We are thrilled to collaborate with the Stellar Development Foundation to introduce the community to blockchain technology.
Running through August 18, the Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge provides an opportunity for web devs to learn all about decentralization, wallets, consensus, interoperability, and all the other lingo you may have heard floating around but never quite understood. This is your signal to dive in and unlock those a-ha moments!
We’ll share all the resources you need to learn the fundamentals, and you’ll come out of the challenge knowing how to build with Soroban, Stellar’s smart contract platform designed for scale and sensibility.
We have two prompts for this challenge, but six ways to win. Did we mention the $50,000 prize pool? And a free trip to London to attend the Meridian Conference?! Our biggest offering to-date, thanks to the generous Stellar Development Foundation.
Ready to get learning and building? Read on to learn about the prompts and how to get started.
Our Prompts
Prizes
We’ll be splitting our $50,000 prize pool six ways. Here is what our prompt winners and additional prize category winners will receive:
Prompt Winners (2):
- $13,000 USD
- An invitation to Meridian, Stellar’s annual conference in London (October 15-17, all travel expenses paid for).
- Exclusive DEV Badge
- A gift from the DEV Shop
Prize Category Winners (4):
- $6,000 USD
- Exclusive DEV Badge
- A gift from the DEV Shop
All Participants with a valid submission will receive a completion badge on their DEV profile.
Getting Started
We know it can be a bit intimidating to jump into web3 and blockchain, so the Stellar team has published a companion guide that covers all the topics you need to get started:
Additionally, we encourage all participants to join the dev-hack channel in the Stellar Dev Discord, a community server for asking questions and meeting the community of developers building with Stellar.
Stellar Livestreams
The Stellar team will host a series of livestreams right on DEV throughout the course of the challenge. Just visit our homepage at 12pm EDT on these dates:
- 7/23 - Intro to Stellar: Getting started in Rust, setting up your environment, and writing your first smart contract. Watch the recap:
- 7/30: Build a dApp
- 8/1: Intro to Passkeys
- 8/6: Migrating from Web2 to Web3
- 8/8: Stellar Community Fund
Need Inspiration?
Below are a few ideas for both prompts to get your creative juices flowing.
Your smart contract dApp could be related to:
- A game where players interact on-chain to compete against each other
- A public goods application where interactions with the dApp could result in real-world positive impact.
- A DAO or governance-related dApp
- Identity Tooling
- Financial services, like a wallet or payment dApp
Your tutorial could focus on:
- Code examples (i.e.Solidity by Example)
- Fun dApp tutorials (i.e. Pet Shop Tutorial)
- Soroban for X developer (X = another smart contracts platform, such as Ethereum, Near, or Solana)
We can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Additional Resources
For building DeFi protocols:
- Getting Started with Writing Smart Contracts: a comprehensive tutorial that acts as the gateway to the Stellar smart contract developer experience
- Soroban Quest: complete interactive challenges to understand the fundamentals of smart contract development
- Okashi: get started building your own Stellar smart contracts right from your browser
- Liquidity Pool: a complete Liquidity Pool example dApp with smart contracts and UI elements
- Circle Stellar USDC Faucet: get Testnet USDC to use in your development efforts
- Create Soroban dApp Boilerplate: Create your dApp with just one command line.
For building wallets:
- Stellar Wallet SDK: a collection of SDKs enabling you to take advantage of the pre-existing deposit/withdraw capabilities of network anchors
- Stellar Quest: interactively learn and understand the fundamentals of interacting with the Stellar network: transactions, operations, accounts, etc.
- Build Applications Tutorials: a few written tutorials focusing on JavaScript implementations of common wallet functionality
- Stellar Design System: components and styles that can make your frontend development easier
Tools
Explore the Network
- Stellar Laboratory: interacts with the network and queries network activity
- Stellar.Expert: Block Explorer to view ledger entries, accounts, assets, analytics, etc.
- Data Indexers: services and infrastructure available for you to query and monitor network state and activity
Connect to the Network
- Freighter Browser Wallet: a wallet developed and maintained by SDF
- Stellar Wallets Kit: a community-built library that integrates multiple browser wallets into a frontend project
- @soroban-react: connects ReactJS frontends with wallets like Lobstr, Freighter, Xbull. Help you create the messages that users will sign.
- Simple Stellar Signer: a plug-and-play tool to integrate your solution with multiple wallets at once
- Account Viewer: a simple wallet, with available source code, that can be used to interact with a Stellar account on Mainnet or Testnet
Build on the Network
- Developer Tools: an organized list of available tools, services, etc. to jumpstart or enhance your development experience
- SDK Library: Stellar boasts an impressive collection of SDKs you can use to interact with the network in almost any language you could ever want
- Beans POS Merchant SDK: an SDK powered by Beans Wallet to help developers implement Point-of-Sale functionality into their app using Stellar
- Create Soroban dApp Video Workshop: tutorial and walkthrough on how to create a dApp
- Sorochat: Creating a chat dApp on Soroban (tutorial):
- How to Start Developing on Stellar (video workshop)
- Build your first wallet on Stellar (video workshop)
Important Dates
- July 10: Build Better on Stellar: Smart Contract Challenge begins!
- August 18: Submissions due at 11:59 PM PDT
- August 27: Winners Announced
Questions about the challenge? Ask them below.
Good luck and happy coding!
Top comments (64)
$50k 🤯
I can't say what the rest of the community thinks... 🙂but I liked it better when the dev challenges where small and friendly. Now their so big and up there that it excludes a lot of devs.
Yeah, but I think the tutorial challenge is great because anyone can participate and learn. You can document what you learn, which helps reinforce your understanding. It's a way to both learn and contribute.
Definitely, the dapp development challenge is not very beginner-friendly.
Yes. And the high money, makes it very competitive.
Yeah 🤧
This is good feedback. Will definitely Keep this in mind
Thank you!
You might surprise yourself. The Stellar community is really supportive of devs at many levels of experience. The other cool thing is that even if you didn't take a prize out of the hackathon, Stellar has multiple different funding programs to support projects well past the Challenge. Check out SCF
So excited to launch our most ambitious DEV Challenge ever. A huge thank you to Stellar for partnering and making this possible. Can't wait to see what everyone builds!
Hey, so I am working on the tutorial challenge
Do we have to create a website or something, I have an idea to make a website with a few tutorials over it and so can I use each tutorial as a separate entry?
You'd be able to use each tutorial as a separate entry, yes!
Thanks a lot for clarification
Whew, I see we're no longer in the little leagues😅🔥. Can't wait to see what the participants come up with.
Good opportunity to learn about the smart contracts
Is it only me or the linked page is broken and there's no form there? 🙄
Are you still having issues with this @turma ? Let me know- I've seen this a couple times caused by a bad request to Hubspot. I can look into it, but if all fails, then you can submit on this webform.
Mmm... yes, I guess... there's no form on the page (linked in the post) currently at all 😅 unless I'm missing something...
And I get a blank page here... 🙄
@turma are you still having issues now?
Yes, I am unfortunately. I was able to open the form by the direct link provided above when I opened it some time before, but now it seems to be broken for me again, as well as the embedded form on the official challenge page. (I see the same loading state there as before) I dunno, maybe some network/ISP issues, if others can open it perfectly fine. (I just don't get why the direct link did work actually)
Hm okay, @turma feel free to submit to DEV as you normally would and leave a message directly in your submission post that you're having trouble accessing the form on stellar's website. This way, your submission will still be valid.
Thanks a lot ❤️
OK. Looks like I was eventually able to find out what is the problem here. My browser of choice is FireFox, and while the form can easily be opened in Chromium-based browsers, FireFox seem to have hard time with that. I assume it's related to this known HubSpot issue (as you mentioned you use HubSpot forms). FYI @jess, @lief_storer_fff38ed6bd2d2.
Gonna be fun as I'm going to learn then just document it as a tutorial for others and my participation will also be done, so one challenge and three benefits.
Hello.
I am trying to play catch up on the original repo and I am clueless and could seriously use as much help, advice, and guidance as I can get.
I am winging this blind folded with no experience.
Thank in advance!
X
@cappyoo7 the stellar team has published a few additional resources since this was first announced. Have you seen the intro to stellar livestream?
Intro to Stellar: Get Started in Rust, Set Up Your Development Environment, and Write Your First Smart Contract
Julian Martinez for Stellar Development Foundation ・ Jul 25
Very excited about this one, good luck to everyone participating!
At some point I thought there was another Frontend Challenge slated to start the same day as this challenge, but now it seems to be missing from the upcoming or current challenges (although its page still exists for Frontend Challenge v24.07.10). Was its original listing a mistake?
@kelseyrh we realized we didn't have the bandwidth to coordinate a new frontend challenge while launching this one, so decided to remove it from this launch cycle. We will have a new frontend challenge for our next launch date on July 24!
I actually have a question regarding ALL challenges, current, past, and future ones; what we make from them are we able to add them to our portfolio and still have them have weight to them for being a challenge from this community? Asking here because I never heard back from the email I sent and it’s been racking my brain. 😅😅 I’m wanting to utilize them to not only showcase my skills but to also showcase my growth and capabilities.
Also, this looks interesting, definitely going to check out Stellar.
@tiani91 not sure I fully understood your question, but you can definitely showcase your projects from any challenge on your portfolio! That's a great reason to tackle these.
That actually answered it, thank you very much Jess Lee!! Your comment is very much appreciated!!
Hey, so I am working on the tutorial challenge
Do we have to create a website or something, I have an idea to make a website with a few tutorials over it and then can I use each tutorial as a separate entry?
@ravixalgorithm You could possibly put multiple tutorials in a single post and we can review each tutorial individually - so you don't have to put a bunch of submissions into the webform or in loads of posts on Dev.to.
That said, the upside of having multiple Dev.to posts is that you might be able to implement better SEO for builders that are looking to solve for issues.
Hope that makes sense and looking forward to see what you put together!
The Smart Contract Challenge is something I'm very excited about! Test your abilities, be creative, and have a chance to win a portion of $50,000 in rewards. This is an amazing opportunity. It's the ideal opportunity to learn and show off your skills, regardless of whether you're a developer or just interested in blockchain technology. Let's get started.
Excellent chance to become familiar with smart contracts
Indeed!
Such a good opportunity. Working on it right now 💪🔥
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