say, the bar for onchain innovation has been raised.

Here’s a region-by-region breakdown of the most based builds from Base Batches #001. Click on the respective headings to see a list of all projects submitted to the regional Buildathons:

🌍 Base Batch Africa

Winners: Neda Pay, KiSMATI, SandWorm, rovify, MicroGigs, Ataeru, and FVP.

Runner Ups: QRBase, Afriramp, LENDBIT Finance, SolarShare, BaseIndexer, and Spotlite.

🌏 Base Batch APAC

Winners: Suite, MintMeACoffee.Com, Crew, SuperVol, Base Freelance, Tumbuh, and YOLO Protocol Hook.

Runner Ups: DynaVest, OnChainFund, Mint Club, PomoWizard, Rivalidate, and ShonClub.

🇪🇺 Base Batch Europe

Winners: Checkout by LINK, Drawcast, hackagent, Subunit, SecServ, Personal Finance Dashboard, and Alphix.

Runner Ups: Cat Town, Songcast, flappy-frog, and Block Control.

🇮🇳 Base Batch India

Winners: Hook-Tuah, Clip, Not Your Type, replyguy, JesseGPT, Creatorbase, and NOICE.

Runner Ups: Kuri, BitMore, A$CE, Lotry, Darkest Dungeon, and AuditHook.

🌎 Base Batch LatAm

Winners: RapiMoni, JesseXBT, Crypto Regulation Entity, Tuneport, Vaquita, Leprechaun, and AI ART3 HUB (sin fricción).

Runner Ups: MiTanda, Vcop Collateral system hook, CampusCoin, and Shine.

🇺🇸 Base Batch North America

Winners: ferfie., Paperview, Gig.bot, MameCoin, X-Alpha, TrendSage, and Mantua Protocol.

Runner Ups: Superfan One, VMF Coin, Scratch, and Nounspace.

💬 Base Batch Messaging Edition

Winners: Squabble, Dstealth.xyz, and Onit.

From Hack to Venture: Inside Incubase & Demo Day 🚀

The journey didn’t end with project submissions. For a select group of standout teams — including all Buildathon winners and a handful of promising projects handpicked by judges — the real building had just begun.

These teams were invited to Incubase, the incubation phase of Base Batches #001, powered by Odisea and Hashed Emergent. Over the course of a month, builders participated in hands-on sessions, received personalized feedback, and got a chance to work closely with top minds across Web3 and venture ecosystems.

The goal? To evolve their hackathon ideas into real-world startups.

The incubation journey culminated in a high-stakes Demo Day, where these teams pitched their refined projects in front of an invite-only audience of investors, partners, and Base ecosystem leaders — turning their early momentum into potential funding, visibility, and long-term backing.

Oh, and did we mention that 'Evil Denver' presented JesseGPT during the demo day?

One Chain. Infinite Builders. 🛠️

Base Batches proved that with the right infrastructure, incentives, and a global community, builders will show up.

And they’ll build things that surprise you.

Whether it was meme-powered mini-apps or stablecoin tools for underbanked regions, this year’s builders showed what onchain can really mean.

And we’re just getting started.

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

🐦 Twitter                 🦄 Farcaster                   🎮 Discord                  📞 Telegram

Until then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

Last year, we gave you Supabald Jesse, a pixelated, cool-aura oracle who left the chain and entered your wallets.

This year, Jesse’s back. Not as a meme.

But as an AI.

Say gm to JesseGPT - your onchain feedback buddy, Base-pilled mentor, and hype generator all rolled into one. Built for the latest cohort of Base Batches 2025, JesseGPT is trained to channel the spirit (and tweets) of Jesse Pollak, CEO of Base, and deliver hot takes on your project submission.

What does JesseGPT do?

📖 Listens to your project idea - Just talk to it like a person

🧠 Thinks like Jesse - He is a super fast thinker.

🗣️ Responds like Jesse (sometimes brutally honest, sometimes shockingly motivational)

💡 Drops insight, advice, or memes - depending on what your project needs

Whether you’re building a Zora protocol indexer for dogs, a new L2-native savings game, or a Telegram bot that tips based on vibes, JesseGPT has thoughts.

🤝 Built With Jesse, Not Just About Him

JesseGPT wasn’t built on Jesse - it was built with him.

The idea was inspired by an open RFP Jesse shared, calling for an AI version of himself to give feedback to more builders. That post was our spark and Jesse was onboard from day one.

Here’s how we collaborated:

✅ While the model uses publicly available data, Jesse went through ElevenLabs’ voice consent process, which requires the actual speaker to read out a unique verification phrase.

You can’t spoof it. You can’t fake it. You need real consent. Jesse gave it.

✅ He also reviewed how JesseGPT spoke and gave us notes like:

“make sure I talk in all lowercase.”

✅ And once we launched it, Jesse didn’t just co-sign, he publicly amplified it and encouraged others to try it.

We take the ethics of AI seriously. In a world moving fast, questions around consent, intimacy, and representation matter more than ever.

JesseGPT was built with permission, intention, and collaboration not as a replacement for Jesse (or anyone), but as a playful tool for builders who might never get a chance to interact with people like him otherwise.

Thanks again to Jesse for being an absolute legend.

Why did we build this?

Let’s be real, getting feedback from people like Jesse is rare and usually comes with a high price tag (or a lucky tweet reply). We wanted to change that.

Also? We had major FOMO.

Seeing the Base Batches 2025 hackathon spin up with some of the most onchain, unhinged, and creative projects we’ve seen… we couldn’t just sit this one out.

So we did what any good degen would do:

we let it binge the last 1,000+ tweets from Jesse Pollak.

The result? An AI that:

• Speaks with conviction
• Cares about builders
• Memes better than your uncle on Twitter

And honestly? It’s surprisingly helpful.

Can I trust this Jesse?

No.

But also yes.

While JesseGPT isn’t actually Jesse (we’re not that crazy), it’s designed to represent the essence of Jesse:

• Build in public
• Go full onchain
• Bet on people and ideas.
• Ship fast, break nothing (unless it’s on Ethereum)

We even asked Jesse’s to give it voice.

Yes, it talks.

📖 How to use JesseGPT

1. Head over to jessegpt.xyz

2. Choose your Jesse

You get to choose from two different personality of Jesse we have prepared for you. Each will  provide you feedback in a unique way.

• JesseGPT: The relentlessly optimistic Jesse Pollak. Sees massive potential everywhere, bursting with Onchain Summer energy, & ready to hype your vision to the moon.
• Supabald JesseGPT: The brutally honest Jesse Pollak. Cuts through the hype, challenges every premise, & believes great ideas must survive intense scrutiny to succeed.

3. Give JesseGPT microphone permission

Speak your idea out loud. The conversation is limited to 3 minutes. You’ll see live transcription of your conversation on the window.

4. Get feedback

JesseGPT responds with signal: ideas, insight, roasts, or motivation. Depends on the vibe and the model you select. You can also interrupt JesseGPT in the middle of his thoughts by speaking into the microphone. JesseGPT will adjust his feedback and conversation based on how you respond and interrupt him. JesseGPT works best in a quite space.

What’s next? Coin your idea

Inspired by platforms like Believe, we thought - what if people could mint belief in an idea?

So once JesseGPT responds, you can coin your idea on Zora. Turning project feedback into an onchain artifact others can back, share, or collect. We truly want to give fellow builders actual incentive to back each other 💖

Think of it as Kickstarter, but for vibes.

Let JesseGPT hype your idea. Then let the community mint their belief in it.

JesseGPT will share a summary of your idea, you can share it via X (Twitter) & Farcaster. You can also edit the idea before coining it on Zora.

💰  Community Rewards: We’re backing your ideas

We’re not just watching from the sideines, we’re backing the most compelling, unhinged, and ambitious ideas that come out of JesseGPT.

Here’s how:

50 USDC is up for grabs for early coin purchases on Zora.

• We’ll mint the minimum buy on every idea coined via JesseGPT.
• If we’ve got greater-than-normal conviction, we might buy in bigger.

100 USDC is set aside for Farcaster shoutouts.

• 1 USDC per like
• 10 USDC per comment

Just tag us + share your ideas.

⏳ This promotion is valid for a limited time. we’ll announce when it closes.

Try JesseGPT now:

jessegpt.xyz

Whether you are participating in Base Batches or just curious, JesseGPT is free to use, meme with, and share. Screenshot the feedback. Argue with it. Quote it on Farcaster and tag us @devfolio and we’ll amplify it to the world.

🛠️ Want to build your own JesseGPT?

JesseGPT is fully open source — if you’d like to contribute, remix, or create your own version, the entire codebase is live on GitHub:

🔗 github.com/devfolioco/jessegpt

Whether you want to:

• Plug in a new personality (VitalikGPT? DevfolioGPT? EthereumGPT?)
• Improve the interface or prompt logic
• Build your own onchain feedback oracle…

We’d love to see what you ship.

⚠️ PSA:

Jesse’s voice is proprietary and not open-sourced.

If you’d like to use voice responses in your own version, you can generate your own voice model using ElevenLabs.

Tag us @devfolio if you launch something cool, we’re always down to amplify devs building in public 🛠️

Never Stop Building ⚒️ 

Last year, Base joined forces with us to launch two of the most ambitious builder programs the ecosystem has seen. Onchain Summer pulling in 7,500+ builders, 1,200+ projects and yes, one very bald Jesse ;). And Base Around The World, which sparked hundreds of onchain experiments tackling local challenges across four regions worldwide.

This year, they're doubling down with a new model that goes beyond bounties and straight into product pipelines. Base is inviting builders from across the world to create the next wave of industry-defining applications onchain.

Enter: Base Batches 001, a global buildathon-meets-incubator-meets-demo-day, aimed at unearthing and uplifting breakout talent from six regions:

1. Africa
2. APAC
3. Europe
4. North America
5. India
6. LatAm

If you’re building something killer and useful onchain, Base wants to back you.

Not a One-Off Hackathon, It’s a Full-On Builder Journey 🗺️

Here’s how it plays out:

1. Stage 1: Buildathon → Join a global wave of builders and ship your best onchain idea
2. Stage 2: Incubator → Get selected as a track or regional winner and placed into a post-buildathon incubator
3. Stage 3: Demo Day → Pitch your project to top names from Base, Coinbase, and beyond for a shot at up to $1M in funding

Buildathon Prizes and Rewards

• At least 1 ETH* from a prize pool of at least* 45 ETH.
• Incubator Placement followed by a shot at up to $1M in funding at the Demo Day
• Connections with some of the most prolific Base builders in your region, with direct access to the Base team.
• All winners will be featured on Base social channels (X, Warpcast) and presented to a global stage on the Demo Day.

(And if you’re wondering about the “at least” part—we’ll let you read into it ;))

What Should You Build?

In short: the next killer onchain app. Pick a track from below and go beyond what's been done.

1. AI — Build onchain AI agents using AgentKit and Coinbase Dev Platform tools.
2. Stablecoins — Use Base’s stablecoin ecosystem for personal finance, merchant acceptance, DeFi, business applications, cross border payments, and more.
3. Mini-apps — Use MiniKit to build a mini app that is distributed directly in the feed and leverages the social graph in unique ways.
4. Entertainment — Create a consumer-facing app including in gaming, media, entertainment or whatever innovative idea you can dream up
5. Showcase — Already built something great? Add new features, enter the ring, and get judged on your entire submission.

How Will Your Project Be Judged?

Every project will be evaluated based on:

• Onchain — Is it built on Base?
• Technical strength — Does it work as pitched?
• Originality — Is it innovative and solving real problems?
• Practicality — Is it usable and accessible by anyone?
• Aesthetics — Is it intuitive and easy to navigate?
• Wow factor — Does it leave an impression and impact?

How Base Batches Is Different

Most hackathons end at submission. Base Batches starts there.

It’s about giving real builders the time, tools, and runway to make something that lasts. You’re not just chasing prizes, you’re building for impact with support from one of the biggest, most supportive ecosystems in the game.

Over 50 teams from Base Batches will be selected for incubator placements and the shortlised ones will be invited to pitch at the Demo Day—on a public stage, in front of the best in the game.

Join the Batches

Base Batches is open to anyone with a killer idea and the drive to build it.

The Global Buildathon runs from April 25 to May 11.

Whether you’re a solo dev, a full-stack team, or just vibecoding, this is where your attention needs to be. Get noticed, get funded, and get the post-hackathon support you need to bring your idea to market.

Looking to get started? Way to go! Here are some resources:

• Getting Started on Base
• Base Documentation
• Basenames (OnchainKit, Wagmi)
• Coinbase Developer Platform
• OnchainKit
• Smart Wallet

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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Until then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

In the crisp Colorado air, ETHDenver, now a legendary fixture in the Ethereum ecosystem, completed its 7th edition in Feb-Mar 2025. Here’s a rundown of what happened behind-the-scenes and our reflections on yet another successful edition.

With each passing year, the legacy of ETHDenver grows even stronger. The fact that EDEN has been thriving for seven years running is a testament to its legacy as the premier community-run innovation festival that kickstarts the Ethereum calendar every year. What began in 2018 as a bold experiment has transformed into a cornerstone event that brings together the brightest minds in Web3 to push the limits of what’s possible onchain.

Devfolio x ETHDenver: A Partnership for The Ages 🤝

After an incredible run in 2024, Devfolio returned this year as a co-organizer for the 2025 BUIDLathon. This was our fourth year as co-organizers with the SporkDAO team. Beyond access to our hackathon platform, the Devfolio team consulted with the SporkDAO team to co-organize the hackathons operations, outline execution strategies, and yield our experience as hackathon organizers to curate a superior experience for BUIDLers.

Operational Excellence

Numbers have a tendency to tell compelling stories. The numbers from ETHDenver this year tell a story of improvement. ETHDenver 2025 executed with surgical precision on aspects that were pain points in previous editions:

• Check-in times were slashed to an average of under 10 minutes, even during peak arrival periods
• Internet stability reached new heights, eliminating the connectivity frustrations of years past
• Feedback from previous participants was not just heard, but meticulously implemented

These improvements weren't just incremental - they were transformative. The festival felt different. Smoother. More purposeful. The goal was to get any and all hindrances out of the way so that attendees and BUIDLers can focus on the things that truly matter.

The Intellectual Ecosystem

ETHDenver 2025 was a melting pot of knowledge and innovation. The talks, workshops, and panel discussions touched upon a wide variety of topics like AI agents, exploring the confluence of blockchain with robotics, and cutting-edge frontiers like ZK and AVS. Luminaries from the Web3 world converged to share insights, challenge assumptions, and chart the future of decentralized technology.

From deep-dive technical workshops to broad-stroke panel discussions about the future of Web3, the intellectual bandwidth was extraordinary. It didn’t matter if you were a crypto-native or a newbie, ETHDenver truly was for everyone.

Check out all the talks, workshops and panels from ETHDenver 2025 on YouTube here.

Beyond Code: The Human Side of Innovation

ETHDenver 2025 was a holistic experience that recognized the human behind the developer. The wellness and entertainment offerings were nothing short of revolutionary. BUIDLers and attendees found sanctuary in the massage and wellness corner, where tired fingers and strained necks found relief through professional therapeutic treatments. An art gallery showcased blockchain-inspired works, and the ETHDome DJ chill zone ensured that no one turned into dull Jacks.

Oh also, there were puppies. Who doesn’t love puppies? 🥹

BUIDLing Beyond Boundaries

The heart of ETHDenver has always been about BUIDLing, and 2025 was no exception. With an original prize pool of close to $1 million and potential access to up to $10 million in grants and investments, the stakes were high and the potential even higher.

Additionally, to celebrate the BUIDLers’ innovation, a 1,000,000 $SPORK pool was also added for Quadratic Voting at the BUIDLathon! This gave all the BUIDLers and SporkDAO members a chance to support the projects that resonated with them the most!

To read more about quadratic voting at ETHDenver 2025, read the tweet thread here!

And now, here are the Top 5 Projects from ETHDenver 2025!

Baseline

Allowing users to create a wallet simply by calling a phone number, with an aim to eliminate technical barriers in crypto.
🥇 Track: Infrastructure + Scalability
🏆 Prizes: $7,000
🛠️ BUIDLers: Roan, Jochen, and Scott
💰 QV Matching Amount: $SPORK 12K

FaceBuddy

Pay and connect with anyone—just by scanning their face!
🥇 Track: Impact + Public Goods
🏆 Prizes: $22,000
🛠️ BUIDLers: William and Xavier
💰 QV Matching Amount: $SPORK 135K (First Place in Quadratic Voting)

0xCaliber

Multiplayer first-person shooter that blends classic fps with real-time block chain in a simple and easy to understand way.
🥇 Track: DeFi + NFT + Gaming
🏆 Prizes: $13,000
🛠️ BUIDLers: C and Alex
💰 QV Matching Amount: $SPORK 30K

Pollination Station

A coordination layer for DAOs, communities, and organizations to coordinate more efficiently and cross pollinate to help reach their goals.
🥇 Track: DAOs + Community
🏆 Prizes: $6,000
🛠️ BUIDLers: Jade, Mekail, Gunnar, and Quinlan
💰 QV Matching Amount: $SPORK 9K

Ultra Anon

An experimental privacy token with maximum plausible deniability and anonymity set where we blur the lines of public and private state.
🥇 Track: Identity, Privacy + Security
🏆 Prizes: $8,500
🛠️ BUIDLers: Joss and Jimjim
💰 QV Matching Amount: $SPORK 14K

P.S. - Special shoutout to Waterloo Blockchain for coming in clutch at the ETHDenver 2025 BUIDLathon, with 18 BUIDLers participating and getting a $100K+ in bounties for their stellar projects! Congratulations!

Looking Ahead: The Mile High Promise

As the dust settles on ETHDenver 2025, one thing becomes crystal clear: this is more than just an event. It's a movement. A collective reimagining of what's possible when passionate BUIDLers and Web 3 people come together with shared vision and unbridled creativity.

The altitude might be mile-high, but the potential? Absolutely limitless.
We can't wait for ETHDenver 2026. See you there, BUIDLers.

P.S. Please note the following regarding the distribution of bounties.

• BUIDlers will not claim bounties via Devfolio. The ETHDenver team will provide detailed information about directly claiming your prizes.
• If you have any questions or need further information, please reach out to the ETHDenver team via Discord or email them at buidlx@ethdenver.com.

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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Until then, Never Stop Building BUIDLing 🛠️

ETHSF 2025 marked a defining moment for all Ethereum builders in San Francisco and beyond. For the first time, we hosted an Ethereum-focused event in a city that’s shaped so much of the technology that surrounds us today, and it felt overdue. Across a week of workshops, talks, and hacking, what resulted wasn’t just new ideas, but whole new wave of momentum.

We gathered to question, explore, and rebuild what Ethereum could mean. There was a shared clarity among everyone: Ethereum has more to offer, and we’re nowhere near done. Builders coming together not just to ship, but to re-think and refine the wheel. We’re glad to have played a part in moving the conversation forward, along with our phenomenal partners the Ethereum Ecosystem Fund and the Blockchain Builders Fund.

Day 1: Starting at the Top 🫡

ETHSF 2025 opened with the kind of energy you want at the start of a builder-focused week: honest, thoughtful, and quietly ambitious. The opening ceremony set the tone with a stacked panel featuring Vitalik Buterin (Co-Founder, Ethereum), Tomasz Stanczak (Founder, Nethermind & Co-Director, Ethereum Foundation), and other longtime contributors to the ecosystem. They dug into real challenges facing Ethereum today, and what it’ll take to move the needle.

We also saw live demos from teams across the stack. Nemil Dalal (Coinbase Developer Platform), Tom Vieira (Base), Aayush Gupta (ZKEmail), and Henri Binsztok (OKContract) offered a glimpse into what’s landing next in usability, infra, and privacy. Denver D’souza (Devfolio), walked took us through the Main ETHSF hackathon tracks, joined by Vitalik to reveal a dedicated d/acc track, inviting builders to focus on accelerating decentralized, defensive, and democratic technologies.

The ETHSF Hackathon  👨🏼‍💻

The ETHSF hackathon, happening througout the week had $40,000+ up for grabs for the best ideas and 6 days to execute them. 150+ builders joined the challenge to build across dapps across, infra, d/acc, onchain consumer experiences, universal prediction markets and more.

The Celo Office became ETHSF builders’ tinkering lab for the hackers—part co-working space, part playground for ideas. Builders came in throughout the week for impromptu brainstorms, heads-down sprints, and plenty of good-coffee-fueled iterations. Huge thanks to the Celo team for not just opening up their space for us, but adding so much warmth and delicious food in the mix.

At Standford: Community Day and AI x Blockchain Summit 🍀

At Stanford, we had the chance to tap into one of the most thoughtful and forward-looking communities in tech. Across both Community Day and the AI x Blockchain Summit, builders, researchers, and students came together for real conversations—grounded in both theory and application.

The sessions dove into what’s evolving at the intersection of AI and Ethereum, and what needs rethinking. From scalable ML infrastructure to decentralized data privacy, the dialogue moved fast, but stayed grounded in first principles.

The event also sparked new bridges—between academia and startups, and future collaborators reminding us that the Ethereum ecosystem is a part of a broader movement to build systems that are transparent, robust, and human-aligned. As AI tools grow more powerful, the importance of open, transparent infrastructure, Ethereum’s turf, becomes even more critical.

Special thanks to Dan Boneh (CS Professor, Stanford), Illia Polosukhin (Co-Founder, Near), Sean Ren (CS Professor at USC & Co-Founder of Sahara AI), and many more speakers for anchoring the conversations with depth and clarity.

🫡 d/acc Day at UC Berekley

As the first d/acc gathering of the year, the d/add Day brought together researchers, founders, and technologists to explore how we accelerate innovation without giving up core values like decentralization, defense, and democratic governance.

Led by Vitalik Buterin, d/acc is a call to accelerate technology without compromising decentralization, defense, or democratic participation—pushing back against models that default to centralized control.

Co-hosted with Berkeley RDI, which has been at the forefront of decentralized AI and blockchain research since 2021, the day featured voices like Allison Duettmann (Foresight Institute),  Dan Boneh (CS Professor, Stanford), Michael Gao (cryptographic hardware), Juan Benet, and others helping define the edges of what’s possible and responsible.

From rethinking digital infrastructure to exploring how AI and neurotech can align with Ethereum values, this was a reminder that acceleration is only worth chasing if it brings more people along.

Project Pitches & Ciaos! 🙇🏼

As ETHSF 2025 came to an end, we gathered for a final day of celebration, reflection, and groundbreaking ideas. Demo Day brought the spotlight to the top 6 teams—who presented their projects to a room full of builders, mentors, and longtime Ethereum contributors–to compete for top 3!

It was a culmination of the work, the late nights, and the energy shared throughout the week. We closed strong with a Fireside Chat featuring Vitalik Buterin, joined by Tomasz Stanczak, and insightful talks from Michael Heinrich (Co-Founder, 0G), Jill Gunter (Chief Strategy Officer, Espresso Systems), and YQ (Founder, AltLayer).

ETHSF 2025 Hackathon Winners 🎉

🏆 Best d/acc Project → Swiish Money by Filipe and Antonio

Send crypto to any passport number – no wallet, no hassle. It makes crypto more accessible to everyday users, bringing it closer to being used as real-world money.

🔗 → https://devfolio.co/projects/swiish-money-1d0e

🏆 Best Infra Project → Footsteps by Cesar Huret 🏃

A serverless zk powered game where players have to find each other just by knowing half of their enemy's footstep trail produced every 5 seconds.

🔗 → https://devfolio.co/projects/footsteps-312d

🏆 Best App → Stamps by Jonathan Cruz 🗺️

Onchain travel stamps that prove where you've been, let you attach memories, and unlock real-world rewards like redeemable Sky Miles and more.

🔗 → https://devfolio.co/projects/stamps-9ec6

ETHSF 2026? 👁️

As we wrap up ETHSF 2025, there’s a strong sense of momentum. A reminder that even in a space as fast-moving as Ethereum, there’s still room to slow down, think deeply, and build with intention. When the right people come together, familiar problems start to look like new opportunities.

ETHSF 2026 is already on the horizon. And if this week showed us anything, it’s that the journey of building resilient, usable, and decentralized systems is just getting started.

Here’s to all the builders who are curious to question, experiment, and always up for a challenge. The journey continues and we will see you next year!

Hugs to the ETHSF Sponsors And Partners! 🫶🏼

A huge thank you to the ETHSF sponsors and partners who helped make this week possible. ETHSF was supported by hackathon and venue sponsors like Reactive Network, Base, Coinbase Developer Platform, ZetaChain, Celo, and Self Protocol. Our event sponsors included Nethermind, Altlayer, EigenLayer, Metamask, Sahara AI, Nexus, Caldera, and Edge.

We were proud to have NYSE Wired as our media partner, with academic support from the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research and Berkeley RDI. A bih thank you to our community partners included the Stanford Blockchain Accelerator, Stanford Blockchain Club, Berkeley Blockchain Club, SF Ethereum Developers, and EduDAO, media partner NYSE Wired, and academic partners Stanford Center for Blockchain Research and Berkeley RDI. 🫶🏼

We hope to see you around at upcoming Devfolio hackathons! :)

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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Until then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

The Gen AI Exchange Hackathon by Google, supported by MEITY Startup Hub and Startup India, was a 3-month long online hackathon that aimed to bring together brilliant young minds from across the country to innovate using generative AI. Over the course of the hackathon, participants from different backgrounds, be it student developers, professionals, and even entrepreneurs, collaborated to solve some of growing India’s biggest challenges.

This event brought together partners from across the Indian startup ecosystem, from VCs like Lightspeed and Peak XV, software companies like Sarvam.ai and RateGain, to consumer brands like BigBasket and PolicyBazaar, a lot of whom provided real-world business challenges to the hackathon participants.

The first stop in the journey to main hackathon was a multi-city roadshow organized by Google. These roadshow events were replete with hands-on workshops, technical guidance from leaders, and sessions that gave the participants insights into the challenges that AI can solve.

It provided hackers a unique chance to dive into Gemini, Google’s cutting-edge generative AI, equipping them with essential skills and inspiring them to craft groundbreaking projects that unlock the transformative potential of AI.

Looking back to when it all began

The hackathon kicked off on the 12th of August 2024 and lasted until the 18th of October. Participants had to choose a problem statement that they will build their proposed solutions for. These problem statements were submitted by some India’s leading tech-first companies from across the business landscape of India, spanning numerous sectors, such as manufacturing, quality control, finance, teaching, hospitality, cybersecurity, air travel, insurance and much more.

These problems, as well as how Gen AI could begin to solve them, were discussed in the roadshows. Google organized these roadshows in emerging & major tech hubs of the country like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Delhi, and Bengaluru. These roadshows gave participants a chance to learn about Gemini AI, Google’s flagship Gen AI product, and how they could begin solving the problem statements that they chose to solve.

Apart from learning, the roadshows were also a golden opportunity for participants to engage with other solution-makers, learn from industry stalwarts, and be part of an environment which was teeming with young Indian builders looking to build a better tomorrow.

Fine-Tuning: It’s Not Just LLMs Who Need It

Out of the 800+ projects submitted, the top 5 teams from each problem track were given the golden opportunity to receive mentorship for their projects. Mentors included industry experts who knew the problem deeply, VC representatives to recommend potential business plans, and engineers from Google who advised our finalists on the technical forefront.

The finalists’ access to these workshops allowed them to fine-tune their solution and address any challenges that they may have experienced throughout the process of building. It also gave them a chance to explore if their project had the potential to turn into a business.

And Now, For the Ones who Scaled the Peak

The Gen AI Exchange Hackathon had multiple problem tracks submitted by the hackathon’s partners, encompassing a wide variety of problems from various sectors.

We received close to 800+ project submissions from 2,000+ participants for these problem tracks.

From all these submissions, the top team from each track was invited to attend the final Demo Day, an event held at Google India’s office in Gurugram, where the winners were felicitated with their certificates for making it to the top of the table (no football reference intended).

They also had a chance to network and interact with partners, engineers from Google, and top VCs to hone their project idea and explore the possibilities of turning it into a business.

The Google Gen AI Exchange Hackathon set the stage for future innovation, proving that the intersection of AI and human creativity holds tremendous promise. The ideas and prototypes forged in this crucible will continue to inspire and evolve, leaving a lasting impact on how India’s future. The hackathon not only highlighted the vast scale of AI talent but also demonstrated how events like these can be powerful incubators for the next generation of AI-powered solutions.

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you so much to everyone who participated. We can’t wait to see how your projects evolve and make a dent in some of India’s biggest problems.

We hope to see you around at upcoming Devfolio hackathons! :)

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

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Until then, Never Stop Building 🛠️

2024 was a year of shipping like there's no tomorrow, helping our community flourish, and juggling ten thousand things, all of which we wouldn't trade for anything. From launching new platform features to hosting record-breaking hackathons, the year was a packed with building, collaboration, and just enough chaos to keep us on our toes. From witnessing AI go from a transformative technology to a fundamental driver of innovation, to breaking new ground in Web3, every moment was guided by the belief that the best way to predict the future is to build it.

January, February, March: Kicking Things Off Strong 🛫

One of our goals has always been to make emerging technologies more accessible to builders worldwide. So we hit the ground running in partnership with DevRev, launching DevRev Forge, an AI hackathon aimed at simplifying voice-of-customer data using LLMs.

ETHDenver 2024 marked our third partnership with this landmark event, something we'd been preparing for since late 2023. They say third time's a charm, and it certainly was, with top-tier builders, projects brimming with potential, and insightful conversations that reminded us why we do what we do. Catch all the details in our front-row recap blog.

March saw us carrying that momentum to ETHSeoul 2024, because some incredible teams, we love working with again and again. In a true Never Stop Building manner, we managed to break our own record for most hackathons hosted in a single month. The quarter culminated with the first ever Ethereum hackathon in India’s city of dreams, ETHMumbai. Another highlight was hosting the Ethereum team to watch the Dencun upgrade live – nothing quite like witnessing history with the folks making it happen.

April, May, June: Levelling Up Along With Fellow Builders 💪

With a strong start behind us, we decided to have a LOT more fun in the second quarter, and fun we had. So we started off with a series of platform upgrades we'd been working on behind-the-scenes.

• We noticed that builders have a large amount of proof-of work-which needed a better interface and easier discoverability. We created a new ‘Dev’-Folio (currently in beta), a revamped Devfolio profile that not just showcases projects and skills but also journeys, growth curve, and sheer passion for building. Read more here and join our beta updates Discord channel to share your thoughts (DM @faradayfury on X for an invite).
• We introduced revamped pages for Hackathon, Projects, and Settings with an aim to make building easier and more delightful.
• Our Cheer feature made its way to Optimism and Base for builders to have more ways to support each other.

Meanwhile, the hackathon scene was unbeatable. FOSSASIA 2024, ETHDubai,  ETHTallinn, Sui Overflow kept builders on their toes in April. May brought in ETHPrague, ZK Hack Kraków, ETHBratislava, Story Protocol v1.0 Buildathon, and something everyone had been keenly waiting for: the month-long Onchain Summer Buildathon by Base.

We had a ton of fun working with the Base team on this and ran the SupaBald Jesse campaign to ensure that Jesse (#001 builder at Base) keeps his promise of going bald when Base hits 10B in TVL (which recently went down in the books along with a historic livestream). Also whipped up a website because who doesn’t need more fun places on the internet, https://letsgetjessebald.com/ :P

June wrapped with ETHSalvador, HackonBlocks, and an in-person Hack-a-Change hackathon with People+ai, building population-scale use-cases for AI in India. That’s what we call a super based quarter.

July, August, September: Colleges to Continents 🌍

Summer brought an unbelievably new level of energy as we kicked off the Gen AI Exchange Hackathon with Google, tackling India's most pressing challenges using cutting-edge AI. At ETH SEA, we saw a collective effort at building blockchain solutions and FOSS Hack 2024 reminded us that open source remains the backbone of technology.

Our partneship with Wallet Connect for Build the New Internet, Skate for their first cohort of Stateless Innovation Program (SSIP#1) and ZK Hack Montreal helped us further help builders to explore new frontiers in Web3. In September, we took Base Around The World for a buildathon series, across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and LatAm, activating a movement around the world with builders everywhere solving for their community using onchain solutions.

Invisible Garden, the #1 pop-up dev city’s, first hackathon kicked off around the same time to foster synergy among technology, culture, and community. Meanwhile, the Devfolio University Hackathons Season was in full swing with a brand-new partner, Aptos, coming onboard!

We had an amazing time hosting our UniDAO leads at our HQ to brainstorm more ways to bring Ethereum to college campuses in India.

October, November, December: Building Till The Ball Drops 🪩

The final quarter started off with two opportunities for builders to solve real world-problems. We worked with Sahamati, a collective of the account aggregator framework in India for the Sahamati BuildAAthon to drive adoption of the AA framework, and QuickNode for Build On that challenged builders to keep building despite regulatory challenges.

Reclaim Opensource Hackweek had developers building solution for data ownership and privacy control, while ETHKL 2024 turned Malaysia into a hotbed of blockchain innovation.

Fresh off their seven-city victory lap, Jesse and the Base team swinged by the Devfolio HQ to launch Bunny V on ethindia.co, an unexpected but terrific highlight.

December?…Is, where we go all out because it’s ETHIndia time, anon. (Cue shooting stars) 🎵

Accompanied by IBW, Unfold hackathon, and FIL Bangalore, ETHIndia turned Bangalore into a crypto festival for the first 10 days of December. As the year wound down, we managed to squeeze in some groundbreaking work with Anon Aadhaar and hosted the amazing builders at Hack This Fall, because apparently, sleep is for 2050.

Looking back, the numbers tell an incredible story. We hosted 300+ hackathons, disbursed $3.5 million in bounties thanks to our amazing partners supporting fellow builders, and onboarded 350k+ new builders to Devfolio. The second season of ETHIndia Grants supported some of the most promising and game-changing projects in the space.

With India maintaining its #1 position for both crypto and AI adoption, we're more excited than ever about what lies ahead. Stay tuned for our upcoming report with Hashed Emergent, where we'll explore how the Indian Web3 landscape was in 2024, from startups and investments to the developer ecosystem and regulatory environment.

2024 showed us how technology is constantly reimagining how we see and interact with the world. From AI changing how we build and solve problems, to Web3 creating new paradigms for ownership and collaboration, to the intersection of both opening up unknown frontiers, we've tried our best to give builders the platform, tools, and community they need to conquer these innovations.

That said, we're already making moves in 2025, starting with our return to Denver! Join us at ETHDenver 2025, the world's largest and longest-running BUIDLathon.  The Devfolio team will be on ground to connect, collaborate, and build together. Register at ethdenver2025.devfolio.co and we'll see you soon!

Stay tuned for more updates and interact with the Devfolio community at:

🐦 Twitter                 🦄 Farcaster                   🎮 Discord                  📞 Telegram

Until next time, Never Stop Building 🛠️