Flare Hackathon Highlights: ETH Oxford

Flare looks back on a successful weekend at ETH Oxford, a 3-day hackathon hosted by HomeDAO at Oxford University (Mar 8-11, 2024). $12,000 in FLR bounties across 3 tracks brought together talented developers from around the globe.

We kicked off the hackathon with an interactive virtual workshop to get everyone up to speed on Flare’s technology. This deep dive session equipped developers with everything they needed to get started.

Welcoming new faces and building together

We greeted participants with a warm welcome and fresh Flare swag. Max Luck, Flare’s Head of Growth, delivered an introductory presentation that showcased the potential of Flare for building data-intensive blockchain applications.

On day 1, Filip Koprivec (Senior Engineer) hosted an on-site coding workshop. The session provided hands-on guidance, demonstrating how to leverage Flare, the Blockchain for Data, in real-world projects.

Flare: The Blockchain for Data

Flare is an EVM smart contract platform specifically designed to support data-intensive use cases, including machine learning, real-world assets, DeFi, social & gaming.

Flare’s oracles are enshrined at the network layer:

Data Connector: Enables information from other blockchains and web2 APIs to be used securely and trustlessly with smart contracts on Flare.
FTSO (Flare Time Series Oracle): Delivers price and data feeds to dapps on Flare, without relying on centralized providers.

Developer Tools: Flare offers a comprehensive toolkit that includes Rainbow Wallet, Etherspot, Web3Auth, Subsquid, Ankr, and more. Explore the full list of tools supporting Flare at https://docs.flare.network/dev/tools/.

ETH Oxford Hackathon Winners

The ETH Oxford Hackathon showcased the exciting potential of Flare, with 14 teams leveraging Flare to build diverse and innovative projects. Here’s a closer look at the winning projects across the three tracks…

Track 1: Bridge [Total prize: $5K in FLR]

Winner: Bridge.flare

A five-person team built a bi-directional bridge between Ethereum and Flare. It leverages the Data Connector to enhance the security of attesting to an entire chain’s data by listening to events emitted on both chains. Additionally, it utilizes the FTSO for price feeds and gas cost calculations. Bridge.flare was also the winner of the General DeFi Track at ETH Oxford Hackathon.

Track 2: Most innovative dapps utilizing Flare’s protocols [Total prize: $5K in FLR]

1st Place [$2.5K]: The XTF protocol

A novel solution by Gaetano Mondelli that proposes a decentralized way of processing multichain variants of ETFs, leveraging Flare’s State Connector and FTSO price data.

Demo: https://youtu.be/tHRf1SrJww0
Github: https://github.com/GaetanoMondelli/ETH-OXFORD

2nd Place [$1.5K]: FireLink Bridge

A marketplace for bridging transactions between Ethereum and Flare, enabling nodes to earn rewards for creating attestation requests and proofs.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-vT13Udg7E
Github: https://github.com/mbcse/FireLink_Bridge

3rd Place [$1K]: Block Roulette

A fun and interactive roulette game built by a four-person team, taking advantage of Flare’s secured Random number generator.

Track 3: Pool Prize [$2K in FLR]

Winner 1: Vinca

A multi-chain lending and borrowing protocol offering seamless cross-chain asset utilization, built on Flare.

Demo: https://vinca-pearl.vercel.app/
Github: https://github.com/mathisrgt/Vinca, https://github.com/NandyBa/Vinca

Winner 2: Flare_bridge

Another bridge solution demonstrating the power of the FTSO price feeds.

Demo: https://youtu.be/KTbm4UVWeQ8
Github: https://github.com/FLock-io/ETHOxford2024

Winner 3: Stream

A project dedicated to enhancing integrity, efficiency, and privacy in expense management by leveraging Flare’s FTSO for price feeds & EtherLink.