In this retrospective report, Harmony aims to reflect on our experiences at ETH.Portland. This feedback is taken from the Harmony Event Operations team, contributors, and ecosystem partners. Establishing an open forum allows us the feedback needed to celebrate victories and humbly review areas that we can improve on as we move forward.

Event Sign Off and Approval: Li, Essa, and Boris

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Hackathon Details:

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First, a moment to reflect and few things to celebrate:

ETH.Portland was a refreshing event. Over the three days, around 50 hackers, 4 title sponsors, and many more blockchain-interested individuals all got the opportunity to build and become close friends. We heard several times that the event felt like a blockchain summer camp, which is quite accurate. Boris and Devin had tons of time to meet new friends, hackers, and future partners – both at the conference building and dinners each night.

ETH.Portland was a highly-valuable conference to sponsor with lots a meaningful networking moments, though low key enough to still accomplish other essential work.

With this said, let’s celebrate a few achievements:

  1. Boris spoke on ZKU and Zero Knowledge on Harmony – Lots of interest for ZKU following his talk. The University of British Columbia will be looking into ZKU for their developer club.
  2. Harmony gave out 4 Hackathon prizes and 1 Project Y grant – Totaling $28,000 to builders!
  3. The team stayed healthy and on top of all other Harmony work over the three day conference.
  4. The ease of building on Harmony’s testnet/mainnet was lauded by all of the developers, so keep it up dev team!

Initiatives that worked that we should continue:

  1. Sponsoring these smaller hackathons is far more valuable (ie accomplishes our primary events objective) than putting lots of money towards big event sponsorships. The team felt that the cost of a title sponsorship was well worth the money and could be replicated again and again with hardly any impact to the overall events budget.
  2. The amount we gave to builders was also perfect. Not only were we the top contributor, but we had four teams building on harmony’s testnet and mainnet, which made the hackathon a fun competition as well.
  3. Technical support on the ground was essential. Shoutout to Boris for all of his hard work and helpful developer insight.