Here at Pinata, one of our favorite things to do is support and attend hackathons. It’s part of our heritage as Pinata was born out of a hackathon in 2018, and ever since then the spirit of hacking apps and features together keeps going to this day. This month, we had the honor of sponsoring Kansas University Blockchain Institute’s “Midwest Block-a-Thon” with $2000 in prizes for the best use of Pinata, and the students of KU did not disappoint! Let’s have a quick look at the winners and what they built using blockchain and IPFS.

3rd Place - Safechain

Coming in third place we have Safechain, a local-first decentralized disaster relief messaging app. The team took a creative approach of using local SQLite databases for messages and storing them on IPFS, but also using IPCM to record versions of the database. They event went to take steps to handle conflict resolution for database records by using the blockchain timestamps of the IPCM backups which we found creative and resourceful. While their demo used web-sockets, in a future version it would use radio waves to send messages.

2nd Place - ZK-PoH

One problem becoming increasingly more popular in our age of AI is identity and proof of humanity. The team behind ZK-PoH was inspired to solve this using zero knowledge proofs, smart contracts, and verifiable data with Pinata to create a robust solution. The app will take a scan of your face as biometric data is the hardest to forge, but since it is also incredible private information the team used hierarchal bloom filters with zero knowledge proofs to create a privacy first method of proving humanity. Pinata was used to store the zero knowledge proofs which provided extra security since IPFS CIDs can be used to verify the content you are retrieving. Overall, this was a very impressive demonstration!

1st Place - EcoPrint

Businesses trying to prove their carbon emissions and verify it to others is a difficult problem to solve, but it didn’t stop the team behind EcoPrint. This project created their own custom blockchain (yes, you heard that right) to sell carbon credits. EcoPrint included both the chain and a frontend application which allows users to buy and sell credits, but going beyond that the team developed a system that stored merkleroots signed by third party entities on IPFS, and with a CID someone can pull and verify the credibility of the carbon credit. Storing blockchain data on IPFS is a unique take and makes lots of sense, as we’ve written before!

Honorable Mention - CheckYoSelf

There were so many good submissions for Pinata’s challenge at Midwest Block-a-Thon, and we couldn’t leave them all out! CheckYoSelf is a unique iOS native app that allows you to scan items and sell them as NFTs. The team implemented a slick augmented reality feature for scanning things like shoes and being able to view them in a natural environment, but also uploaded the files to Pinata and used the CIDs to prove authentic content with the NFT.

Wrapping Up

It’s always encouraging to see how the next generation continues to push the boundaries of crypto and blockchain technology, and the Midwest Block-a-Thon was no exception. From building a blockchain from scratch to implementing hierarchal blooms with ZK proofs, never underestimate students (especially from the midwest 😎). All of them attested to how simple Pinata was to use, so don’t wait now: give Pinata a try with a free account!

Happy Pinning!