---
# System prepended metadata

title: ideation bounties Open the Metaverse Hackathon
tags: [hackathons, ' tezos']

---

---
tags: hackathons, tezos

title: ideation bounties Open the Metaverse Hackathon
---




# Open the Metaverse hackathon

The word 'metaverse' was coined in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, when the Internet we know today was in its early infancy, but it has taken wings in recent times, with even large companies changing their focus and even name to position themselves for this new trend.

Throughout the history of information technology, open standards and open ecosystems repeatedly proved more successful than proprietary walled gardens. Public blockchains, a concept little more than a decade old, provide us with better tools than ever for opening up a plural, equitable world.

For this hackathon, we invite everyone to become co-creators of this new paradigm. The focus of the tracks will be on playfulness / gaming and the digital you in the metaverse. We welcome different backgrounds, whether it is blockchain, AR, VR, 3D, art, design, architecture, or anything you could imagine as part of this digital reality. Hack with us and Open the Metaverse.

## Track: Digital playground

In contrast with the broadcast culture of the XX. century, we might define the XXI. century as a playground culture, with the boundaries between media consumption and creation getting increasingly blurred with the advancements of information technology. This blur has extended to the boundary of play and work, especially in creative professions. Regardless whether this is a new development or the reclamation of a fundamental human birthright, we see more and more opportunities around us to achieve acclaim through playfulness.

We invite you to think about ways play and creativity can blend, how games can encourage and support creativity, how play can become creation, and how the world around us - digital, physical and its intersection - can breed play and wonder... To explore the boundaries of 'videogame' as a concept; to blend the virtual and physical spaces we play and create in; to connect and empower; and the role that a distributed trust layer, such as the one provided by the Tezos blockchain, can play in all this.

First prize:
- Prize money: 5000 EUR
- Minimum requirements:
    - Working prototype
    - Open source codebase
    - Documentation explaining the concept, execution, and further steps needed for delivering a complete product

Runner-up prize:
- Price money: 2500 EUR
- Minimum requirements:
    - Whitepaper or detailed concept document
    - User experience wireframe, extending to the UX of blockchain operations
    - Analysis of feasibility and steps needed for delivering a working prototype

## Track: Digital Me

The more immersive online environments become and the more we use them, the more we want to make our digital identities our own. To reflect our real-world appearance through 'digital twinning', to dream and design something that expresses our personality in ways that would be impossible in physical reality, or to blend the physical and the digital through computer vision and AR 'filters'.

We believe that digital extensions of our personality - avatars, personas, digital twins, personalized filters and digital fashion - will be increasingly central to the concept of an open metaverse. But who owns the 'digital me'? Can we take back control from the platforms we use? Could a 'global digital persona' even exist, carrying a coherent identity and self-owned representation across video streams, VR chatrooms, building block games and photo filters?

We invite you to explore this space of digital identity and 'personal branding', and envision novel concepts enabled by the layer of distributed trust offered by the Tezos blockchain.

First prize:
- Prize money: 5000 EUR
- Minimum requirements:
    - Working prototype
    - Open source codebase
    - Documentation explaining the concept, execution, and further steps needed for delivering a complete product

Runner-up prize:
- Price money: 2500 EUR
- Minimum requirements:
    - Whitepaper or detailed concept document
    - User experience wireframe, extending to the UX of blockchain operations
    - Analysis of feasibility and steps needed for delivering a working prototype

## ~~cutting board~~

~~What *is* the 'Metaverse'?~~

~~The word was coined in the science fiction novel Snow Crash published in 1992, when the Internet we know today was in its early infancy, and referred to a virtual world people could access through VR and AR-like interfaces. But the word's current use hints at more than simply *a* virtual world. When we talk about the Metaverse today, we mean *the* virtual world - the collective economy of all virtual spaces and all forms of digital communication, in convergence with the physical world through AR and telepresence technologies ([Metaverse Roadmap 2016](https://metaverseroadmap.org/roadmap.html)).~~

~~Some consider the Metaverse to be a future infrastructure to be built, and we see major companies changing their focus and even their name, to position themselves as masters of the coming new age. ~~

~~We don't share this view.~~

~~The Metaverse cannot have a 'master' - if it does, it's not *the* Metaverse, just another virtual space among many. The Metaverse must be as plural, collective and open as our physical reality is. And in a way, it already exists - in the way the Covid generation's teenagers are blending influencer culture, video game streaming, improvisational theatre, digital art and social media into a single platform of social and parasocial relationships, all the disparate technical components assembling into a whole greater than its parts.~~

Public blockchains can have a fundamental role in an open and equitable technical infrastructure for developing the Metaverse ~~through self-sovereign identity and ownership~~, and independence from any single private or government entity, eliminating the fundamental issue of the 'plug in the wall' that a single actor may pull, erasing the communication channels and recorded history of entire communities ([Shapiro, 2018](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=13287742104084591442&hl=hu&as_sdt=0,5)). 

~~And we firmly believe that Tezos is in the right place at the right time to be a core driver of this revolution.~~