The Buidl Web3 with Coinbase Cloud Challenge asked aspiring developers to create a prototype for the next great dapp (decentralized app). Coinbase, a leader in the innovative fields of blockchain and web3 technologies, believes that the field of dapp development is growing fast so they want to ensure that this field serves the users of the future.

For this challenge, Coinbase sought innovative and socially conscious people to take their development tools and use them for the greater good of web3’s future. Competitors that presented a promising prototype for a dapp, using Coinbase Node and Coinbase Wallet for the build, would be rewarded with part of a $15,000 prize purse, a pitch meeting with influential Coinbase members, and access to exclusive training sessions.

Although competitors could build nearly anything they wanted, Coinbase incentivized dapps that were designed to help the next generation of users come into web3 or that served the greater good. 

This challenge involved multiple webinars that were designed to support the audience in navigating the new Coinbase Cloud and Node tools. These webinars were immensely helpful, but an unforeseen snag briefly disrupted the challenge as Coinbase experienced some internal shake-ups.

In light of the internal changes Coinbase experienced, we successfully transitioned between the client teams who managed the challenge, adjusted the challenge timeline, and responded to a low participation rate near the close of the challenge.

One issue that could not be fully resolved was a change to the Coinbase tools that were supposed to be used for the challenge as these were no longer available to the public in the same form. In light of this, the challenge team made the submission formats more encompassing so that competitors who had to react to these changes could still complete the challenge without undue strain.

In spite of these difficult circumstances, we successfully encouraged a cohort of four talented competitors to participate in the challenge and develop their own dapps. Three of these submitting teams/individuals were invited to present their functioning prototype before a panel of about eight Coinbase invitees from various teams within their company. These presentations gave the innovators exposure to Coinbase workers and also enabled a few subsequent connections where they continued the conversation about the potential of their dapp. 

In the end, the entire $15,000 USDC prize purse was awarded among these three finalists and the winners were offered the chance to stay in touch with Coinbase.

1st place

• Ben

2nd place

• stackit.finance

3rd place

• DeSure: Protect your Future with Blockchain