World Crypto Con 2018 and MET Hackathon Wrap Up

World Crypto Con (WCC) in Las Vegas was an excellent opportunity to spread the word about Metronome to even more cryptocurrency enthusiasts and newcomers. Between talks, panels, and events, there were many conversations about Metronome and cryptocurrency at large. The BLOQchain Vegas Hackathon also provided a chance for the Metronome community to win some MET and brainstorm use cases and applications.

BLOQchain Vegas Hackathon

Bloq, in partnership with World Crypto Con, hosted a day long hackathon/competitive workshop. The main focus of the hackathon was exploring Metronome and its potential use cases. All participants received MET as a participatory prize, but all competed for the first prize of 1 BTC and the second prize of 500 MET.

Dariusz Jakubowski, the Metronome community manager, began the hackathon with an opening talk on Metronome at a high level, its motivations, and its goals. Following that, senior engineer Gabriel Montes provided an in-depth talk on Ethereum Smart contracts. Finishing off the presentations for the workshop, Ryan Condron presented an in-depth look into the Metronome code and contracts themselves.

After that, the participants were off, writing, ideating, and hacking away.

Throughout the day, participants had access to the expertise of Bloq and Metronome mentors. Among them were Christian Sullivan, Gabriel Montes, Dariusz Jakubowski, and Alexandra Prodromos.

Rules and Judging Criteria

• 7.5 Hours of ideating and hacking
• No code needed (due to short day), but encouraged
• Teams of 2–5
• Can’t come in with a pre-determined idea
• Judging criteria: practicality, originality, and MET integration
• Judges: Maxine Ryan, COO and Co-founder of Bitspark Limited and Jordan Kruger, Research and Operations of Bloq, Inc.

Winning Projects

We asked the first prize and second prize winners to describe their projects.

First Place — 1 BTC

What is your team name and describe your project in a few sentences:

Our Company name is Care Drivers, but what we developed was CityCoin. Brandon Troche, Bijan Dela Pena, Titas Das (couldn’t be present), and James Peralta are the founders and we are an EdTech company based in Las Vegas, NV. We are developing an App-based service that makes childcare more convenient, safe, smarter, affordable, and available, like Uber meets Airbnb for childcare. We came to the World Crypto Con Hackathon because we were curious about the possibility of implementing blockchain technology into what we currently do.

CityCoin is a Raffle run by municipalities to augment their income to help fund education, public works, and special projects. How it works is like a decentralized lottery built on-top of Metronome. For residents to play, they have to but CityCoins at 1 CityCoin equal to 1 MET, regulated through the MET API. Using ERC721, the raffle runs for 1 week until the winner is chosen and the money dispersed through smart-contracts that disperses 50% to the winner and 50% to the city/municipality. The money earned through the raffle is transparent and the community can see where the money goes.

Second Place — 500 MET

What is your team name and describe your project in a few sentences:

Our team was comprised of Hai Tran and Catherine Rhee.

Metrofunds is an extension that aims to utilize Metronome platform as way to educate financial literacy and help students reduce student debts. With Metrofunds, students can received tax-exempt funds from other users and using Metronome unique subscription feature, to also pay for other loans that student might generate over time.

World Crypto Con

Jordan Kruger spoke about the Satoshi Whitepaper, its ten year anniversary, and the introduction of the most empowering cryptocurrencies to date — namely Metronome.

During her graduate program at Georgetown University, Jordan learned about blockchain technology and the Satoshi whitepaper. Immediately she wanted to learn more, and see how this technology could impact her (what she thought to be) future career.

After learning more about the potential (and limitations) of the current technology, Jordan joined Bloq, Inc as the director of operations and research. Here, she joined the Metronome team and helped bring Metronome to life as its project lead and data scientist.

In presenting Metronome to the crowd Jordan described its autonomous and self-governing nature, its reliability, and its portability. She described that the Q1 chain port to Ethereum Classic was still on target, and teased the release of the Metronome mobile wallets.

However, she also focused on how the Metronome team views itself. “Metronome authors see themselves as just another player in the MET ecosystem — the community is the main driver,” she said.

Metronome belongs to the community, to each individual owner, and we are all just as able to expand and promote Metronome.

Conclusion

World Crypto Con and the BLOQchain hackathon were excellent opportunities to engage the Metronome community and discuss Metronome with the wider cryptocurrency community. All hackathon participants offered unique and intriguing solutions and use cases for Metronome, and everyone got to take some home.

Be sure to follow Metronome on Twitter and join its Telegram to keep the conversation going, the Metronome team will continue to let the rest of the community know about upcoming meetups, conferences, and talks.