Innovation Sandbox: Awards Ceremony

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 1:17

   Hello and good morning near uh we're going to take a couple of minutes wait for some people to join in. If you want to scan that QR code, you can hop on and browse all the wonderful projects that were submitted into this hackathon.

2. 1:35

   If you hold a Legion SBT, you can vote on them. Just getting a few things signed up. Hey, hello. Good to see you. Let's get this started. I'm with you. Going to wait. Uh, going to wait a bit longer. I think that we don't have the link out to the right thing.

3. 2:21

   Let's see. Where are you? looks like we're getting everybody from YouTube, but are we posted to X right now? If you are tuning in from X, please comment. Let us know if you can see us. Good morning. Good to see you. Go ahead and join that community vote. Let's upload some things. Let me know.

4. 3:15

   Oh, hey, UTICK is here. Nice. Good to see you. UTICK was one of the projects. I It was a decentralized video sharing. I think it utilized Nova. Morning, Monza. GM Raul. Good to see you. I still don't think that we're streaming live to X yet. I see a whole lot of YouTube, but not any X. So, uh, bear with me as we get this sorted.

5. 4:09

   Uh, oh, yeah. Okay. So, somebody's watching it from the broadcast from the X, but for some reason I don't Oh, there you are. Okay, cool. So, we are we're streaming everywhere we need to be. Okay. Um, hey, good to see you. Good to see you. Jacob, welcome in.

6. 4:30

   Solanir Neptune AI is here. Another great project that was submitted. Shadow Corp is here. They did um zero the private browser. Paul is here. Check out war. Oh, whoa. War of Cards. Team Smart Pay SDK is here. Solid. Solid. Good morning, Vital Point. Um that one is Argus.

7. 5:17

   I see the numbers going up. We'll give it uh one more minute and then we'll we'll go ahead and get started. Okay, cool. We got that going. There we go. Now, now it now it looks like it's set up. This makes a lot more sense. Yes, we're cooking.

8. 5:59

   All right, I think we are good to get started. So, let's kick this off. Um, last chance. I'm going to switch the side, but scan that QR code. You'll be brought to the community vote page. You can browse all the projects, check them out, you can vote on them if you hold a Legion SVT. Let's get started.

9. 6:19

   So, this is the Innovation Sandbox awards. It's uh we are uh going to do an overview of what this hackathon was all about. We're going to have have a couple of words and uh thank you to our sponsors and partners. We're going to do the awards and then some next steps.

10. 6:42

    So, the innovation sandbox, it was a 21-day global virtual hackathon. We were focusing on shipping productionready products that meaningfully leverage near. This involved the uh these tracks involve were focused on decentralized AI, privacy preserving consumer apps, intent-driven commerce and projects were meant to leverage the near AI private cloud near intents shade agents and near protocols unique capabilities such as it account model chain signatures and global contracts.

11. 7:18

    The results is we had 485 participants, 85 projects submitted. We had over 20K in bounties. This included three ecosystem sponsors who we will hear from soon. And then we had six workshops with over 250K engagements. It was a lot of fun.

12. 7:40

    We had some sponsors, Hot Pay, Ping, and Nova, each with their own track sponsor. And then we had some partners. Shout out to Funding the Commons. Uh Funding the Commons, it's a global platform dedicated to advancing public goods funding. Um they really helped us out in organizing this whole hackathon. And we also had James come on at the last final one, uh final workshop, the last office hours. had some great review of projects, kind of learned about what the whole program was about. Um, big big

13. 8:12

    shout out to them. Thank you for um helping organize all this. And then also uh PL Genesis who has a special track to keep you building past this hackathon which we'll get a word from later at the end of this presentation. So for judges uh the uh these projects were judged by nearthub and near a AI. So this includes Joe Spano and uh the great folks at NearDev and then the Near AI team uh

14. 8:50

    lended a hand here as well checking out the projects and looking at each each of each of them. So thank you. How projects were evaluated on technical execution. I've shown this slide quite a few times, but we focused on technical execution. So, um, a sound architecture, thoughtful implementation, reliable execution, the user experience of the app. So, how did it look from the user's perspective, the impact and usefulness

15. 9:16

    of the app, uh, if it addressed a real problem and a credible path to adoption, the completeness and functionality of the app, so how ready was it at the end of the program? And then I've added one more here just because I think it's relevant and I hope it paints a picture.

16. 9:31

    So uh we also evaluated them on the relevance to the track. There were a lot of really great projects that were submitted but we have to keep in mind what the tracks were asking for and ultimately a lot of these like last these last decisions kind of boiled down to how well did the project fit the track that it was being built for.

17. 9:56

    So, we had uh just to go over the prizes that we will be announcing, there was uh so $3,500 per track. We had the three main tracks, so it's $3,500 each. There's a $2,500 only on bonus and then a,000 and then $2,000 crosstrack bonuses. And I just want to like make this clear that so there were there's uh one award per track and then two awards additional. So there is one track that will not have an additional uh runner up.

18. 10:36

    And then we have our uh ecosystem bounties Nova, Hot Pay, and Ping, which we'll bring on to announce the winners. So I'm going to bring on Julian from Nova. take it away. Hi. Can you hear me? Yep. Very good. All right. Um, so thanks for having me, uh, IOT. Um, yeah, just a quick word about Nova. So, I built Nova as an SDK for anyone to be able to plug and play easily uh, some decentralized backend

19. 11:11

    service into their DAPs. And I was expecting from this hackathon to to see how builders start using Nova. Uh and I'm really happy because uh we had uh 18 projects who integrated Nova in their code. Um there are some very interesting things. So if you want we can go with Nancy in the winners.

20. 11:38

    Thank you. So on my side I have selected private rag, proof of pulse and private finance as my uh winners. Private rag because uh the market is huge and will keep growing. uh they are proposing um a tool for enterprises um I believe that enterprises willing to integrate AI into their workflows uh but without leaking uh private data is a huge market and uh so that's the main reason uh of course the app uh technically is very

21. 12:13

    good and uh is very well done proof of pulse the market is more niche uh they are proposing a solution to fight code on move to earn apps. Uh but what I like is that the problem is really clearly identified and also we have one big competitor. Uh that's the sweat app in the near ecosystem. So I really want to give a chance to proof of pulse to maybe move on the next step. Uh if we can make the bridge with with sweat that would be awesome. And then priv Finance honestly

22. 12:47

    it's very well done app. Uh the UIX is simple but straightforward. It has the interesting features that you could expect from uh private portfolio application and so yeah, I think this app is for everyone and I I really like um how it's working.

23. 13:08

    Nice. Thank you very much. Uh I I also enjoyed looking at all the Nova bounties. I thought there were a lot of really good submissions here, but thank you Julian. I'm gonna bring you down. Yep. All right. So now next to announce the hot bounty going to bring on Georgie. How's it going Georgie?

24. 13:27

    Hi everybody. Do you hear me well? Yep. Can hear you great. Yeah, thanks Elliot. So uh I'm apart from uh Hotlaps. Hotlaps is a uh a set of uh projects uh for decentralized payments starting from decentralized bridges uh to um decentralized exchange NFT marketplace and uh hot pay is just one of the products that we have simply saying hot pay is the way to generate a link to for you to receive a payment and uh I would expect solutions ranging

25. 14:03

    from very bas basic to just uh generate uh a link to get the money and it integrates into an application flow or maybe an application that is built around the idea that uh there are many people that can pay you throughout the link and etc etc and uh we are ready to move to the winners.

26. 14:26

    Cool. And so we decided to go with two uh they are uh lie they present us best in the in the narrative of AI agents. Uh one of them is uh cloudboard skills and another one is a uh a wrapper for um chat GPT also and uh they both utilize uh generating a link and receiving payments and uh I really like the it's the right time to go with the narrative.

27. 15:02

    So kudos to the projects. Nice. Thank you. Uh thank you very much. That was great. All right, so I'm gonna bring you down. Uh, move on to ping. Um, okay, Jay, I'm going to bring you on up. There you go. What's good, Elliot? How's it going?

28. 15:25

    Doing well. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I'm pumped about the hack. Go ahead. Tell us about ping. So, yeah, let me jump in. So ping essentially is the orchestration layer for anything to anything payments. Teams can use ping to accept and automate payments across any chain or fiat through our APIs or on-ramp and our ping links. Um when it came to the bounty for the hackathon, we really wanted to see

29. 15:50

    people build things like an application, an agent or a SAS workflow that used ping to accept or route these payments across fear and crypto. um whether that used our on-ramp or generated or managed payments through the ping API or ping links. Um especially with new product experiences which can be unlocked through AI now. Um I think this was I was really excited to see how this went

30. 16:12

    and I'm pretty happy to say we got a bunch of submissions uh which I really liked many of which leverage ping in a a load of different ways. So let's get them announced. Cool. Uh so we got three winners. Um, the first winner is Crooksen AI, which is an AI clone that can write replies and posts um on socials in one click, automate content calendars and brand strategies in notion. I thought this was super cool being able to have kind of

31. 16:39

    your agent plan content or strategies while you code or do other things. I think that's a great unlock for small teams. Um, they use Ping for payments in their pro and agency plans, which seemed a really logical extension for their business model and product. Um and it's just a great overall use of ping here.

32. 16:55

    Um second winner is actually a double winner across the boundaries near skills for open claw which allows agents to chat. Um you can control agents in chat in order to receive crypto payments and swap using your intents. I love the demo. Um I thought it looked super easy to use as an end user too. I think the near get paid skill to accept payments with ping and hot is um as both options

33. 17:18

    was really slick. Um I thought this is a really good job. So well done. And then the final winner was Cabo, which is a privacy first trading dashboard with a marketplace for encrypted strategies. Um, I thought the demo was great again and I also thought this was a great example of using Nova as well. Um, the strategies could be purchased using Ping checkouts and you could also top up your account using the Ping on. So, um, used kind of two examples of Ping tech there.

34. 17:42

    Um, so yeah, each each winner takes home $500. Um, thank you for all the submissions. This was really fun to be part of. um any builder that tinkered or used painter in the sandbox. Thank you so much. This was fun. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Jay. I'm gonna bring you No worries. Thanks for having me, man.

35. 18:01

    All right. Uh that wraps up our ecosystem bounties. Thank you so much for everybody that applied to them. Um, it's always really great when you when we are able to work with these ecosystem bounties because I feel like it like really puts them to the test. I think you're able to kind of explore a lot about these products that you're trying to integrate and it's it's really useful

36. 18:25

    for everybody involved. So, thank you again. So, now to talk about the main tracks. So the big winners the first one is private web and private life. So this was focusing on building consumer apps where privacy is a focus specifically that privacy is a necessary feature in order to make this app what it is something that could be returned to every day. Uh yeah. So without further ado,

37. 19:05

    the runner up for this is a test AI. So safe and audible and private AI for governments. The judges liked that. Um so it was a desktop near AI app. It had a principal QR code proof so you could trace sources. Uh the judges thought that at its core it was a solid model for proper products building on Near AI and uh they're really excited to see it break into the space would like to see this project continue and um ideally use

38. 19:37

    this foundation as like what other products can you build from this idea uh with real world applications. So, congratulations to a test AI that is $1,000. The next one, uh, the main track winner is Argus Strategic Intelligence Re-Imagined.

39. 20:01

    This was, uh, it had a really unique pass key feature for secure data transfer. I would really encourage folks to check it out. When you log in and, uh, we went through the code and we verified it. Um the this team published their own package that like essentially you can use a pass key to log in and create a near account and um be able to sign transactions via NPC network. And it had this layer of privacy on it where

40. 20:31

    you could uh be very anonymous. And we thought that was really unique especially to the um the purpose of this product which is like crowdsourcing um on the ground news from protected sources. So we thought that was a really unique capability. It had uh near AI integration as well in into it and um yeah would would recommend checking it out.

41. 20:59

    Okay, next. So, that rounds out the uh private web and private life. Congratulations, Argus, with $3,500. Next track is AI that works for you. So this one, this one was focusing on um autonomous agents, something that could uh that was doing that was maybe doing some uh task for you as uh you were going on.

42. 21:31

    Sorry, I could describe that better, but um it want it needed to le leverage near's AI stack, the private cloud, private chat um and autonomous this this idea of autonomous execution, uh AI that's doing a job very well. So, first runner up was Nest Home, private home care for those who matter the most. This was a really cool project. Um you should check it out. It's uh it's like an elder elder elderly care app that was hooked

43. 22:02

    up with a Raspberry Pi. So if you go and you see their demo and you go onto their website too, it recognizes faces and processes audio. It has a long time running camera that can be hooked up into um watching a room where your an elderly patient could be. And it'll recognize them. it'll recognize the patient and the caregiver and um it'll be able to give you updates on what is

44. 22:27

    happening. Um it was all verifiably private in uh how it used leverage near AI in the cloud. Um and we thought this was a really unique use case for this track. So congratulations Nestto Home $1,000. Next, the winner to take it home is Clinker Chat with intent.

45. 22:53

    Judges thought this was a really cool project. Um, you basically you enter an intent into it and then the agents will interact with each other to solve the intent on your behalf. So, as you can see like in this image and what he does in this demo, um, these these two a he like says that he wants something. I think he says that he wants to buy a Coke and his agent will interact with other agents on his behalf and all the agents have their own wallets and so they actually can transact on each other and we thought

46. 23:26

    that was really applicable for the for AI that works for you. So congratulations uh Clinker for uh you're taking home $3,500. Okay, for the next track, open society from finance to the real world. So, this one was focusing on stable coins, real world assets, tokenized assets, and near intense turning real world facts into reliable onchain outcomes. Something that was really emphasized here in probably every workshop was this focus on oracles. Building oracles on Near is

47. 24:02

    uh Near's technology is very good for building oracles because of this concept called yield resume. And so this was a really uh this ultimately judged this track was this usage of of an oracle. So congratulations to Nest an optimistic oracle on Near. Uh this was this was actually kind of twofold. So this was a concept for decentralized data um or decentralized oracles on Near and then it also shipped

48. 24:40

    a prediction market product to go with it to prove the oracles and how they were built and how they would and how they would use. And so uh we thought this was a really unique project and especially in how it used this turning real world facts into onchain executions. Um congratulations to the team. You're taking home 3500. Thank you very much.

49. 25:07

    Okay. And then uh the last one is the only on near bonus bounty. This was a project that had an exceptional use of near native capabilities such as the account model, chain abstraction, off-chain computation patterns and shade agents or code hash adistation. Um really the most like technologically advanced project we probably saw in the whole hackathon which was really cool.

50. 25:33

    This one was deliberent voting on near. This one is really cool. it um autonomous AI agents. It had like a persistent memory using some service that I forget what the name of it was but um these essentially these worker agents worked together to do autonomous style governance and they have a shared memory between them and in order to make all this possible um it leveraged TE code at the station via shade agents. So

51. 26:05

    each worker is deployed as a shade agent. It had yield resume to uh coordinate and listen to each other during um when voting and then all of the deliberation that was happening within a worker was private and verifiable via near AI. So we thought this was a very uh fitting choice for this track and how much it used the near uh the near technology and really demonstrated something that is only possible on near. So congratulations to Libra. $2500.

52. 26:39

    Well done. So unfortunately that is all the prizes but congratulations to all of the winners. Thank you so much for participating. This has been a long journey and I know how much it like uh what it how it feels to be a part of a hackathon and to spend so much time on it and uh to submit to to prizes and all that type of thing. So, thank you so much for participating. There are a lot

53. 27:06

    of you projects that I've tried to reach out uh directly to talk about. There's some others that I still owe some uh messages to, but um please don't stop building yet. Um a a big a big motivation of this hackathon is to keep it going. So, uh shout out to the community vote.

54. 27:28

    There were a lot of uh really good projects that were here. The engagement was great. We love seeing all the different uh the comments and the up votes and the sharing around unfortunately a lot of these projects didn't place and that kind of comes from the uh message that I mentioned earlier which was maybe that they weren't exactly applicable to any the tracks or um they didn't meaningfully leverage or

55. 27:51

    feel like they uh they leveraged the right tech stack in order to do what they did. Um but uh I've reached out to a couple of these and I'll reach out to the rest of them as well. So thank you so much for participating. There were a lot of really great projects in this hackathon.

56. 28:09

    And now so for some next steps um we don't want these projects to go to waste. We uh want to make sure that builders keep on building and we want you to be in uh be engaged in the Legion. So, uh, the vote app is getting an upgrade. So, we'd like you to link your project, your near account with the project. I'll give some more details on that later. And that's just so that we can kind of like keep a tab on you and know how you are building and we can continue to provide feedback and engagement to your projects. Uh, I want

57. 28:43

    you to share your feedback about this hackathon. I'll try and get a form out there so that you guys can share your feedback anonymously. I want to hear how how you think it went done went went what you think could it be uh could go better join the legion that is near's community squad uh do get involved you know the community vote succeeded as as much as it did because of the activity

58. 29:06

    that came from the legion and um I I that was it's a really great it's a really great community to be involved in finally don't stop building um the building doesn't stop here I'm actually going to bring on uh Noma from PL Genesis to go over to the next slide.

59. 29:25

    Although I got to find her first. There you are. Hello. Hi Elliot. How's it going? Going well. Uh ready ready to go bed. Amazing. Well, first I want to say huge congrats to all the winners of the innovation sandbox hackathon. Really, really cool to see what everyone's built. Um, I'm going to be diving into the projects. Um, and just kind of getting into the details more, but really quickly, I want to highlight one of the pathways that builders from

60. 30:02

    Innovation Sandbox can keep working um on their projects if you guys want to. Um, so I'm NMA. I'm representing Protocol Labs. PL Genesis is our hackathon, our flagship hackathon series. Um, last year we had a hackathon themed modular world. This was really focused on the building blocks of the internet. We collaborated with near on that one and this year we are back for more with the frontiers of collaboration hackathon. So what's really really cool

61. 30:33

    about this hackathon is that we have two tracks, one for fresh code and one for existing code. So that really brings me to my point here about how builders can double down with Near and PL Genesis. So if anyone is thinking, oh wow, like I really really like what I built. I want to carry this on. I want to get support to carry this on. Then you can scan the QR code in this slide to join the PL Genesis hackathon. So we have attached a

62. 31:05

    bounty booster of sorts of $500 for the best new or continued projects coming from the Innovation Sandbox hackathon. But that's not all. So if you scan this QR, you join the hackathon, you make some meaningful progress on your project from innovation sandbox, you also gain exposure to a 150k plus prize pool. Um so there is already 100k set aside for our fresh and existing code categories and then 50k plus from additional

63. 31:38

    sponsor bounties from our focus area tracks. Protocol Labs is really really keen on four key frontier tech domains. Web 3, crypto AI and neuroch. So I know a lot of folks here are building within the realms of web 3, crypto AI. Uh so just submitting you know that project from innovation sandbox with some meaningful progress made gives you exposure to you know this massive prize pool. But that's not all. Um if we could see the next slide.

64. 32:12

    Y builders also get exposure to an incredible pathway to turn their projects from proto prototype to a seed ready company. So protocol labs also stewards the early stage startup accelerator called founders forge. This is an 8 to 12 week uh synchronous program where the most promising projects from our hackathon are passed into this rigorous uh accelerator that offers mentorship, a detailed

65. 32:44

    curriculum, workshops, integration support, networking support. There's funding from protocol labs, connection to investors. We have a demo day which you know the entire program culminates in into where you get to pitch in front of investors and get investment. So um really that pipeline from hackathon to accelerator to demo day and investment is something that I would love to see more builders start to think about with their projects like how can I turn this from a hackathon prototype into a

66. 33:15

    fullfledged business. So, just here to highlight that. Uh, I maybe we could go back really quickly for everyone to scan that QR. If you didn't get a chance to take a picture, um, I will be around in our Discord. Um, all the details are there on this page on DevSpot for you to quickly sign up and get cracking on your uh, project. If you didn't get a chance to build during innovation sandbox and you're like, whoa, I really want to contribute, then you also have the opportunity to do that because we

67. 33:47

    accommodate new projects as well. So, thank you so much for your time and congrats again to all the winners. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. It's a great opportunity. All right, I will catch you later, Nema. There you go.

68. 34:04

    Um, and that concludes it. So that uh that's it on a 21-day sprint uh starting in January 26 until February 16th. Um it's been a great experience in all this. Um I see a lot of you projects in the chat. I'm so happy that you participated and contributed. Do reach out. I encourage you to reach out um directly.

69. 34:31

    uh really want to make the most of the projects that that did submit and and were were in this hackathon. I think a lot of them had potential. I think um uh yeah, and I think sorry I I do need to go take a nap. Anyways, um and finally, join the Legion. So, if you scan that QR code, um you will join Near's community.

70. 34:56

    Uh you'll mint an SBT. you'll be able to vote on the community projects. We do have a lot more planned for um continuing the uh continuing the projects that came in from this hackathon. And then finally, if you are going to Near Con in San Francisco on February 23rd and 24th, I think it is Monday and Tuesday, uh I'll see you then. So, thank you again everybody for tuning in. That concludes this presentation and I'll catch you next time. Bye-bye.