hackathon, DraperU, university program

Draper University Hosts First Public Hackathon

On April 19th, MouseBelt had the honor of judging and providing prizes for Draper University's first public hackathon. The event, HEROthon: Building the Future of Gaming and Entertainment, was held simultaneously with their Spring Pre-Accelerator program. Draper University is a fully immersive, school for innovators founded by venture capitalist Tim Draper. During the 5 week program, participants live and learn in Silicon Valley, create a company, receive mentoring and coaching from experts, and have the opportunity to pitch for funding from VCs. The HEROthon provided an opportunity for non-students to team up with entrepreneurs from the program in hacking and pitching a product within 40 hours.

The event was sponsored by a DraperU alumni company Qtum. Qtum is an open sourced public blockchain platform, leveraging the security of UTXO while enabling multiple virtual machines including EVM and the revolutionary x86 VM. Qtum is PoS based and boasts a Decentralized Governance Protocol which allows specific blockchain settings to be modified by making use of smart contracts. The challenge for the competition was to build an application on the QTUM blockchain that inspires the future of gaming and entertainment. Teams got the chance to pitch to Draper U Ventures, Draper Associates, and the QTUM team. Our very own Galen Danziger, CTO of MouseBelt, volunteered as a judge as well!

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Winning teams received prizes such as a pre-sale Atari VCS console, day passes to Hero City, free gameplay at Hero Hangout, and scholarships to Draper University. MouseBelt also awarded a cash prize of $1,000 to the first place team: VRfest. The idea for VRfest is a virtual reality ecosystem for artists and their fans. Artists can create amazing, custom concerts for their fans, while fans enjoy an immersive, unreal experience from anywhere in the world. The team included Graeme Moore (Team Leader), Artur Aslanyan,Nhat Nguyen, Andrew Li, Sevan Mardirossian, Viet Dinh, and Harvey Chan.

The DraperU team said of the event:

We had an amazing weekend, great projects and teamwork, and amazing surprises... It was an extraordinary experience and we look forward to hosting our next hackathon coming up this summer.

Our team had a great time at this event too and we look forward to participating in future Draper University hackathons! The HEROthon is scheduled for Friday, July 5 - Sunday, July 7. Learn more at https://www.draperuniversity.com/hack

Getting involved with events like this is part of our University Program mission to support blockchain education and entrepreneurship. Interested in having us participate in your next hackathon or other events? Contact us at universities@mousebelt.com

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About MouseBelt Team

MouseBelt is an ecosystem promoting blockchain innovation by supporting hands-on development of the emerging projects and leaders in the industry. Startups. Builders. Community.