Vechain, a leading enterprise-grade L1 public blockchain, has announced the winners of its sustainability-themed hackathon – a 36-hour-long event hosted at Harvard University in partnership with Web3 educational mobile app, EasyA, and global consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
- Vechain track winner: Movelo, a move-to-earn application that offers companies the opportunity to sponsor and reward users for sustainable transportation choices such as walking, biking, or ride-sharing.
- BCG track winner: FiTag, a project that delivers a new shopping experience for luxury brands, enabling supply chain transparency through blockchain and NFC tags, digital twins, loyalty-program NFTs, and AR shopping.
- ‘Shark Tank’ Pitchathon track winner: PropelPixel, an eco-friendly travel solution that incentivizes ride-sharing and sustainable travel through a bespoke metaverse environment powered by NFTs.
Winners of all projects were awarded a portion of $46,000 in prize money and the opportunity to access additional funding was announced at the event.
Built on VechainThor, vechain’s highly sustainable public network, Movelo verifies distances traveled through walking or cycling on the blockchain, calculating carbon offset and directly rewarding individuals on the basis of carbon emissions saved. Instead of ESG spend, companies can directly incentivize their employees to use sustainable travel options, with the experience gamified through NFTs and leaderboards, showcasing blockchain’s ability to have a meaningful impact on the enterprise sector by providing sustainable business solutions.
The BCG track-winning project, FiTag, is a luxury fashion tracking iOS app that promotes transparency in a brand’s supply chain through the vechain blockchain. From sourcing to sale, FiTag utilizes NFC tags to ensure full transparency and assist brands with compliance in the latest sustainability regulations set by the Fashion Industry Charter. Beyond serving as a marketplace, FiTag promotes a circular economy with its rental model, and its NFTs not only guarantee product authenticity but also provide digital ownership.
“By educating developers about the viability of Web3 technologies as a tool for sustainable development — as witnessed at the Harvard hackathon — we are helping build the next iteration of the Web3 economy.
Developer excellence continues to bring to life the very ethos of Web3, guided by vechain and BCG’s ‘Blockchain Biosphere’ framework outlined in our recent ‘Web3 for Better’ whitepaper. With this at hand, developers can build sustainable, functional dApp ecosystems that leverage tokenization and gamification to improve the world and create new kinds of collective value,” said Sunny Lu, CEO of vechain.
Smaller cash prizes were also awarded to business and sustainability club students. The winner of the Pitchathon category was PropelPixel, a platform where people can share their eco-friendly travel experiences while building an NFT city to showcase their progress and memories. PropelPixel brings a new level of excitement to carpooling, ridesharing, and public transportation by allowing users, or Propellers, to take pictures, earn tokens, and share those pictures with their friends on a secure platform. Once users document their experiences, they earn virtual tokens and NFTs and can share their pictures with their friends and family on the platform.
Projects were judged by a panel of industry experts, including Dr. Bernhard Kronfellner, Partner and co-lead of the digital asset and blockchain group at Boston Consulting Group, and assessed based on their ability to address the developer tracks outlined for the hackathon, namely, ‘X’-to-Earn sustainability applications.
“Over the weekend, we saw the development of truly innovative blockchain solutions for enterprises, and we now have the opportunity to see these winners enter the sector and reshape the way entities within it operate.
The event further demonstrates how building on sustainable infrastructure like vechain’s network can make sustainability a by-product of business solutions, meaning companies can both streamline their processes and strengthen their carbon neutrality efforts all at once,” commented Bernhard Kronfellner, Partner and co-lead of the digital asset and blockchain group at BCG.
The hackathon concluded vechain’s #60daysofvechain
About vechain
Vechain, headquartered in San Marino, Europe, is the curator of VechainThor, a world-leading smart contract platform spearheading the real-world adoption of blockchain technology.
Through leveraging the capabilities of ‘trustless’ data (information without intermediaries), smart contracts, and IoT technologies, VechainThor has enabled solutions across a wide array of fields. Vechain now turns its attention to the greatest challenge of all — building digital ecosystems to drive sustainability and digital transformation at global scale.
About EasyA
Founded by brothers Phil and Dom Kwok, former alums of Cambridge University and The Wharton School, EasyA is the world’s leading Web3 learning app. EasyA has one of the world’s most talented and largest developer communities globally, with over 500,000 developers at top universities and companies across the US and UK. Startups founded by the EasyA community have been funded by a16z, YC and many more top VCs.
EasyA partners with over 250 of the world’s best blockchain clubs such as the Harvard, MIT and Cambridge Blockchain clubs and frequently ranks as one of the top apps on the App Store, having won Apple’s prestigious App of the Day award.
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