When organising your event, you need to take prizes and judging into serious account. At their core, hackathons are fun and friendly competitions that allow teams to compete for prizes, awards, and accolades. This article dives into choices, judges, and the awarding of your event’s prizes. Choosing your Prizes When deciding what prizes to award the winners of your hackathon, it is worth bearing in mind your desired outcomes and hackathon goals. Prizes are a great incentivise for participants to build products and market events by attracting quality talent, and they can also align participant priorities and get them to build products that meet needs and desires. However, bigger prizes don’t always equal more participants. You should always provide prizes that are appealing, but you should also reserve some capital for other perks and bonuses, such as free access to software, mentorship, and workshops. When choosing your prizes, consider: Budget

Virtual hackathons are online events where participants gather to build products or solve complex problems. Usually, following a specific theme or subject, hackathons are one of the most proven ways to incubate and build great ideas using a targeted technology or stack. At the end of the event, a selected panel of judges (usually industry experts) assesses the projects entered and awards prizes to the teams that build the most successful product or proof of concept. As you’ll read later, success is a relative term that you get to define as the event organiser. Over the past year, BOLT🔩FUN has hosted a number of different sized events that varied in subject, length, and target audience. Throughout these events, we registered > 800 makers on to our platform, incubated 100+ projects and ideas, hosted 60+ workshops and discussions, and distributed over 3.5 BTC (~$65,000) in prizes - onboarding the next wave of bitcoin maker talent. Our most recent event, the Legends of Lightning tournament, was the largest bitcoin hackathon ever run. In this 4 part guide, we will break down the key details, considerations, and modules you will need to know to run your own successful online hackathon event. Discover & Incentivise Your Target Audience When running an online event, one of, if not the most important aspect is who will take part. Stating the obvious, hackathons don’t run without participants. Make sure to put a lot of thought and energy into who you will target to sign up to your event. This effort will also greatly impact your marketing and registration success rate. Finding Your Target Audience

Peak Shift also employs more general research methods during client sprints, including SWOT analysis of companies, platforms, or features. Research into competitor applications, user groups, and behavioural patterns provide a bedrock of user research which can be used to improve the UX of your application. This research can be done on a mirco (single feature) or macro (industry view) scale, depending on what is being focused on in a given sprint. Strengths We pull apart your application or feature to see what you're currently doing well, what distinguishes you from your competitors, and why. This gives us a good indication of USPs and how a product or specific feature/user journey can be shaped over time. This could be anything from UI/UX, customer service and support, to the values that drive your business. It's worth baring in mind that strengths are only strenghts if your competitors do not currently possess them, otherwise it's simply a necessity. Weaknesses

An Introduction to Virtual Hackathons Virtual hackathons are online events where participants gather together to build products, or solve complex problems together. Usually following a specific theme or subject, hackathons are one of the most proven ways to incubate and build great ideas using a targetted technology or stack. At the end of the event, a selected panel of judges (usually industry experts) assess the projects entered and award prizes to the teams that build the most successful product or proof of concept. As you'll read later, success is a relative term that you get to define as the event organiser. Over the past year, BOLT🔩FUN has hosted a number of different sized events that vary in subject, length, and target audience. Throughout those events, we managed to register > 800 makers to our platform, incubate 100+ projects and ideas, host 60+ workshops and discussions, and distribute over 3.5 BTC (~$65,000) in prizes - onboarding the next wave of bitcoin maker talent. Our most recent event, the Legends of Lightning tournament, was to this day the largest bitcoin hackathon ever run. In this guide we will break down some of the key details, considerations, and modules you will need to know to run your own successful online hackathon event. Discover & incentivise your target audience When running an online event, one of, if not THE most important aspect is who will be taking part. To state the obvious, hackathons don't run without participants. Make sure to put a lot of thought and energy into who you will target and sign up to your event. This effort will also greatly impact your marketing to registration success rate.

Now that we’ve covered a few of the basics of virtual hackathons, it’s time to have a think about what type of hackathon you’d like to host and how long it will run for. You can expect different outcomes and results depending on the length of your hackathon. In this article we will break down some common hackathon lengths, expectations, as well as some pros and cons of each. Before we dive into it, here are a few factors to consider when choosing the timeframe of your hackathon: Budget Generally speaking, the longer your hackathon runs, the more costs you will incur. These can be labour costs for those running the event, increased speaker and mentor fees, prize amounts, scaling software used, and more. Availability

Before you organise your virtual hackathon, you should first sort out what your desired outcomes are. Based on these goals, you can use a varying number of event “modules” to build the core of your online hackathon’s schedule and calendar. Focused mainly around onboarding, education, community engagement and building, event modules will help you stay organised whilst driving up participant engagement and hacking success. We split events into 2 categories: Workshops & Tutorials Focused around maker onboarding and education, these types of events provide participants with the skills required to be a successful hacker. Talks and keynotes (conference style) can provide inspiration of ideas, whilst more technical workshops and tutorials dive deeper into applying practical skills and mindsets. Community Hosted Satellite Events During our longer format hackathons (tournaments), we provide different community members and groups the opportunity to host their own “satellite” events. This encourages local engagement and community ownership during remote events, whilst continuing education and onboarding efforts.

Explore page Header section When no filter added, header should read "Discover {total} lightning projects" with a subtext reading "Explore a directory of lightning startups, projects, and companies." When a filter is added, header should read "Explore 14 lightning projects" with a subtext reading "Filtered by"

We are applying for a $100,000 grant to support our team in the phase #1 development of BOLT🔩FUN’s community and educational platform, growth, and quarterly #ShocktheWeb⚡️ virtual hackathons over the next year. The theme of this proposal is community building and education. Mass adoption of bitcoin requires use cases that will come from people with distinct skill sets, perspectives, and team formations. There is also a need for more builders with practical skills with bitcoin in the job market. BOLT.FUN is a community space for makers to learn about, and experiment with both bitcoin and lightning. Our mission is to support the evolution of bitcoin as the internet’s native currency by fostering an ecosystem with tools, events, and resources that decrease the time it takes for makers to create lightning-enabled web applications. An artifact of focusing on the developer experience is that we make bitcoin development attractive to the next generation of makers curious about coming into the ecosystem. Components Community: For some key phases bolt.fun is already reaching the top of search results (try searching for keysend, or lnurl). There is a lack of tutorials for creating bitcoin applications that cannot be filled by a couple of writers. We want to encourage more original user-generated content that would supplement our hackathons and the wider ecosystem. More specifically, we’re building our community platform using Stories, Bounties, Discussions, and a Hackathon Directory. Product Directory: Small amounts of money go a long way in bitcoin, but the progress of the projects and growth of the maker is quite opaque. Our directory not only serves as a place to discover lightning applications but also supports the individual or team maker by providing updates in the form of standup reporting.

Peak Shift also uses A/B testing, another method of user research used to compare two different versions of an application, product, or service. The outcome of this method is to see which version of the application performs better with users, and why. The statistical analysis of quantitive data (such as task success rate and time taken) is then used to determine which version of the application or service performs better with users. How to Prepare Collect your initial data and decide which feature, journey, or page you wish to test on users. It's best to start by optimising weaker areas of your application that need improvement. A good tip is to start by looking at areas typically associated with low task conversion or high drop-off rates. Identify the conversion goal or success metric. When performing A/B tests, it's important to have a guage of what defines a success in your variation design. These goals could be anything from number of clicks, time spent scrolling, e-mail signup forms completed, or even just looking at task rate completion and time taken. Generate your hypothesis. Once you've identified your testing goal, you can begin hypothesising potential improvements to the current version of your application. Prioritise a list of your ideas, keeping an eye out for two specific metrics: expected user impact, and difficulty of design, development, and implementation.

Peak Shift uses usability testing to uncover problems and opportunities in a client's application design. We also use this popular observational methodology when gathering data on how applications and their various user journeys are performing over time, identifying which areas require design attention in upcoming sprints. In a typical usability-testing session, a researcher asks the participant to perform certain tasks, usually interacting with a specific interface(s) or user journey/flow. While the participant completes these tasks, the researcher observes their actions, behaviours, successes and failures, as well as listening to any feedback or anecdotes they have along the way. The goals of a usability test are: Identifying any problems or painpoints in the application's design Exposing any opportunities for improvement Observing and learning about the user’s behaviors, patterns, and preferences Avoiding blind design bias from designers, marketers, and product owners

About the job At Peak Shift, we improve the user experince of privacy tools. From concept and research to design and development, Peak Shift Ltd. is a small studio focused on developing technology that distributes power and opportunity. Officially started in 2012, over the years we have worked on client projects globally with our remote team. From Asia to Europe, North America, the Caribbean and East Africa. We are looking for a product designer. You will be responsible for the direction of product design, and will work closely with development teams within the startups we work with to develop and launch new and improved products for our clients. Your responsibilities: UI Design Define and develop beautifully branded cross-platform products for our clientelle (UI) Identify opportunities for new product features, or improving current ones

Brainstorming Directions What type of content will be posting How often will we be posting What SM platform will we be using (Twitter/instagram/linkedin) Design Explorations content Ideas

This document is an overview of the Raise design work completed over the past year, and the suitable files required to carry on the design work within the company. The goal of this document is to provide a single place to organize all of the product-related content for a product design team to work internally. The focus behind this document is setting up for version 4 of the Raise platform which includes making the platform easier to use and building a transactional platform and cap table. The design file focuses on the latest version of the Raise platform that is being implemented. Previous versions of the Raise platform have been re-freshed to keep up with customer requests and usability. The new components of version 4 have been tested extensively with customers to inform the new direction for the Raise platform. Raise is a platform that allows founders, lawyers/legal secretaries, and investors to manage their companies and their legal assets (shareholdings) within one platform. Companies can get verified by completing an up-to-date version of the cap table (ownership structure), issuing any assets to shareholders to manage via the platform. Companies can then fundraise using the Deal Room feature, creating more shareholdings to issue to investors. Who are our users, and what's their journey? The main users we build for today are busy African founders building pre to seed stage companies primarily in Nigeria or Kenya. The ideal customer is in financial technology and managine two to three corporate structures between Africa and Delaware, or Canada. Here's the journey for those customers to be onboarded:

Abstract Imagine this scenario. You are in a public place, and you need to make a payment using your bitcoin wallet. You open your wallet on your phone, but you don't feel comfortable having your address and balance information displayed in public. This here a problem because you probably want to feel safe whenever you use your wallet in public, instead of worrying if someone might be looking over your shoulder. Privacy in bitcoin payments goes far beyond hiding balances and other sensitive information, however it is clear they could play a big part in it. By giving users the ability to hide their wallet's information if desired, they gain an added sense of privacy and security when making payments. How Information is Hidden in Bitcoin Wallets Although the hiding of information isn't incorporated into many bitcoin applications, a few wallets like Wasabi, Wallet of Satoshi, and others have. These are some of the methods they have used: Solution 1: Tapping on the Balance to Hide and Reveal It In this method, the hide icon / button is usually displayed within close reach of the balance itself. Users can quickly and easily hide information by tapping on this button. This method, though quick and easy to use, only provides the user with a limited amount of privacy. All other addresses, transactions, and other information that you may want to keep private are still very much visible.

Payment requests are a core feature of any bitcoin wallet, i.e being able to receive incoming funds into your account. Creating payment requests will allow you to receive funds into your bitcoin wallet. Input Variables There are various inputs required to generate a bitcoin payment request. This data is then encoded into a QR code/hash which can be shared with the payer as a form of invoice. These inputs will often vary from invoice to invoice, creating a unique payment request each time. Payer When generating a payment request, this input field allows you to request a payment from a particular contact or address. Amount Choosing the amount of bitcoin you wish to be payed.

Intro Coin selection is the process of choosing which of your Bitcoins to spend when creating and approving a spending transaction. To understand coin selection a little better, we must first grasp the concept of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs). A UTXO is the amount of digital currency remaining after a bitcoin transaction has been executed. UTXOs are processed continuously and are responsible for beginning and ending each bitcoin transaction. They might sound complicated, but they really are quite simple. They are the unspent change left after someone completes a transaction, similar to the change someone receives after conducting a cash transaction at the store. How does this relate to coin selection, you might ask? Because UTXOs allow for transactions to be conducted using miltiple fractions of bitcoin that do not all come from a single previous transaction. Instead, multiple fractions of bitcoin are retrieved by the algorithm to fulfill a spending request. For example, a purchase worth 1 bitcoin may retrieve 0.6 BTC from one byte and 0.4 BTC from another. Change from each of these fractions is then sent to the UTXO database to be spent at a later date. For example, my wallet balance is 1 bitcoin (BTC). If I have recently mined a block, this could be a fresh whole bitcoin. However, it is most likely going to be an accumulation of UTXOs (change) from previous bitcoin transactions. So, a balance of 1 BTC is more likely to comprimise of: 0.25 BTC

To understand coin selection, you should have already read up on UTXOs. Coin selection is the process of choosing which UTXOs to fund a bitcoin transaction with (i.e the transaction's inputs)^1 when making an on-blockchain payment. Since your wallet contains multiple fractions of bitcoin to arrive at a balance, these fractions are retrieved by an algorithm to fulfill the payment amount. There are two categories of coin selection strategies that are used in bitcoin applications: Automatic Coin Selection Manual Coin Selection

Coin Selection Intro Coin selection is the process of choosing which of your Bitcoins to spend when creating and approving a spending transaction. To understand coin selection a little better, one must first have a decent knowledge of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs), the amount of digital currency remaining after a bitcoin transaction has been executed. How does this relate to coin selection, you might ask? Because UTXOs allow for transactions to be conducted using miltiple fractions of bitcoin that do not all come from a single previous transaction. Instead, multiple fractions of bitcoin are retrieved by the algorithm to fulfill a spending request. For example, an outward transaction of 1.2 BTC may retrieve UTXOs worth 1 BTC and 0.5 BTC from a users wallet. Change (0.3 BTC) from this transaction is then sent back to the senders address in the form of one of more UTXOs. Coin selection, therefore, is the choosing of which UTXOs to fund a bitcoin transaction with (i.e the transaction's inputs). Design Problem Because each UTXO can be traced back on a public ledger to it's newly minted state (a whole bitcoin), we can unearth the digital footprints of bitcoin payments, potentially exposing the private data of senders, receivers, and their various wallet balances along the way. Coin selection, whether an automated or manual process, will most likely result in the breach of privacy for both you as well as your previous senders of bitcoin. However, there are various ways of mitigating how much data is exposed during each transaction. We can reduce this security risk in a few different ways, however, we are left with a design challenge.

A UTXO is the amount of digital currency remaining after a bitcoin transaction has been executed - essentially, the unspent change left after someone completes a transaction, similar to the change someone receives after conducting a cash transaction at the store. They are processed continuously and are responsible for beginning and ending each bitcoin transaction. They might sound complicated, but they really are quite simple. How does this relate to coin selection, you might ask? Because UTXOs allow for transactions to be conducted using miltiple fractions of bitcoin that do not all come from a single previous transaction. Instead, multiple fractions of bitcoin are retrieved by the algorithm to fulfill a spending request. For example, a purchase worth 1 bitcoin may retrieve 0.6 BTC from one byte and 0.4 BTC from another. Change from each of these fractions is then sent to the UTXO database to be spent at a later date. For example, my wallet balance is 1 bitcoin (BTC). If I have recently mined a block, this could be a fresh whole bitcoin. However, it is most likely going to be an accumulation of UTXOs (change) from previous bitcoin transactions. So, a balance of 1 BTC is more likely to comprimise of: 0.25 BTC 0.01 BTC 0.56 BTC 0.04 BTC

Notes taken from Shinobi's interview with Peter McCormack from What Bitcoin Did (WBT) Ep 303... How does Bitcoin work at the technical level? Consensus Rules Mining & Nodes Wallets & Transactions Why is Bitcoin important?