A comprehensive look at the 5 most noteworthy projects at the Avalanche hackathon

Author: Overnight Porridge, The Path of the Metaverse

From March 25 to 27, 2022, over 250 hackers from around the world gathered in Barcelona, Spain, to participate in a hackathon organized by Encode Club. It is reported that a total of 56 projects were submitted during this hackathon, most of which focused on the theme of Avalanche subnets, but some submissions also involved games, DeFi, and NFTs.

In addition, the event received support from several project teams and institutions, such as Ankr, Axelar, Chainlink, Coinbase Wallet, LayerZero, etc., which provided prizes for some of the participating projects.

This article focuses on five projects that received recognition from the Avalanche Foundation, each of which won a $20,000 hackathon prize.

Figure: The last few hours of the hackathon competition

1. Best Optimized Precompiled EVM, Prize $20,000, Winning Project OracleEVM

2. Best Ledger-Compatible Subnet UI, Prize $20,000, Winning Project SubnetX

3. Best Subnet Notification Service for Expired Validators, Prize $20,000, Winning Project subnet.center

4. Best Custom VM Subnet Implementation, Prize $20,000, Winning Project AEVEREST

5. Best dApp Deployed on Subnet, Prize $20,000, Winning Project zkID

Here is a brief introduction to these award-winning projects:

Best dApp: zk-id

Note: This application is for hackathon and learning purposes only; the circuits and contracts are unaudited.

Project Overview:

zk-id is a zero-knowledge identity protocol that allows users to anonymously prove that they meet certain criteria (e.g., owning an NFT or having more than X Y tokens). It can be used for various applications, such as joining a DAO or receiving airdrops, without revealing their address.

The demo of the application includes the following:

1. A universal plugin for building Merkle trees using Poseidon hash on the AVAX public chain state.

2. A universal implementation for SNARK proofs of Merkle inclusion.

3. Constraints that the prover knows the private key corresponding to such addresses.

About Zero-Knowledge Proofs

To enhance privacy, Merkle leaves can be commitments to private values, such as

hash(pws/addresses/some_secret_nullifier_tuple), rather than just plaintext addresses (as shown in Tornadcash, zkAirdrops). However, since zk-id is proving public chain state, these additional constraints are unnecessary in this simple project.

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/0xEigenvector/zk-ID/

Developers: 0xSage and 0xMako

Comment: Identity protocols are a crucial component for Web 3, yet existing protocols in the market can lead to privacy leakage issues. Identity protocols that adopt zero-knowledge proof solutions may become a necessity, as they can satisfy behaviors like flaunting wealth while protecting users' information and asset security. Therefore, although zk-id is still just a demo product, it is indeed worth paying attention to.

Best Custom Subnet: AEVEREST++

AEVEREST++ is a fast, high-throughput custom VM subnet of the Avalanche network, written in C++. According to the developers, this project was completed in less than 72 hours. Without optimization, the theoretical TPS limit of this subnet can reach 13,500, and with optimization, the theoretical TPS limit can be increased by 10-30 times.

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/subnetooors/subnetooor

Developers: itamarcps (Itamar Carvalho), neirenoir, and Jean-Lessa (Jean Francisco Lessa)

Comment: For the Avalanche network, Subnet subnets will be a focus in the future, and AEVEREST++, as the award-winning best subnet, is expected to become one of the focal points of the Avalanche community.

The following award-winning projects are more inclined towards ecological services, so they may not receive as much attention.

Best Optimized Precompiled EVM: OracleEVM

OracleEVM is a custom EVM that uses stateful precompiles to create efficient access to high-fidelity financial information in each block.

How it works:

1. Validators stream deterministic financial data from the decentralized Pyth network on Solana;

2. During block production, financial data is included in the block header;

3. Validators vote on the validity of the block (including the included financial data);

4. When nodes accept the block, the financial data is written to the state database;

5. Stateful precompiles allow data to be accessed directly from smart contracts;

The main benefits of OracleEVM are:

1. Conservation of block space;

2. Very efficient access to financial data via precompiles;

3. The validity of financial data is enforced by VM block validation and consensus;

This subnet EVM runs in a different process from the AvalancheGo main process and communicates with it via local gRPC connections.

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/gattaca-com/oracle-evm

Best Subnet Notification Service: Subnet.center

Subnet.center is an analytics and notification platform aimed at validators, delegators, builders, and Avalanche users.

It can notify validators and delegators in different scenarios, covering the following notification schemes or WIP:

1. Validator staking expiration (completed)

2. Delegator staking expiration (completed)

3. Uptime warnings (when below 80%) (completed)

4. Available staking amount for validators (WIP, template/email code completed, needs triggering)

5. New delegators (WIP, template/email code completed, needs triggering)

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/subnet-center/platform

Developers: Daniël Zwijnenburg and Charif Mews

Best Ledger-Compatible Subnet UI: SubnetX

SubnetX is a tool for creating and managing ledger-compatible subnets, primarily doing the following two tasks:

1. Creating ledger-compatible subnets: It allows users to create subnet subnets in three steps. First, users create a subnet using their control keys. After creating the subnet, users can add validators and create a blockchain based on that. (The developers of SubnetX built a dashboard where users can view all their subnets and details such as the number of validators in the subnet.)

2. Notification settings for expired validators: Users can set subnet notifications for upcoming expired validators. Users can receive notifications via webhook one day before the validator expires.

GitHub repository link: https://github.com/bitpixelsio/subnetx-avalanche-hackathon-2022