# Astralis Chain Hackathon > An eight-week hackathon producing MIT-licensed developer tooling and infrastructure for Astralis, a proof-of-authority EVM chain. Three tracks, prizes per track, and a maintenance pool for repositories still active sixty days after it ends. ## Who this is for EVM developers and small teams who build tooling: contract migration tools, project starter kits, and resources that let AI agents deploy without a human in the loop. Not consumer dApp builders. ## What is not settled Three things on this page are not settled. The budget tier is unconfirmed, so the prize figures are the Recommended tier’s proposal rather than a committed number. The judging panel is a proposal and is confirmed in week two. The start date is proposed for 18 August and not yet fixed, so week numbers are firm and calendar dates are not. ## Program shape - Duration: 8 weeks. Weeks 1, 2, 3 prepare and market, weeks 4, 5, 6 build, weeks 7, 8 judge and wrap up. - Start date: proposed for 2026-08-18, not confirmed. Week numbers are firm, calendar dates are not. - Registration opens: week 3, on DoraHacks. - Submissions close: end of week 6. - Winners announced: week 8. - Licence required: MIT by default. - Target output: 20 to 30 qualifying open-source repositories. ## Tracks 1. Smart Contract Factory Build: A web tool that takes a contract address and ABI from another EVM chain and redeploys an equivalent contract to Astralis. Judged on: UX quality, backend cleanliness, and whether the migration is actually correct. Note: Source contracts have to be verified and openly licensed. Check the licence before you migrate anything; this is a requirement of the build, not a blocker on it. 2. Boilerplate dApps Build: Scaffold-ETH-2-style clonable starter kits that take a newcomer from git clone to a deployed dApp. Judged on: Completeness, coverage of chain-specific features, and the quality of the documentation. Note: The measure is whether a stranger can clone it and deploy without asking you a question. 3. Agentic Resources Build: MCP servers, developer portals, and cloneable resources that let AI agents build and deploy without a human in the loop. Judged on: Practical usefulness to an agent, and whether the interaction rewards the person driving it. Note: This track exists because the documentation an agent needs is not the documentation a person needs. ## Eligibility A submission missing any one of these is screened out before scoring. - An open-source licence: MIT by default. Private repositories are permitted only by prior arrangement with the Astralis team, agreed before you submit rather than after. - Deployed and working: Either a live URL with a working interface, or a working CLI or TUI with complete documentation. This proves the build runs and leaves something usable behind. - A README that stands alone: Setup, architecture, and the chain-specific configuration. The test is whether someone can pick it up without you in the room. - A demo, in either format: A video of three to four minutes at most, or a slide deck. Cover the problem, the solution, what you built, and where it goes next. - Proof it deployed: Contract addresses on the Astralis testnet, verified on the block explorer. Verification support is a hard dependency for the event, not a convenience. ## Judging rubric Scored one to five per criterion, then weighted. Ties go to the track's lead technical judge. - Technical execution (30%): Does it work? Is the code sound, tested, and maintainable? - Usefulness to the ecosystem (25%): Would another builder on this chain actually use it? - UX and completeness (20%): Is it finished enough to hand to a stranger? - Documentation and presentation (15%): Can someone else pick it up without the author? - Longevity potential (10%): Is this worth Astralis maintaining or extending? ## Prizes Figures are the Recommended budget tier from the proposal. The tier is not confirmed. - Per track: first $2,500, second $1,500, third $1,000. - Prize pool: $15,000, being 3 tracks at $5,000. - Maintenance pool: $2,000 for repositories still actively committed to more than 60 days after the event ends. - Total reaching builders: $17,000 of a $29,080 program, being 58%. - The full pool is held in reserve before the event opens. ## Timeline - Week 1, Foundations: Designer onboarded, a channel opened with the Astralis dev team, an input session on tracks with the CEO and CPO, teaser posts live. - Week 2, Build-out: Brand assets in progress, documentation portal drafted, testnet faucet confirmed, waitlist form created. - Week 3, Launch: Docs, tracks, questions and judging criteria published, DoraHacks listing live, sponsor letters of intent secured, registration opens. - Week 4, Build opens: The event goes live. Kickoff call and office hours begin, with daily support in the community channels. - Week 5, Build midpoint: Mid-event check-in, builder spotlights, and technical escalation to the Astralis engineers where a team is blocked. - Week 6, Build closes: The final seventy-two-hour push, where most of the activity is expected. Submissions close at the end of the week. - Week 7, Judging: Eligibility screening, judges scoring independently, then a group review call and a technical deep-dive on the shortlist. - Week 8, Wrap: Winners announced, prizes distributed, results written up, and a retrospective that sets up the second event. Dependencies that must be in place by the end of week two: - Testnet RPC endpoints and chain ID, publicly documented. - A funded faucet sized for the registration target. - A block explorer with contract verification, because verified addresses are an eligibility requirement. - A named technical contact at Astralis for escalations during the build weeks. ## Judging panel 5 judges proposed, 9 would be ideal. Not confirmed; confirmation is a week 2 decision. - Mariano Santucho, Lead technical judge, CTO. Light-touch during the event as a support developer. At judging, reviews the code under the hood, assesses what would need to change, and decides whether the build is worth keeping. - Rolando Polanco, Strategic judge, CEO. One or two briefing calls upfront to set expectations, optionally available to builders and sponsors during the event. At judging, identifies the strongest opportunities and leads the forward-looking questions for winning submissions. - Stephany Nunez, Product and resources judge, CPO. The most active before and during the event, making sure development resources and documentation are in place. At judging, assesses fit with the product vision and proposes routes from hackathon project to long-term product. - Rolando Polanco Vargas, Business model judge, Latam Growth. Assesses ease of use, quality, and ecosystem longevity. Also contributes to defining the tracks at the start. - Lisa Seim, Ecosystem and investment judge, Board. Subject to availability. Identifies opportunities benefiting both the chain and Strategic Exchanges, and connects promising builders to investors or launch platforms. For a new chain’s first event, an all-internal panel invites scepticism about fairness, and that scepticism is a well-known friction point in developer communities. Adding one respected external EVM developer, or a representative from a sponsor, materially improves credibility at close to zero cost. Candidates are being sourced. The program manager supports judging operationally, on scheduling, scoring sheets, and eligibility screening, and holds no scoring vote. ## Questions Q: Who can enter? A: Any developer or team, anywhere, subject to the excluded jurisdictions published with the event rules. That list is agreed in week one and published with the listing, so it cannot surface as a surprise at payout. Q: What licence do I have to use? A: MIT by default, with no additional assignment. MIT already grants Astralis the unrestricted right to fork, modify, extend, commercialise and maintain a submission, so nothing further is asked for. Private repositories are permitted only by prior arrangement. Q: Does Astralis end up owning my repository? A: No. There is no assignment beyond the licence you publish under. If Astralis ever wanted more, an explicit right to relicense for example, that would have to be a proper contributor licence agreement, drafted in clear language and presented at submission time rather than assumed. Q: When do prizes actually arrive? A: The full pool is held in reserve before the event opens. Before a payment moves there is identity verification, tax documentation, a W-9 for US winners and a W-8BEN for everyone else, and sanctions screening. The payment rail, whether that is USDC on Astralis, USDC elsewhere, or fiat, is still an open decision. Q: Can I use AI tools to build? A: The AI tooling policy ships with the published event rules in week three, alongside team size limits, the rules on pre-existing code, and the dispute process. One track is explicitly about building for agents, so the answer is not going to be no. Q: Can I start before the build window opens? A: The rules on pre-existing code are published with the listing in week three. Judging weighs what was built during the event, and the eligibility screen checks the deployment proof, so anything you bring in has to be declared. Q: My migration source contract is closed-source. Does that work? A: No. The Smart Contract Factory track requires that source contracts be verified and openly licensed. Identifying which contracts qualify is part of the build rather than an obstacle to it, and it is what keeps the resulting library safe to reuse. Q: What happens to my repository after the event? A: Abandonment after the prizes are paid is the highest-likelihood risk in this program, and the maintenance pool exists to counter it. Repositories still actively committed to sixty days out draw from that pool, and Astralis intends to fork and maintain the strongest of them. ## Contact hackathon@astralischain.com ## Languages This site publishes its full copy in English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. 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