Coinparty Hackathon Update: Pangolin

Hackathons are about solving problems. As soon as you join one, you have solved the problem of what you are going to do 24/7 with the next part of your life until you send in your submission. I did my first one during one of many quarantines last year.

This one has had several problems on several levels to deal with. I thought I had a collaborator, and then I didn't. She did leave me her problem, however. It was an idea for an incentive program to encourage students to complete online study courses. MOOCs and other courses have a very low completion rate. In our project, students would earn cryptocurrency for finishing their courses. There would be a tracking system to tally up points and convert them at the end of the course. I came up with "Pangolin" just because I Googled it and there are not 500 other companies or organizations with that name.

Back in the team formation pool: the random selection of your teammates is another problem. Not for the quality of their work, but the randomness of their locations. For this one we have two guys in New York, one in California, one in India, and me, in Istanbul. Herding international cats across time zones. The team used CSS and React to bring the idea to reality.

Right now we are working toward submission, racing to finish.