Mini Tutorial Creation Hackathon

Working Groups Business Models
#1

Clarity, smart contracts, and education have repeatedly come up as hot topics throughout our meetings. During the 2020/03/30 business model lab session we discussed the possibility of a mini-tutorial-creation-hackathon leading up to the Clarity hackathon at the end of April.

Notes from the meeting:

Topics from the RICE scoring sheet as reported in the 2020/03/23 business model lab session are below.

Topics: Clarity

  • Hackathon: most innovative use cases of Clarity
  • Integration: using Clarity to interact with crypto exchanges
  • Smart Contract: certify documents
  • Smart Contract: create a time-sensitive token whose value goes to zero after a certain deadline
  • Smart Contract: randomly select a winner, like in a lottery
  • Smart Contract: track collaboration between users
  • Smart Contract: verify data from IoT devices
  • Smart Contract: verify multiple identities
  • Smart Contract: verify signatures
  • Tutorial: how to build an NFT smart contract
  • Tutorial: Zero-to-Clarity, how to write and implement Clarity smart contracts
  • Blockstack Certification Registry - Reputation Verification: Create a smart contract executed between a “Certificate Issuing Authority” and a “Student” - Creates a verifiable Reputation Registry for Blockchain / Blockstack professionals for various levels (developer, architect)
  • "Blockstack Gaming: Would be interested in setting up a smart contract interacting with STX to provide the ability to 1) Create a game - contribute tokens 2) Joining the game - contribute tokens 3) Determining a winner - assign tokens.
    A couple of ideas:
  • Workshop: how to use smart contracts for pay-as-you-go or subscription services
  • Tutorial: App creators creating value for the ecosystem, i.e. reward existing holders with STX and convert new users to STX hodlers via app usage

Topics: Education

  • Dev: Figure out ways to create crypto hybrid models, i.e. BTC/STX or ETH/STX in order to connect to the wider crypto ecosystem
  • Tutorial: Economics of Stacks 2.0 (how different stakeholders, i.e. miners, stackers, can generate value for the ecosystem)
  • Tutorial: Zero-to-STX, how to send/receive STX as part of your app
  • Tutorial: Zero-to-Token, how to send/receive STX as part of your app
  • Wiki: existing crypto specific business models, i.e. micro transactions, money streaming, crypto collectibles, ICOs, NFTs, flash loans, staking
  • Agree on what makes potential business models on Blockstack unique, i.e. ability to support app chains and payments for data
  • Come up with user friendly experiences / models that abstract away complexity of crypto, i.e. users can simply engage with fiat
  • Zero to Fiat / Zero to STX / Zero to newCoin() / Zero to Delegator

Next Steps

We need community input to know what to focus on first, as well as to gauge interest in this idea. As we are getting closer to the Stacks 2.0 launch educational materials are an important cornerstone to development on both testnet and mainnet.

This post is intended to start a conversation. Please feel free to submit any additional ideas for educational materials, tutorials, and/or comments. Thank you!

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Working Group Session - 04/06/20
Working Group Session - 04/20/20
#2

Curious if folks are interested in participating in a clarity mini hackathon in general – I would expect folks to focus on their own areas of interest and see benefit in leaving it pretty open ended to support diverse clarity contract experimentation. We could get this kicked off pretty soon so that there’s meaningful progress ahead of the full clarity hackathon.

1 Like
#3

@whoabuddy The post is already long and looks like exhaustive. Not sure how to contribute more.

As a smart contract developer, I would like to do programming together to learn quicker, so a dedicated day where I can exchange with others would be good.

Maybe we could use the (old) ethereum pet-shop tutorial (https://www.trufflesuite.com/tutorials/pet-shop)
with a blockstack twist (https://bitbucket.org/friedger/pet-shop-tutorial/src/master/) and elaborate on the differences, so that ethereum developers have an good transition as well.

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#4

But long, exhaustive posts are my thing! :nerd_face:

I completely understand this sentiment, and it’s a challenge when trying to balance a list of new ideas against what we can actually take action on.

I like this idea, I know we’ve talked about making a channel on Discord dedicated to this type of discussion, and there have been proposals for another working group based around smart contracts and Clarity in general.

The biggest challenge we all have is available time, so I am curious about how we can make this more efficient for everyone while still providing a place for open discussion, and hopefully some kind of reward for participation.

I think that’s a great idea, and I’m also curious about your updated version of the Zero-to-Dapp tutorial - you recently revised it based on the COVID-19 work, correct? Do you have a link?

The way I understand it, this “mini-hackathon” would take high-level topics from the list (or new ideas) and reward community members (or participants in general) for creating a tutorial or educational resource that others can use. The goal is to collaboratively raise our own knowledge and expertise on Clarity smart contracts as well as identify any issues and update the materials out there now.

For example, you’ve done a great job at identifying some issues in the tutorials and reference materials after recent updates to the Clarity language structure, and in the long run, this is critical information to make sure all of our resources are up to date.

@Gina - maybe we should elaborate a little more on the structure of the mini-hackathon, what we are looking for, and what the potential prizes are to get the ball moving? Is my understanding of it correct, and would you have anything to add?