Protocol 404 is a 48-hour hackathon where the system is already broken — and your job is to make something in the wreckage.
No tracks. No filters. No pretty plans.
Just full-send chaos, wild utility, and max-speed builds.
You're not fixing the system.
You're beating it to the rebuild.
🔧 FORMAT- 48 hours
- Solo or teams (up to 4)
- Open to everyone, everywhere
- No-code and beginners welcome
- Any tools, stacks, or tactics allowed
- Show up.
- Build whatever works in a broken world.
- Submit your prototype + short write-up.
- Wait for the Grand Ceremony in November for results.
That’s it.
- Chaos coders
- Creators who build first, think later
- Indie hackers, Gen Z generalists
- Designers, meme lords, system skeptics
- Anyone who codes like they're racing the clock
Timeline:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Oct 4, 12 AM IST | Hackathon Begins |
| Oct 5, 11:59 PM IST | Hackathon Ends |
| Nov 2025 | Results Ceremony |
Part of the Grand Indian Hackathon Season
This hackathon is part of the Grand Indian Hackathon Season (GIHS) — a three-month sprint featuring 10 unique hackathons.
All prizes feed into an ever-expanding season-wide prize pool, currently at ₹17,00,000+. Each hackathon has its own winners and shoutouts, but the bigger rewards are revealed at the Grand Indian Hackathon Ceremony in November, where the best projects from across all events are celebrated together.
Because the prize pool grows as we bring in more partners, sponsors, and communities, we encourage participants to join the Discord server for the latest updates on prizes, collabs, and surprise drops throughout the season.
Requirements
- Link to GitHub, Notion, Figma, or any prototype
- Short write-up:
- What were you building for?
- What broke?
- Why does it still kinda work?
- Optional 1-min video pitch
Prizes
Kernel Panic Recognition
₹8200 worth of tech credits.
For the project that caused total mental overload — confusing, chaotic, but impossible to ignore. Winners get a Maximally certificate, platform shoutouts, and an optional LOR.
Broken But Beautiful Award
₹8200 worth of tech credits.
Some systems collapse into art. This recognition is for the project that looked like a disaster but ended up strangely aesthetic. Winners receive a certificate, Maximally social features, and LOR on request.
Debugger’s Nightmare
₹8200 worth of tech credits.
Awarded to the submission with the most cursed bugs, errors, or spaghetti logic that somehow still shipped. Winners get a certificate, spotlight coverage, and the option of an LOR.
Zero-Day Spirit Award
₹8200 worth of tech credits.
For the project that feels like it found a hidden exploit nobody else noticed. Winners receive Maximally recognition, a certificate, and optional LOR.
Survivors of the System Award
₹8200 worth of tech credits.
A special recognition for teams that stayed alive through 48 hours of chaos, shipping despite every crash, error, and breakdown. Winners earn a certificate, Maximally shoutouts, and an optional LOR.
Chaos Master Award
Some teams build, others *explode into brilliance*. This award goes to the hacker (or team) that thrived in disorder — breaking systems, finding loopholes, and somehow turning chaos into something real. It’s for the ones who made judges go, “WTF... how did they pull that off?”
Perks: ₹3,000 cash,₹1,02,000 worth of tech credits, an official Maximally certificate, platform-wide shoutouts, and a personalised LOR on request.
Blue Screen Legend
Some projects fail, but few fail *spectacularly*. This award celebrates the build that crashed the hardest yet burned the brightest — the bug that became art, the exploit that almost worked, the pure hacker spirit that defines Maximally.
Perks: ₹2,000 cash,₹62,000 worth of tech credits Maximally certificate, social features, and an optional LOR.
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
Judges
Rishul Chanana
Founder @ Maximally
Sergey Polyashov
Principal Software Engineering Manager @ Microsoft
Vishal Padh
Sr. Software Architect
Vikranth Kumar Shivaa
Founding Engineer @ Fig
Nikita Klimov
Sr. Software QA Engineer contractor at ADP, Inc.
Shreesh Agarwal
Sr Business Analyst, McKinsey and Company
Rakesh Pullayikodi
Staff Software Engineer @ Graphite Health
Raja Sekhar Rao Dheekonda
Distinguished Engineer @Dreadnode
Tanmay Kejriwal
Founder @ MakeX
Sahil Deshpande
Software Engineer @ Meta
Ashwini Joshi
Senior Machine Learning engineer @Warner Bros. Discovery
Senthilkumaran Rajagopalan
Tech Lead Manager, Video Recommendations, Meta
Prateek Batla
Product Manager at Meta
Venkataram Poosapati
Senior Data Engineer, Atlassian
Ruslan Ibrahimov
Senior Software Engineer at VoiceLove
Bohdan Churik
Software Engineer at VoiceLove
Jay rungta
Engineering Manager @ Google
Ashish Singh
Sr. IT Architect @ Global Payments
Sai Charan Reddy Nevuri
Software Engineer @ AWS
Abhishek Shrivastava
Senior Staff Software Engineer @ Google
Yogiraj Awati
Engineering Manager@Instacart
Krishna Arjun Saravanan
Senior Software Engineer @ Bloomberg
Abhinay Kumar Reddy Seella
Sr Software Engineer @ Roku
Jay Bharat Mehta
Senior Software Engineer @ Snowflake
Alexandr Dergunov
Software Engineer @Meta
Anastasia Glavatchi
Head of Marketing
Aleksandr Ruban
Marketing Expert in the Game Industry
Aleksandr Karavanin
Production Engineer at Meta
Assiya Jaisheva
Design Lead
Oleg Skliarenko
Co-founder, Chief Product Officer at DRCT
Dmitry Bobolev
Founder of Froxy Labs
Sumit Saha
Software Engineer at Microsoft
Puneet Ramaul
Senior Sales Director at HCLTech
Akash Jindal
Product Owner at Llyods Banking Group
Karthikeyan Sundaram
Backend Software Engineer at WithU
Anil Kumar
Software Engineer at Paua
Arvind K Gautam
ASEAN Lead at Avaya
Judging Criteria
-
Chaos Utility(30%)
Does it work in weird ways? Does it make your brain goes absurd? Is it chaotic? -
Speed Thinking (25%)
Are you able to execute under pressure? Can you face the pressure of time with your brain? -
WTF Energy (25%)
Is it orginal? Is it bold? And most important, is it FUN??:-D -
Presentation (20%)
How well you explain the madness. Can you present like an expert?
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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