Stratis, an enterprise blockchain technology company, announces that its online hackathon to promote the use of smart contracts is now live. The Stratis Smart Contracts Challenge has been set up to create a community of experts to develop smart contract applications that are useful, easy to use, innovative and can have a big impact in a variety of industries such as financial services, international trade, supply chain, energy and Internet of Things.

The Stratis Smart Contracts Challenge is open to submissions from individuals and teams from around the globe. It opens today and will close at 18:00 GMT on 16 December 2019 with winners to be announced on 20 January 2020. The total prize fund will be US$18,000 with a first-place cash prize of US$10,000, second-place prize of US$5,000 and third-place prize of US$3,000.

Stratis CEO Chris Trew said: “Today is an exciting day for Stratis as we launch our Smart Contracts Hackathon. This international event will give developers a unique opportunity to create smart contracts in a user-friendly C# programming environment. We believe blockchain can revolutionise the way multiple industries work and look forward to seeing the new and innovate ideas for enterprise applications that emerge from the hackathon. The set-up process is extremely simple and we encourage everyone who has an idea to register and get involved.”

The event is part of the Stratis Academy initiative to reduce barriers to entry for developers entering the blockchain space. Significant effort has been put into simplifying the ‘setup’ process and ensuring a consistent development environment for those looking to develop Smart Contracts in C# on the Stratis Platform. This includes a ‘click and play’ Cirrus Core (Hackathon edition) which can be installed by participants to set up a local test network. New developers can find a full tutorial, including instructions and examples, on the Stratis Academy website: academy.stratisplatform.com  

Participants in the hackathon are tasked with building a new functioning use-case for Stratis Smart Contracts in C#, demonstrating how blockchain can have a meaningful impact across a multitude of sectors. These include: 

• Automotive
• Banking and financial services
• Energy
• Gaming
• Government
• Healthcare and medicine
• Identity
• International trade and commodities
• IoT
• Supply chain

The judging panel will be made up of sector experts, including developers, blockchain gurus and Micrososft MVPs. Judges will be asking: does the entry solve a real-world problem, are the contracts readable, how innovative is the idea, do the core parts of the contracts behave correctly, and is there a design document detailing the application? Submissions can cover any kind of software application, such as the web, cloud, personal computer, mobile device or console, but they must use Stratis Smart Contracts in C#.

The hackathon is sponsored by C# Corner, an online global community of 3 million software developers, and is hosted on the Devpost platform, providing access to a substantial existing user-base of talented developers.