College students and young professionals coded projects in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center for the chance to win over $12K in prizes at Hack The Chains, a Blockchain hackathon, last weekend.
Hack The Chains is the inaugural 36-hour Blockchain hackathon hosted by SMU’s Blockchain Club. The hackathon allowed participants to hone their skills in coding challenges to win prizes, network with industry professionals, and learn more about Blockchain through workshops and lectures.
Dr. Simon Mak, Hack The Chains judge and faculty advisor for SMU Blockchain, said hackathons help students prepare for careers in computer science by gaining real-world experience.
“Hackathons are designed to be a very short amount of time where you have to solve a problem,” Mak said. “It teaches you how to do rapid problem-solving, and then coding the solution, for this particular hackathon it’s coding it using Blockchain methodologies.”
Blockchain is a technology that allows for the permanent, immutable, and transparent recording of data and transactions. It is a fairly new industry and growing rapidly, Mckinsey & Company said.
Hack The Chains had over 150 participants, primarily students from SMU, University of Texas at Dallas, Texas Christian University, and other schools in the DFW area. Students from Arizona State University and Louisiana State University were also in attendance.
Logan Choi, an SMU Freshman, created Escape Room, a simple memory game, with the motivation to make education more exciting through games. He hopes to implement more complex games, including an English-Spanish word match.
He also hopes to make a leaderboard and a reward system to create incentivized competitive play.
“It would be really cool to see your other friend play, high score, top of the leaderboard,” Choi said. “You want to be like that too.”
Choi, a beginner to Blockchain, taught himself the coding program in 12 hours and found a new interest in it.
“That was so hard, I swear,” Choi said. “But the more I learned, it was super interesting, super fun.”
Choi stayed awake for 27 hours straight. His team members left halfway through the competition, leaving him to complete the project himself.
“I came for the PS5, I stayed for the Blockchain,” Choi said. “I had four Celsius, after the third my heart started beating.”
The Escape Room team ended up winning the second place prize, AirPods Pros, during the closing ceremony on Sunday afternoon.
The first place team from SMU, Membrane, each took home a PlayStation 5. Membrane transfers crowdsourced data to researchers without compromising users’ privacy.
Other teams who placed in the award categories won cash prizes from sponsors, biometric wallets, and other tech.
Ephraim Sun, director of technology for SMU Blockchain, was proud of the blockchain club executive team’s around-the-clock work that ensured the event’s success.
“Overall for the event, I think it went really well, this was our very first hackathon as the Blockchain team,” Sun said. “Our team was able to navigate pretty well, we also had a fun time with karaoke on Saturday night.”
Sun is looking forward to the future growth of Hack The Chains.
“For the future of Hack The Chains, we’re looking to continue to do this every year, maybe every semester or so,” Sun said. “And continue to build up our talent for our members while also continuing to connect with our DFW community members.”
Learn more about Hack The Chains at https://www.hackthechains.com/.
Drew Gibson contributed to this story.
