Deploying ETHBerlin04 Winners - Steady Lads

Zooming in on the winners and runners up from the fourth edition of our hackathon

It’s been two weeks since the doors of ETHBerlin04 opened, and we are still buzzing from such an amazing weekend of hacking and extravaganza-ing. A HUGE heartfelt thanks from the ETHBerlin team to everyone who joined us and made it a magical weekend! Seeing all the projects as a result of your hard work makes organising it very worthwhile.  Anyway, after a bit of recovery time and reflection, we wanted to wrap up this edition by celebrating all the awesome projects that were submitted this year, and also give a shoutout to the winners. If you have time, we highly recommend you browse through all of them, so add the submissions page to your reading list/bookmarks!

With that being said, we had a total of 83 projects submitted across the different tracks and our all-star judges had to choose some of these projects to win. Hackers made it a very hard job with so many genius ideas. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the projects that won over the likes of our judges and became the winners of each track.

Meta Award 

ICYMI the Meta Award was a new prize aimed at improving the ETHBerlin experience by making our (the organisers') life easier, upping the experience for hackers, or all of the above. There was a wishlist by the team, but we were amazed at how you all thought outside the box.

1. Zkal solved our need for a Google Calendar replacement! This project is a self-hosted calendar feed with a web-based widget that integrates multiple .ics feeds, allowing for a gradual transition away from Google Calendar. Users access it through Semaphore, maintaining anonymity while proving group membership.

2. Zukofi enables private quadratic voting using FHE, offering a great solution for use cases like our Hackers' Choice Award. Voting for such events is usually held in public which can lead to quid pro quo arrangements and other privacy issues. Other than the lack of privacy, public voting has other drawbacks such as the current tally of votes influencing the future decision of voters. Zukofi allows participants to prove that they are an ETHBerlin hacker and allows them to vote on projects. The participants encrypt their votes on the client side and send the encrypted votes to a server along with a ZK proof of inclusion showing that they are a ETHBerlin hacker. Once the voting has finished, the server decrypts and reveals the final tally.

3. Zumeet was inspired by a need for an in-event social app. Zumeet was built as a conversation starter for people who find it hard to socialize at hackathons or are too shy to break the ice, with a gamified twist to help you meet new people and collect lasting memories. The event participant creates a personalized digitalized artifact which can then be exchanged between participants by meeting in person and sharing their Zupass public identity with each other. 

Track Awards

The track awards were based on specific topics that align with our manifesto, and what we believe the industry needs to re-focus on. 

Freedom to Transact 

1. InclusionBribes seeks to tip the scale for non censoring block builders to build more profitable blocks. It allows dapp developers to add a back-running MEV opportunity to any call on their contract. The developer can specify which functions of their contract will get bribes, which token it will be paid out in and how much per tokens will be paid out per call - effectively fixing corruption... with more corruption!

2. CypherSmith is solving wallet address reusability & anonymity problems. The dApp allows to generate stealth addresses on demand for an asset receiver using elliptic curves and ephemeral keys, referencing the ERC-5564 proposal. Stealth addresses are generated by asset sender but the private keys are available only for the asset receiver. It is not possible to tie the stealth address to an asset receiver for an outside actor.

3. RageAgainst.eu helps you run DeFi interfaces locally and KYC free (see Hackers' Choice Award below for more deets).

Social Technologies

1. zu-git-proofs was designed to facilitate anonymous feedback in forums by assigning credibility badges based on GitHub contributions (e.g. Core Ethereum Contributor). zu-git-proofs ensures that participants can stay anon while being recognized and trusted with proven expertise. This approach fosters high-quality and reliable community discussions and governance while first maintaining user privacy, using Zupass.

2. zk-Twitter enables another avenue for ETHBerlin hackathon participants to connect with each other by dropping ZK-Proveable Data (called PCDs) into a publicly accessible feed on Zupass.

3. Voto is an on-chain censorship-resistant anonymous voting solution, allowing communities to easily set-up a poll and participate in a voting process which cannot be subverted or manipulated. They use a censorship-resistant, anonymous, bribery-resistant voting protocol - MACI - based on community-issued identities.

Infrastructure 

1. R55 brings innovation to Ethereum by showing how the smart contract developer world can be if we have more VMs in execution clients. R55 is an experimental Ethereum Execution Environment that seamlessly integrates RISCV smart contracts alongside traditional EVM smart contracts. With that, R55 lowers the barrier to entry into Ethereum for 2.8 million Rust developers worldwide!

2. Anti-Correlation Attestation Penalties focuses on the decentralization of the validator set as one of the most important properties of Ethereum for credible neutrality and censorship resistance. By adjusting penalties to foster decentralization, diversification and fault-tolerance, this EIP proposes to adjust penalties in a way that more diversified entities get lower penalties while entities with high correlations in their setup face more servere ones.

3.  Desentralized TLS verification leverages blockchain to improve privacy in Web2 services and prevent the use of fraudulent SSL Certificates by centralized entitites (like governments).

Defensive Tooling

1. Shadowlings pushes the freedom to transact to a new level. It generates unique and disposable deposit addresses that appear to be clean EOAs but are supercharged using EIP-3074 and ERC-4337. Additionally these deposit addresses can be connected to your existing account without doxing yourself using the power of Zero Knowledge. With that you can utilize recoverability mechanisms of an existing smart account and don’t have to worry about losing access to your shadow accounts. Users are able to freely and privately transact without needing to manage multiple private keys, or being bothered by the wary eyes of other participants.

2. zk TRIPSTER aims to solve challenges in running and maintaining bug bounty programs in the DeFi space. They are not always honored, and may not always offer sufficient compensation for white hats. This can lead to a lack of incentive for hackers to report vulnerabilities, which can ultimately result in a less secure DeFi ecosystem. They solve the issue by introducing zero-knowledge proofs of exploit contingent payment protocol. This removes trusted intermediaries by binding the release of bounty payment to the release of vulnerability details (at this point only a smart contract owner would be able to view vulnerability details).

3. Chainmail empowers and incentivises whistleblowers that would otherwise be too afraid to reveal vital information for fear of safety or reputational damage. By using ZK Proofs, they can prove the authenticity of emails while ensuring the privacy and anonymity of the seller. Creating a marketplace as a mechanism of delivery, Chainmail provides additional incentive structures for those in possession of this information.

Excellence Awards 

The excellence awards were designed to recognise certain aspects of a project. Every project was eligible for these awards.

Best Smart Contract

Catacombs is a game designed for decentralized networks, embracing the autonomous worlds. Its game mechanics are sybil resistant and cater for human players rather than bots. In Catacombs, players stake their character, play once a day with as many character as they chose, and level up. Each move is fully resolved onchain. Enter at your own risk!

Best UX/Design 

TrustKey Recovery focuses on security and the fact that securing crypto accounts is paramount. Traditional methods often rely on centralized custodial services, which can be a single point of failure. This project introduces a decentralized approach to account recovery, focusing on leveraging trust within a user’s social circle—friends, family, and close acquaintances—without the necessity for them to have a crypto wallet before, nor maintaining any funds.

Best Social Impact 

CarnationFM: BROADCAST FOR LIBERATED FUTURE  is an experiment in decentralized and encrypted communication with a focus on music as a transport vessel carrying hidden messages. It empowers users to broadcast their voice and coordinate with others securely and privately all while safeguarding their anonymity. The user contributes with an audio file (wav, flac) and weaves in an encrypted message into to subsonic frequencies. This hidden channel allows for discreet communication. It prioritizes anonymity, letting your voice be heard without compromising your safety. It thrives on community. It’s a space for collaboration, where people can unite and coordinate towards a shared vision.

Hacker's Choice

Last but not least is the hacker's choice award, all hackers that attended (and created their zupass identity on time *cough cough*) had the opportunity to look through the submissions after the event and vote for their favourite one. Voting closed on Monday, and the winner of this award is - RageAgainst.eu! 

This project aims to solve the need for KYC on centralised components, including hosted frontends. They give everyday DeFi users the power to host their own frontends locally, enabling everyone to use protocols the way they were meant to be used - without permission from "The Union", and without the need to rely on other entities to host.

Hackers, we <3 you!

And that's a wrap for ETHBerlin04! We wish we could write about all 83 wonderful projects on here - so do check them out if you have the chance!

Thanks again to every single human (and dog) who contributed to this year’s edition of (y)our favourite hackathon and as always keep an eye out on the DoD X account for any news in the future. It’s now time for us to take a break and touch grass before we start plotting again.

Until next time friends 💛