Think about you are a fresh-faced developer, puffed up and able to construct your first large challenge. You have obtained at the least 3 RedBulls in your veins, a GitHub repo open, and a dream.
Then you definately see it: a hackathon. Massive names, large prizes, large alternative. Sounds… good… proper?
On September 2, Base hosted the Onchain Summer season Awards, a hackathon celebrating probably the most revolutionary and broadly used client mini-apps within the Base ecosystem. 500+ developer groups joined in to chase a $200,000 prize pool.
Fairly strong deal, props to Base for supporting the group…
… is one thing I would be saying if this factor wasn’t rigged.
On October 7, Base introduced the winners.
That is when an X person named Alanas, co-founder of Ogvio (a world cash switch service), seen one thing… off.
Whereas looking by means of the High New Client Apps class, he realized two of the successful tasks – owatch (second place) and Opi Commerce (third) – had been hella sus.
Based on his findings, each apps had been principally AI-generated touchdown pages with no working buttons, no product, and no actual performance.
Additional investigation revealed that a few of these AI-generated shell tasks had been linked to Coinbase staff – the identical firm behind the Base community, and, conveniently, the hackathon’s organizer.
Which is VERY attention-grabbing, to say the least.
Hackathons are alleged to be these thrilling, open occasions the place anybody can showcase their expertise, meet different builders, and perhaps even flip a facet challenge right into a funded startup.
However when insiders and AI-generated tasks win over precise working merchandise, that entire group empowerment factor begins to sound a bit hole.
And it is not simply Base. Builders have been skeptical about hackathons for years.
Throughout boards and social media, folks have complained that many of those occasions are extra about PR and model picture than real innovation.
Some even name them exploitative – getting builders to pour hours into constructing concepts that firms can then use totally free, all below the comfortable banner of “group constructing.”
The checklist of hackathon controversies is lengthy, truly: CodeX with its underwhelming rewards, Hack the Hill elevating charges on scholar members, Salesforce’s “pre-made challenge” winner scandal again in 2013…
It is virtually like you’ll be able to’t host a hackathon today and not using a little bit of drama. So, it makes you surprise: are hackathons even price it?
Possibly the higher reply is: not in the way in which we’re informed they’re.
Hackathons promote the thought of “the perfect builders win.”
However in follow, they typically reward connections, presentation expertise, or just being on the within. The judging is opaque, the timelines unrealistic, and the prizes disproportionately small in comparison with the worth firms extract from the publicity and submissions.
That doesn’t imply nobody advantages – simply that it is hardly ever the members:
👉 For organizers, a hackathon is affordable advertising: a burst of social media buzz and free R&D disguised as group engagement.
👉 For builders, it’s unpaid labor dressed up as alternative.
Positive, you may nonetheless study one thing or meet somebody helpful – however these are unintended effects, not the purpose.
So perhaps the query is not “are hackathons price it?”
It is “price it for whom?”
