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Join Us For The First Community Smart Contract Challenge With $50,000 In Prizes!

We are thrilled to collaborate with the Stellar Development Foundation to introduce the community to blockchain technology.

Running through August 18, the Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge provides an opportunity for web devs to learn all about decentralization, wallets, consensus, interoperability, and all the other lingo you may have heard floating around but never quite understood. This is your signal to dive in and unlock those a-ha moments!

We’ll share all the resources you need to learn the fundamentals, and you’ll come out of the challenge knowing how to build with Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform designed for scale and sensibility.

We have two prompts for this challenge, but six ways to win. Did we mention the $50,000 prize pool? And a free trip to London to attend the Meridian Conference?! Our biggest offering to-date, thanks to the generous Stellar Development Foundation.

Ready to get learning and building? Read on to learn about the prompts and how to get started.

Our Prompts

Build a dApp

Build a decentralized app (dApp) that leverages one or more Stellar smart contracts. The main requirement is that users should be able to interact with the application. Other than that, you are free to build whatever you want!

Prize Categories

In addition to our overall Build a dApp winner, we have two additional prize categories you could win for this prompt:

  • Glorious Game: Awarded to a top game dApp
  • Super Sustainable: Awarded to a top dApp that focuses on real-world positive impact

Here is the submission template for anyone that wants to jump right in, but please review all challenge and prompt-specific rules on the official challenge page before submitting.

Submission Template for Build A dApp

Create a Tutorial

Create a tutorial that explains some part of the Stellar developer experience. Your submission does not need to be long and involved, or super polished, but it should be coherent and easy to follow.

Prize Categories

In addition to our overall Create a Tutorial winner, we have two additional prize categories you could win for this prompt:

  • Wonderfully Written: Awarded to a top written tutorial
  • Vivid Video: Awarded to a top video tutorial

Here is the submission template for anyone that wants to jump right in, but please review all challenge and prompt-specific rules on the official challenge page before submitting.

Submission Template for Create a Tutorial

Prizes

We’ll be splitting our $50,000 prize pool six ways. Here is what our prompt winners and additional prize category winners will receive:

Prompt Winners (2):

  • $13,000 USD
  • An invitation to Meridian, Stellar’s annual conference in London (October 15-17, all travel expenses paid for).
  • Exclusive DEV Badge
  • A gift from the DEV Shop

Prize Category Winners (4):

  • $6,000 USD
  • Exclusive DEV Badge
  • A gift from the DEV Shop

All Participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.

How To Submit Your Project

At minimum, you will need to take the following steps to submit a valid entry:

  1. Fill out this form on the Stellar website. Make sure the email address you sign up with matches the email address associated with your DEV account so we can verify your submission.
  2. Publish a post using the submission template associated with each prompt.

All participation guidelines (i.e. judging criteria, links to contest rules, etc) can be found on the official challenge page so be sure to review that information thoroughly before submitting.

Getting Started

We know it can be a bit intimidating to jump into web3 and blockchain, so the Stellar team has published a companion guide that covers all the topics you need to get started:

Additionally, we encourage all participants to join the dev-hack channel in the Stellar Dev Discord, a community server for asking questions and meeting the community of developers building with Stellar.

Stellar Livestreams

The Stellar team will host a series of livestreams right on DEV throughout the course of the challenge. Just visit our homepage at 12pm EDT on these dates:

Need Inspiration?

Below are a few ideas for both prompts to get your creative juices flowing.

Your smart contract dApp could be related to:

  • A game where players interact on-chain to compete against each other
  • A public goods application where interactions with the dApp could result in real-world positive impact.
  • A DAO or governance-related dApp
  • Identity Tooling
  • Financial services, like a wallet or payment dApp

Your tutorial could focus on:

We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Additional Resources

For building DeFi protocols:

For building wallets:

  • Stellar Wallet SDK: a collection of SDKs enabling you to take advantage of the pre-existing deposit/withdraw capabilities of network anchors
  • Stellar Quest: interactively learn and understand the fundamentals of interacting with the Stellar network: transactions, operations, accounts, etc.
  • Build Applications Tutorials: a few written tutorials focusing on JavaScript implementations of common wallet functionality
  • Stellar Design System: components and styles that can make your frontend development easier

Tools

Explore the Network

  • Stellar Laboratory: interacts with the network and queries network activity
  • Stellar.Expert: Block Explorer to view ledger entries, accounts, assets, analytics, etc.
  • Data Indexers: services and infrastructure available for you to query and monitor network state and activity

Connect to the Network

  • Freighter Browser Wallet: a wallet developed and maintained by SDF
  • Stellar Wallets Kit: a community-built library that integrates multiple browser wallets into a frontend project
  • @soroban-react: connects ReactJS frontends with wallets like Lobstr, Freighter, Xbull. Help you create the messages that users will sign.
  • Simple Stellar Signer: a plug-and-play tool to integrate your solution with multiple wallets at once
  • Account Viewer: a simple wallet, with available source code, that can be used to interact with a Stellar account on Mainnet or Testnet

Build on the Network

Important Dates

  • July 10: Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge begins!
  • August 18: Submissions due at 11:59 PM PDT
  • August 27: Winners Announced

Questions about the challenge? Ask them below.

Good luck and happy coding!

Top comments (74)

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youngfra profile image
Fraser Young

$50k 🤯

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softwaredeveloping profile image
FrontEndWebDeveloping

I can't say what the rest of the community thinks... 🙂but I liked it better when the dev challenges where small and friendly. Now their so big and up there that it excludes a lot of devs.

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ravixalgorithm profile image
Mr. Algorithm

Yeah, but I think the tutorial challenge is great because anyone can participate and learn. You can document what you learn, which helps reinforce your understanding. It's a way to both learn and contribute.
Definitely, the dapp development challenge is not very beginner-friendly.

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softwaredeveloping profile image
FrontEndWebDeveloping

Yes. And the high money, makes it very competitive.

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ravixalgorithm profile image
Mr. Algorithm

Yeah 🤧

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

This is good feedback. Will definitely Keep this in mind

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softwaredeveloping profile image
FrontEndWebDeveloping

Thank you!

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lief_storer_fff38ed6bd2d2 profile image
Lief Storer

You might surprise yourself. The Stellar community is really supportive of devs at many levels of experience. The other cool thing is that even if you didn't take a prize out of the hackathon, Stellar has multiple different funding programs to support projects well past the Challenge. Check out SCF

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peter profile image
Peter Kim Frank

So excited to launch our most ambitious DEV Challenge ever. A huge thank you to Stellar for partnering and making this possible. Can't wait to see what everyone builds!

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ravixalgorithm profile image
Mr. Algorithm

Hey, so I am working on the tutorial challenge
Do we have to create a website or something, I have an idea to make a website with a few tutorials over it and so can I use each tutorial as a separate entry?

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

You'd be able to use each tutorial as a separate entry, yes!

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ravixalgorithm profile image
Mr. Algorithm • Edited

Thanks a lot for clarification

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sarahokolo profile image
sahra 💫

Whew, I see we're no longer in the little leagues😅🔥. Can't wait to see what the participants come up with.

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karthik_n profile image
Karthikeyan

Good opportunity to learn about the smart contracts

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turma profile image
Ted

Fill out this form on the Stellar website

Is it only me or the linked page is broken and there's no form there? 🙄

page error image

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lief_storer_fff38ed6bd2d2 profile image
Lief Storer

Are you still having issues with this @turma ? Let me know- I've seen this a couple times caused by a bad request to Hubspot. I can look into it, but if all fails, then you can submit on this webform.

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turma profile image
Ted

Are you still having issues with this

Mmm... yes, I guess... there's no form on the page (linked in the post) currently at all 😅 unless I'm missing something...

you can submit on this webform

And I get a blank page here... 🙄

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

@turma are you still having issues now?

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turma profile image
Ted

Yes, I am unfortunately. I was able to open the form by the direct link provided above when I opened it some time before, but now it seems to be broken for me again, as well as the embedded form on the official challenge page. (I see the same loading state there as before) I dunno, maybe some network/ISP issues, if others can open it perfectly fine. (I just don't get why the direct link did work actually)

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Hm okay, @turma feel free to submit to DEV as you normally would and leave a message directly in your submission post that you're having trouble accessing the form on stellar's website. This way, your submission will still be valid.

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turma profile image
Ted

Thanks a lot ❤️

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turma profile image
Ted

OK. Looks like I was eventually able to find out what is the problem here. My browser of choice is FireFox, and while the form can easily be opened in Chromium-based browsers, FireFox seem to have hard time with that. I assume it's related to this known HubSpot issue (as you mentioned you use HubSpot forms). FYI @jess, @lief_storer_fff38ed6bd2d2.

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mrgeraffe profile image
P Yogesh

Image description

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cappyoo7 profile image
Cappy-OO7

Hello.

I am trying to play catch up on the original repo and I am clueless and could seriously use as much help, advice, and guidance as I can get.
I am winging this blind folded with no experience.
Thank in advance!
X

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jess profile image
Jess Lee
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alician3 profile image
Alicia

Im considering attempting, your post is encouraging 😊. Wish you the best 🙏😊

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ravixalgorithm profile image
Mr. Algorithm

Gonna be fun as I'm going to learn then just document it as a tutorial for others and my participation will also be done, so one challenge and three benefits.

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kelseyrh profile image
Kelsey Hale

At some point I thought there was another Frontend Challenge slated to start the same day as this challenge, but now it seems to be missing from the upcoming or current challenges (although its page still exists for Frontend Challenge v24.07.10). Was its original listing a mistake?

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

@kelseyrh we realized we didn't have the bandwidth to coordinate a new frontend challenge while launching this one, so decided to remove it from this launch cycle. We will have a new frontend challenge for our next launch date on July 24!

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jess profile image
Jess Lee

Very excited about this one, good luck to everyone participating!

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