The Web3 Social Hackathon has come to a close and the results were absolutely awesome! The Hackathon, which took place from December 1st to December 31st, invited participants to unleash their creativity and develop decentralized social projects using a web3 stack. The prize pool of $50k attracted a large number of submissions, 41 in total, featuring a wide range of concepts such as innovative creator platforms, decentralized identity control, sybil-resistant social networks, and token-gated experiences. In this article, we will take a deep dive into each of the winning projects, examining the concepts and technical integration of Orbis and its partners. So, without further ado, let's dive in and see what the future of social media could look like.
Validate: A verifiable collective knowledge platform
Validate is a verifiable collective knowledge platform that was built by a team of three (Mario, Marco and Bull) and finished 1st in Vocdoni #1 Bounty. The project aims to create a central platform for community discussions that incorporates features such as verifiable credentials, making it a better discussion place where contributions from all participants can be tracked.
To achieve this, the team integrated different protocols such as Orbis SDK, Gitcoin Passport and Vocdoni, allowing them to turn their initial concept into a functioning product. Vocdoni SDK was used to generate polling capabilities within specific discussions to enable community participation. Gitcoin passport was leveraged to let specific “verified” users create new topics and every user profile, topics and comment section was built using the Orbis SDK.
Try it out here
Stag3: A web3 project discovery platform
Stag3 is a winning project for the Gitcoin Passport #3 bounty built by a team of five: Neil, Cristiana, Al Joseph, Nadeeb and Patrizia Isabel. The project aims to put blockchain builders' projects in the spotlight by providing a platform where they can showcase their works, validate ideas, gain valuable insights from other web3 natives, and kickstart their communities. The team came up with the idea for Stag3 while brainstorming when they realized the lack of a platform for blockchain builders to showcase their work.
They used Orbis SDK to easily integrate social features such as a social feed for product listing (with Gitcoin credentials to gate access), commenting widget, notifications, and login.
Try it out here
Magic Wallet: Automate Orbis identity (DID) via Lit Protocol PKPs
Magic Wallet, built by Dustil Dawn (a team of one!) finished first for the Lit Protocol bounty. The project allows users to have control over their data and the way it is accessed and used. It features Programmable Key Pairs (PKP) and stream ownership through the Orbis Protocol, integration with other dApps, access notification, and the ability to create posts through Magic Wallet via Lit Actions. The app is designed to be a hub where users can perform various actions based on their context and welcomes new developers to develop their own apps. Dustil was inspired to create this app because he believes that data sovereignty is becoming increasingly important in today's world and that it is crucial that individuals have tools and resources to protect their data and maintain control over how it is accessed and used. He hopes that this app will contribute to the promotion and protection of data sovereignty for all users.
Try it out here
CryptoStudio: A decentralized platform where users can create/monetize NFTs
CryptoStudio is a decentralized social platform that allows users to create and monetize NFT collections as spaces. The team behind it is Nick and Suhel. The spaces include features such as a group chat, posts, and proposals, and each user has a profile, displaying their own posts and NFTs. The platform also includes the option to encrypt posts using the Lit protocol, and add access rules based on verifiable credentials provided by Gitcoin Passport. CryptoStudio is designed to be a hub for NFT communities to connect and interact with one another. The project has been expanded for the Web3 Social Hackathon to include community proposal-polls using Vocdoni SDK and enriched user profiles with Verifiable Credentials thanks to Gitcoin passport. Orbis SDK has been used for the entire social layer (profile, post and groups).
Try it out here
Playground: A platform for super fans with web3 benefits
Playground won the Unlock protocol bounty for the Web3 Social Hackathon. The team behind it, Dendito, Jagad and Opet, created the platform after talking with friends in the entertainment industry who were interested in how web3 could be leveraged beyond NFT collectibles. Playground allows creators to easily set up their decentralized fan club with subscription NFTs utilizing Unlock Protocol, exclusive chat, and livestream built on top of a web3 stack. The team was fascinated that in combination, Orbis, Livepeer, Unlock Protocol and Lit Protocol can offer a practical solution to current market needs. They also aimed to further implement Lit Actions, to create wallet-less login/register to lower the barrier of entry to web3 adoption.
Try it out here
Sonic SDK: Plug-and-play decentralized commenting widgets for your website
Sonic SDK is a winning project for the Ceramic and Orbis bounty that enables you to quickly setup and integrate your decentralized community. Sahil and Anish, were excited to build their first React component library, and the hackathon provided a golden opportunity for them. They came up with the idea of a suite of widgets for dapps - commenting, forums, and chat widgets as components that can be integrated with just a few lines of code. This was their first time using Orbis as well as the Ceramic network so they learned a lot of new things in web3. Their widget is built entirely on the Orbis SDK including the profile widget, discussion feed widget and more.
Try it out here
OrbisRep: A scoring platform reflecting your level of participation in web3
OrbisRep is a scoring platform that reflects a user's level of participation in web3. The idea for the project came from the builder, Nathan's frustration with being spammed by bots on Twitter and Discord. He realized that one of the main reasons for this problem in traditional web apps is that users do not own their identity. With blockchain technology, it is possible to check users' data without violating their privacy and to prioritize active users who are participating in decentralized protocols.
To achieve this, Nathan used the Gitcoin Passport SDK to give specific stamps a score and then check if the logged-in user has them. If the user has a score above a reasonable threshold (for instance, 50%), the option to mint a badge with the Krebit SDK is made available.
Try it out here
OrbisTube: A decentralized video-sharing platform
OrbisTube is a decentralized video-sharing social media platform built with the Orbis protocol. This one-person project built by Harpreet was created as an alternative to web2 video sharing platforms like YouTube, allowing users to have ownership of their videos and the ability to make them composable within the network. All content is created as a post on Orbis (following specific data models) with media content attached and is easily processed thanks to Livepeer.
Try it out here