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