Turning Hackathons into a Growth Engine
Running one hackathon could be easy. Running a series that keeps attracting developers, producing real projects, and growing an ecosystem is a different game entirely.
Stacks figured it out. As a Bitcoin Layer 2 that brings smart contracts and dapps to Bitcoin, they’ve hosted 9 hackathons on DoraHacks since 2025. What started as individual events evolved into a system, which has become a model for how to build a developer community through hackathons.
A System, Not a One-Off
Most teams treat hackathons like marketing campaigns. Launch one, collect some submissions, announce winners, move on. Stacks did something smarter: they built a portfolio.
Their hackathons cover different angles. Some spotlight core products or tools like sBTC, Turnkey, or USDCx, giving developers hands-on reasons to try new tools. Others ride industry waves, like vibe coding or the x402 protocol. Some target specific regions, with dedicated events for Latam developers or tied to ETHDenver. And once a year, they go big with BUIDL Battle: The Bitcoin Builders Tournament, a global competition open to anyone building on Bitcoin.
Why the variety? Different hackathons reach different people. A developer in São Paulo might skip a generic global event but show up for something designed for their region. Someone curious about AI-assisted coding might not care about protocol-specific challenges but will jump at a vibe coding hackathon. By diversifying their hackathon portfolio, Stacks casts a wider net and creates multiple entry points into their ecosystem.
The lesson for organizers is simple: think about what different segments of your target audience care about, and design events that speak to each of them.
Clear Rules, No Guesswork
Ambiguity kills participation. When developers don’t understand what a hackathon is looking for, they either don’t enter or they submit projects that miss the mark. Either outcome wastes everyone’s time.
Every Stacks hackathon has a defined theme and explicit rules from day one. Eligibility requirements, submission formats, deadlines, and judging criteria are all published from day one. Participants don’t have to guess whether their project qualifies or wonder how winners will be selected. This clarity has two benefits: it reduces the number of questions organizers have to answer, and it ensures that submissions are actually comparable when judging begins.
Specificity isn’t limiting, it’s focusing. The best hackathon submissions often come from constraints that force creative problem-solving within a defined space.
Be Responsive and Reliable
A hackathon isn’t just a submission portal. It’s a temporary community, and communities need communication.
The Stacks team stays engaged throughout every hackathon. They use DoraHacks’ built-in messaging features, respond to questions in the dedicated “Ask Questions” section, and maintain presence in external channels like Discord or Telegram when needed. Participants building under deadline pressure can actually get help when they need it. This responsiveness matters more than many organizers realize.
Equally important is what happens when the hackathon ends. The Stacks team announces winners on time, every time. No delays, no vague “we’re still evaluating” updates that stretch for weeks. Participants who invested effort into their submissions deserve a clear outcome, and prompt announcements respect that investment.
This reliability builds trust, and the opposite is also true: teams that go silent after submission deadlines or take months to announce winners develop reputations that hurt their future hackathons.
Scaling with Good (AI) Tools
The reason why Stacks keeps using DoraHacks to organize hackathons is based on some practical realities. One of them is that successful hackathons attract a lot of submissions. That’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. Stacks handles the volume using DoraHacks’ Hackathon AI features.
The AI screens submissions in real time, checking whether projects meet the stated requirements and flagging issues with clear reasoning. Incomplete entries, off-theme projects, and eligibility violations get caught automatically instead of eating up hours of human review time.
For final judging, the AI generates a shortlist of top candidates based on the winning criteria for each prize. Judges focus their attention on the strongest contenders rather than sorting through everything by their own eyes. Human judgment still makes the final call, but the filtering happens at machine speed.
The broader point applies beyond AI tools: as your hackathons grow, your processes need to scale with them. Whether that means adding extra manpower, inviting more judges, or building more SOPs for the team. But all of these could be time-consuming and even expensive. DoraHacks’ Hackathon AI OS was just born to solve this.
The Formula
In 2026, Stacks keeps launching hackathons timed to new trends and community needs. Each one builds on lessons from the last. Developers who joined one event come back for another while new hackers keep joining. The community compounds through steady, repeated engagement rather than any single viral moment.
Their formula isn’t complicated: dedication to showing up consistently and following through on commitments, good ideas that connect hackathon themes to what developers actually care about, and good tools that make scale manageable.
That formula works whether you’re a blockchain protocol, a university club, or a tech giant trying to attract your first developers. Hackathons grow communities when organizers commit to running them well. Stacks shows what that commitment looks like over time.
*Stacks hackathons are hosted on DoraHacks. Explore upcoming events or start organizing your own at dorahacks.io.
About DoraHacks
DoraHacks is the leading global hackathon community and open source developer incentive platform. DoraHacks provides toolkits for anyone to organize hackathons and fund early-stage ecosystem startups.
DoraHacks creates a global hacker movement in Web3, AI, Quantum Computing and Space Tech. So far, more than 30,000 startup teams from the DoraHacks community have received over $92M in funding, and a large number of open source communities, companies and tech ecosystems are actively using DoraHacks together with its BUIDL AI capabilities for organizing hackathons and funding open source initiatives.
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