My Bolt Journey: From Disappointment to Discovery
I stumbled upon Bolt during a month when I desperately needed something to occupy my mind. Having just left Cape Town, South Africa, I'd moved back to my hometown, Johannesburg. My time in Cape Town had been spent pursuing a course I hoped would kickstart my corporate career. Unfortunately, the program turned out to be a scam, a narrative all too common in Africa.
The Unexpected Appearance of Bolt
Then, a LinkedIn post from a friend titled "Startups to Look Out For in 2025" caught my eye, and Bolt was prominently listed. Moments later, I saw the Bolt logo a second time during the Google I/O 2025 Keynote Address. I immediately sensed there was something significant about it 👀 I quickly Googled "Bolt" and found bolt.new 🗲
My very first prompt was to create an information chatbot for a physical product I'd developed. The Bolt AI-Assistant processed the request in about 9 seconds and then executed the prompt. I was absolutely blown away because, despite having learned Kotlin a few years prior, I'd never managed to become a full-stack developer.
A Nod to the Pioneers: From Volunteer to Builder
Throughout my journey, I'd been part of various startup communities and companies, always contributing as a volunteer or on a bounty. I've had the privilege of being close to the work of true geniuses, to whom I owe immense gratitude. Among them is the pseudonymous jl777, lead developer of BitcoinDark, Supernet, and later Komodo Blockchain. He also made significant contributions to the field of cryptography.
In 2021, the Komodo developer team, under jl777's guidance, developed DogeDEX. This decentralized exchange for DOGE provided users a way to store and trade DOGE through atomic swaps, a technology first brought to reality by jl777 and his team, especially after Dogecoin's interest skyrocketed. Unfortunately, despite their groundbreaking work, no one could get Elon Musk to retweet or acknowledge the team's contribution to DOGE at the time.
The Hackathon Pivot: A Form Builder Emerges
The daily call to "Join the World's Largest Hackathon" was something I initially ignored. However, an email invitation eventually prompted me to read more, and I'm glad I did. I signed up just before it began and immediately started searching on Devpost for a teammate with more experience than my own.
Someone did reach out, but then abandoned me in the first week of the hackathon 😔. I then asked a friend to join my team, but he was too busy. At that point, I did a complete 180 and changed my original concept. I decided to develop something simpler with many practical use cases: a form builder.
Forms are an integral part of daily life, and nearly every business relies on them for various activities. My cousin was in the process of restructuring his business, and my goal was to get his input to develop something he genuinely needed. This way, I'd ensure my product would be useful well beyond the hackathon.
Addressing a Critical Need: Security and Cryptography
I waited two weeks before he was available to meet. When I arrived, he had a printed form on his desk. This, it turned out, was his business's main pain point: a consent form. Getting this document signed was paramount to his operations.
"That's all?" I thought. At this point, I had already developed the core form builder. I figured I only needed to ensure the user could customize the form to suit their business needs.
However, before I left, he mentioned a past impersonation case that necessitated verified information. That's when it clicked: I would need to implement robust security measures to prevent identity fraud. Gravitating towards a cryptographic solution was a no-brainer for me.
Although four weeks seemed like a generous amount of time, especially with bolt.new capable of generating code in seconds, the deadline didn't feel sufficient given all the unexpected life events that can unfold in a month.
The Community and the Finish Line
I spent an incredible amount of time designing my hero image, as image generation is something I experiment with a lot. I've noticed I usually only get a like when I add a cat to the frame 🐱. You can check out the landing page for ◇ otokia. I even spent a lot of tokens on a sun animation that unfortunately disappeared into the gray sky background ⛅.
The Bolt ZA group, started by Servaas, was incredibly supportive. We helped relay information right until the last minute. I submitted my project 2 hours before the deadline; one of our members, Sugan, submitted his project just 2 minutes before! Servaas even submitted within the deadline extension, after nearly giving up.
The community is growing beyond the hackathon. I'm working toward expanding it beyond borders. I recall once being part of the biggest online Africa community. We had over 10,000 people at one point and had to find ways to eliminate participants simply due to incapacity and insufficient support.
In retrospect, I think the lot of us took this hackathon a bit too seriously because we wanted to push the bounds about what we could build using a Vibe Coding tool.
As we often say here, #AlutaContinua !
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