We are excited to host the MIT Bitcoin Hackathon 2023 on the 10th anniversary of the Expo on April 21st-23rd. This is a big deal and a unique hackathon where you will have 30 hours to learn, share and, most importantly, build a remarkable project that might be one of the next building blocks for the evolution of the crypto industry. You can participate in the Hackathon IRL at MIT or online.

In the past, those who have participated in the hackathon have come out with amazing new startups, projects, and connections. Whether you have a team or you are alone, come and join our MIT community of hackers. Participants can be mentors, students, or professional hackers from all around the globe. Historically, some of our best and most successful stories are from people that are new to Bitcoin and crypto so everyone is welcome. 

The Hackathon will begin April 21st @ 6:00 PM (Eastern Time, USA) and will end April 22nd @ 11:59 PM. The first day will take place at MIT’s amazing new Innovation Headquarters (iHQ).  This Hackathon is a technical event so it is expected that projects are coded during the 30 hour hacking period. 

The MIT Bitcoin Club members, along with our amazing mentors, alumni, and sponsors, will be there to mentor and support teams to help create great projects. Compete in one of these tracks - Bitcoin & Lightning & Taproot, Decentralized Applications - or one of the sponsored challenges that will be listed soon. You will have a chance to win a portion of our $26,000 prize pool. 

Are you new to the space? No worries; this event is beginner friendly! 

Already have a hacker team? Come compete at one of the most prestigious events of the year. 

Just curious or want to learn even more about crypto? Join us, and the fun will be guaranteed.

Give it a try and register now!!!  We're excited to see you all on April 21st-22nd. Let's Go!

You can also follow us on Twitter: @MITBitcoinClub to keep up with news about the event and reach out to mitbitcoinexpo@gmail.com for any questions.

MENTORS

• Nicolas Alhaddad is a PhD student at Boston University in Applied Cryptography and Distributed Systems. He has experience in both academia and industry. Nicolas enjoys designing protocols and is interested in everything MPC and ZK.
• Sam Stuewe is a CBDC-focused Software Engineer at the Digital Currency Initiative out of the MIT Media Lab. Sam's been working in professional software engineering for years, and as a hobbyist for years before that—working on everything from low-level performance optimization, build-system wrangling, to front-end web-engineering (and much in-between) always focusing on minimalism, accessibility, and human empowerment.
• Brandon Lucas is a Frontend Engineer at Voltage working on Bitcoin Lightning Network infrastructure. His interests include privacy, micropayments, and financial empowerment through Bitcoin.
• Taylor Brown is a Software Engineer at Voltage working on Bitcoin Lightning Network infrastructure. Has extensive experience with data pipeline systems (think big databases), has dabbled in frontend work, but mostly at home in the back-end of systems.
• Thomas Sharp @ Twilight is a software engineer with experience in aerospace, neurotech and adtech. His interests in cryptocurrency are bitcoin, privacy, and scaling.
• J @ Eth.id is a MIT computer science graduate (6-3) that has been a lover of crypto since 2016. He has worked at Dropbox and Pinterest, companies that are known for building easy-to-use products that incorporate powerful technology.  He is a former YCombinator founder.  He is now founder of Eth.id, a burgeoning startup that provides a profile page that bridges Web 2 and Web 3. It has been funded by a16z Crypto Startup School 2023.
• Jordan Mack @ Nervos is a Senior Software Engineer at the Nervos Foundation and has been interested in cryptocurrency since 2011. He comes from the fast-paced tech startup world where he worked as a full-stack developer on web apps and mobile apps. He now uses his technical experience to empower individuals through decentralized technology.
• Nate Maninger @ Sia is an incredibly talented developer who has been in the Sia ecosystem for years, well before his professional association with the Foundation. Nate currently works on `hostd`, our next-gen Sia hosting app.
• Luke Champine @ Sia is the co-creator of Sia and the President of The Sia Foundation. He leads the premiere decentralized storage network forward on its mission to bring user-owned data to the world.

WORKSHOPS

#1 Building on the Bitcoin Lightning Network with Voltage

- Speaker: Brandon Lucas

- When: April 20th, 8:00 pm ET

- Where: https://app.livestorm.co/voltage-1/building-on-the-bitcoin-lightning-network-with-voltage?type=detailed

- Description: Voltage empowers engineers with the tools and infrastructure to implement Bitcoin & Lightning with a few clicks. Do you have an idea for a Lightning project, but don't want the hassle of setting up a node manually? With Voltage, you can have a node up and running in minutes, along with a suite of tools to help you build your ideas. Join us for a walkthrough of setting up a Voltage node and integrating it into a variety of Lightning applications.

#2 Building on Eth.id

- Speaker: j.eth.id

- When: April 20th, 4:00 pm ET

- Where: Virtual - https://meet.google.com/jof-ovmz-bip

- Description: Eth.id provides a (very) flexible developer interface that hosts an iframe on a user's profile page. You can use any web technology, frontend, backend configuration as long as it loads in an iframe. Eth.id provides a rich network of users where apps will be provided with the user's Ethereum wallet address and domain name. Apps also have the option of storing user-specific data with Eth.id, allowing you to develop just a frontend and not worry about configuring a backend. Join us for a walkthrough of the Eth.id platform and how you can build your idea utilizing Web 3

#3 BDK on Android/iOS/Python

- Speaker: thunderbiscuit (GitHub, Twitter)

- When: April 18th, 6:00 to 7:30 pm ET

- Where: Virtual - Connection info to be shared on MIT Bitcoin Hackathon Discord

- Description: Topics covered: 1 - What is the Bitcoin Development Kit?, 2 - BDK 1.0, 3 - Exploring the bdk repository, 4 - Exploring the bdk-ffi repository, 5 - Website and resources (tutorials, podcasts, youtube), 6 - Samples Android apps ready to fork, 7 - Sample iOS apps ready to fork , 8 - Sample desktop apps ready to fork, 9 - Using the bitcoin development kit in Java/Kotlin server-side, 10 - Using the bitcoin development kit in Python.

#4 BDK on Android/iOS/Python merged with CLI, Rust, Scripts, ldk-node

- Speaker: thunderbiscuit (GitHub, Twitter)

- When: April 19th, 6:00 to 7:30 pm ET

- Where: https://mit.zoom.us/j/91577509033

- Description: Topics covered: 1 - bdk-cli (YouTube series, Podcast), 2 - Rust examples, 3 - Exploring the bitcoindevkit-scripts repository

#5 Lightning App Development with Polar

- Speaker: Jamal James

- When: April 19th, 8:00 to 9:30 pm ET

- Where: https://mit.zoom.us/j/93043218877

- Description: Polar is a tool focused on improving the developer experience when integrating Lightning payments into an application. It allows you to iterate on your app faster by creating disposable Lightning Networks that run locally on your machine with value-less Bitcoin. In this workshop, we’ll explore how to use Polar to build a Lightning application. You’ll also learn how Polar can be leveraged to make your first contribution to existing Lightning open-source apps. https://bmancini55.github.io/building-lightning/intro.html . https://bmancini55.github.io/building-lightning/intro.html

#6 Building on CKB with Nervos Foundation

- Speaker: Jordan Mack

- When: April 20th, 6:00 pm ET

- Where: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybl3tBdOPU8

- Description: CKB is a RISC-V based smart contract platform which allows developers to deploy their own cryptographic primitives and decentralized application logic without limits. Like Bitcoin, CKB is UTXO-based, however it's Turing complete. Contracts can be written in a variety of languages such C, Rust and Lua (CKB can run interpreters). Join us as we walkthrough an overview of CKB and configuring a development environment to utilize the power of this exciting platform.

#7 Sia Decentralized Storage

- Speaker: Chris Schinnerl

- When: April 20th, 10:00 am ET

- Where: https://meet.google.com/xvx-egym-khb

- Description: Sia harnesses the power of cryptography to create a trustless cloud storage marketplace, allowing buyers and sellers to transact directly. renterd is a next-generation Sia renter, developed by the Sia Foundation. It aims to serve the needs of both everyday users — who want a simple interface for storing and retrieving their personal data — and developers — who want a powerful, flexible, and reliable API for building apps on Sia. Join us for this workshop - we’ll walk through an overview of Sia and how to set up and use renterd.

#8 Watching for Forks in the Bitcoin Network

- Speaker: Thomas Sharp

- When: April 20th, 3:00 pm ET

- Where: https://zoom.us/j/8081358119?pwd=UHc4V0Vabjc4RlhXSFJFVUVKbkNQZz09

- Description: https://github.com/twilight-project/forkscanner - Prerequisites: Some basic BTC knowledge, though we can go over some of that for background info. If you'd like to follow along, we recommend installing rust, docker and nodejs. Access to BTC nodes will be needed, we can look at providing access to our nodes. Goals: 1. Understand what a fork is, and the need for a fork monitor. 2. Explain forkscanner, a rust implementation of fork monitoring, and how it uses the bitcoin network to watch for forks, stale blocks, potential double spend attempts.. 3. Demonstrate APIs available in forkscanner and how to configure/run it.

#9 An exploration of decentralized identity

- Speaker: Homin Luo

- When: April 21st, 4:00 to 5:30 pm ET

- Where: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5269942458?pwd=S09nS1NvTUNORzQxL2dFMnd6Qkp3QT09

- Description: Discover the open standards-based solution for verified decentralized identity that gives people more control and convenience. We will cover the introduction of DID, and how DID approach helps people, organizations, and things interact with each other transparently and securely, in an identity trust fabric. Goals: 1. Understand the relationship between DID and Wallet. 2. Explore the difference between the existing DID projects. 3. Setup your first persona based DID. 4. Demonstrate APIs available from multiple projects and integrate some SDKs for your own projects. Prerequisites: Some based knowledge about blockchain wallet, we recommend Typescript or Rust lang. Github: https://github.com/NextDotID/proof_server https://github.com/NextDotID/relation_server.

• Technical
  The completeness and functionality of the project, and the relevancy of the resources utilized to accomplish the goal of the project.
• Originality
  A project that hasn’t been done before, or doesn’t currently exist. The project addresses a new or unsolved problem, or creates a unique solution to an existing problem.
• Ambitious
  The complexity of the problem being addressed, or the approach to solving it.
• Design and User Experience
  The user experience and flow of the project is pleasant and delightful.
• Wow Factor
  The project is exceptional in some manner.
• Sponsor Challenge Specific Criteria
  Specific criteria or requirements stated on the prize/challenge description provided by the sponsor.