The Netherlands holds the world's largest blockchain hackathon, attracting 500 participants, with Bitcoin as the winning reward

According to the Huobi Blockchain Research Center, more than 500 participants participated in the world's largest industry hackathon in Groningen, the Netherlands - the Netherlands Blockchain Hackathon (event video link). Fifty-five teams need to compete to come up with solutions to problems in five areas: future pensions, digital certification, energy transition, government reform, and international trade within 48 hours.

Teams work around the clock to come up with solutions to social goals, such as an app to track refugees and ways to improve democracy.

Rutger Van Zuidam, founder of Blockchain Netherlands and organizer of the event, said participants will change society.

ING supports

According to Huobi Blockchain Research Center, ING Bank has provided guidance for the team’s proof of concept, and as a strategic partner of blockchain, it has many elite experts on hand to provide the team with blockchain expertise information.

ING Bank’s “You Can Do It” game installed a vulnerability on the blockchain and asked the contestants to identify and find it. B9 was the winning team. They were the first to find the vulnerability and won a studio with an innovation coach at the Amsterdam Blockchain Experience Center.

The game "You Can Do It" is like signing a smart contract with a regular bank. Customers can deposit and withdraw money on their own. Only customers who deposited Ethereum with the correct permissions can withdraw their money, but the contract has a loophole. By hijacking the contract, Team B9 was able to crack the smart contract in less than an hour.

Blue balloons were given to the winning teams to indicate their advancement to the next round.

Judges' impressions

Professor Alexander Rinnooov Kan, a member of the Dutch Parliament who participated in the competition, said:

"Obviously, there can be no restrictions."

Groningen's deputy mayor Joost Van Keulen, who also attended the game, said:

"It's great that they all want to make a difference."

The ToBlockachain team won the energy flow category and received 20 bitcoins. They built an app based on the hackathon website that runs on the blockchain. The app can monitor who has accessed the data. Through this program, users can decide whether to share their energy data and get analysis of the energy data. Users can decide to use, share, and store the data.

The SocialFabric team won the identification category and won 20 Bitcoins. The winning concept was to help refugees, government organizations and NGOs. The solution the team came up with was to provide an empowering platform for refugees. Refugees do not need to go to an office, but can be discovered and tracked simply by their digital identity. Refugees can also upload their skills through the platform.

The Zissou team won in the International Trade category. They figured out the trust issue that freelancers and clients have been struggling with with complex rules. Users download an app to set up contracts. The app allows freelancers’ contracts to be easily reviewed by authorities without controversy. This effectively prevents fines from the Dutch IRS.