Binance SAFU Hackathon: Making the Blockchain World More SAFU

2019-01-21

Binance held a two-day hackathon during Binance Blockchain Week. Get to know the winners of this competition, plus some of the highlights!

At Binance, we support developers who constantly come up with solutions for improving the blockchain ecosystem, most recently through the just-concluded Binance SAFU Hackathon. Held in Singapore during the Binance Blockchain Week, more than 100 developers were tasked to BUIDL an open platform that protects crypto users against scams, hacks, and money laundering schemes.

The winning team -- Merkle Blox, composed of Mriganka Pattnaik, Nirmal AK, and Aleksey Studnev, presented a pitch for a smart-contract-based insurance system for users who experienced attacks. The team won up to US$50,000 worth of Binance Coins, while the second- and third-place teams (Crypto Lynx and Perlin) respectively won US$25,000 and $15,000 worth of Binance Coins. Congratulations!

The Making of Binance SAFU Hackathon

The Binance SAFU Hackathon was created as an integral part of Binance Blockchain Week, the first major blockchain event of its kind for Binance. True to our BUIDL philosophy of constantly developing and innovating, we start our event with a 32-hour, round-the-clock hackathon featuring some of the best blockchain engineers in the world.

The SAFU Hackathon addressed the theme “Query Platform for Address Security: Is the transaction address you are sending your crypto to SAFU?”

We recognize that we still need a safer digital asset world in order to build core blockchain infrastructure and useful real-world applications on top of it. Hence, developers from around the world were called to build a safer community where users are protected from scams, hackers, and money laundering.

Before the main hackathon, we held pre-hackathons in San Francisco on December 11, 2018, and in Seoul, Singapore, and Hong Kong on January 12-13, 2019. The winners of those pre-hackathons, the list of which we’ll reveal below, then moved on to the main event in Singapore this weekend.

Binance SAFU Hackathon: The Highlights

The 32-hour Binance SAFU Hackathon began in the morning of January 19, 2019, where more than 100 talented blockchain developers converged at PwC Singapore. After a briefing session, the developers formed teams and planned their solutions to the designated challenge.

The developers were challenged to build a platform for users to quickly check whether a public address is safe. This platform should also incentivize contributors to report public addresses that are deemed hacked or malicious. The teams then met with 10 blockchain thought leaders,––our mentors for the competition––to refine their ideas. The main hackathon commenced immediately afterward.

On Day Two, teams spent their mornings refining their pitches for the solutions they came up with. After sessions for pitch tips, tech runs, and mock pitches, the teams presented their solutions to a panel of seven judges, all recognizable names in the blockchain industry. The judges weighed on each presentation based on these four criteria: technology, creativity/innovation, a demo of the solution, and pitch quality.

Out of the 20+ teams that presented, six teams advanced to the final round. Some of the noteworthy ideas the SAFU Hackathon finalist teams presented include the use of deep graph analytics (from Team Crypto Lynx), avalanche consensus on a custom ledger (from Team Perlin), an e-commerce platform for a database of user reputation (by Team Shark), and a crypto scoring platform (by Team Phenom). And while a lot of their ideas are exceptional in their own right, the winning team, Merkle Blox, proposed a smart contract-based insurance to users who are attacked by hackers, ponzi schemes, or phishing scams.

Merkle Blox, composed of Mriganka Pattnaik, Nirmal AK, Aleksey Studnev, will have a chance to meet Binance’s senior leaders, as well as potentially access incubation programs run by Binance Labs, the investment arm of Binance, and Tribe Accelerator, a Singapore government-backed blockchain accelerator.

Special Thanks to All Hackathon Participants!

We at Binance SAFU Hackathon thank the mentors and judges who participated in the event, for sharing their knowledge and expertise to our developer participants, as well as assessing the strengths and merits of our developers’ pitches.

And of course, the Binance SAFU Hackathon will not be complete without all the developers who presented solutions for a more SAFU blockchain world. We give recognition to:

Team

Members

Notes

AxByCz

Sanghun Kang

Juhwan Son

Hyung Seok Choi

Jungho Rheem

Youngjun Choi

* 2nd place at Seoul pre-Hackathon

* Proposed simple standards for legitimacy and security

BlockCheck

Iqbal Singh+ 4 anonymous developers

* Proposed an innovative chain analysis method for AML prevention.

Blockwell

Josh SmithEric NolPaul Novoa

* Proposed and demonstrated the use of ERC20 tokens to prevent users from sending or interacting with bad actors

Coral Protocol

David KucharHarrison DahmeDenali Marsh

* Proposed address scoring and alerts, as well as a review of submitted fraud instances

Ken ChanDerek Chin

* Finalist, Most Creative honors at SAFU Hackahon* Proposed an open market for scoring addresses running on analysis by data scientists, analysts, and engineers

Crypto Lynx

Basile VerhulstMike KohTim LinGabor BenedekJosé María Lizano

* 2nd Place at SAFU Hackathon* Proposed the use of deep graph analytics to detect fraud and suspicious transactions

Cypherforge

Juntao ZhuSimon Eric Lee

* Proposed finding trusted and verified addresses and letting people know of these addresses

Electro Pact

Arvind Kumar Ajay Pandey

* Proposed a trust rating program for wallet addresses

HEX

Chun Fai Wong

Vivian Kwan

Jennifer JĂ€ger

Jin Young Park

Rafal Czerniawski

* Finalist at SAFU Hackathon* Placed 2nd at Hong Kong pre-hackathon* Proposed a browser extension that checks for dangerous addresses, powered by a crowd intelligence network

Iamcrypto

Yunus Ugullu

Joshua Putter

Turgay Ersintepe

Kevin Wijsenbach

Raymond Lau

* Proposed extra futures in BNB token code to create voting rights insurance funds

LongGrin

Raghav Sood Nicholas Chen

* Proposed a graph-based transaction analysis indexing web app

Merkle Blox

Mriganka PattnaikNirmal AKAleksey Studnev

* Winner of SAFU Hackathon* 2nd place at Singapore pre-hackathon* Proposed a smart contract-based insurance to users who are attacked by hackers, ponzis or phishing scams

Neuronpoint + Xeonbit

Phillippe

Justin

Cao Thanh

Richard

* Neuronpoint placed 2nd at SG pre-hackathon, merged with Xeonbit for SAFU Hackathon* Proposed a system that tracks safe crypto addresses, gives a score to addresses, and uses AI to update its database

Perlin

Kenta Iwasaki

Heyang Zhou

Doug Szeto

Ahmad MuzakkirAjay Prakash

* 3rd Place at SAFU Hackathon* Proposed a semi-decentralized DAO that consisted of a reputation-driven community that would come to a consensus on taint scores

Alex Smirnov

Max Petriev

Yaroslav Artyukh

* Finalist at SAFU Hackathon* Proposed a crypto scoring platform that checks for an address’ involvement in transfers of illegally obtained funds

RNS

Shakil MuhammadHassan Tauqeer

* Proposed the use of meta heuristic algorithm, construct tree, and data collection

ROMAD & ICORA

Claire WuKeith LeeLi ShiweiSun YudiZhang Ruiyang

* Proposed a platform that features a KYC/AML service and uses a scoring system

Safu Query

Bernard ChooCuong Truong CongEdo Jayakusuma.

* Proposed the use of a Telegram bot to submit and query scams related to information in Telegram chats.

SaveU

Eugene Lim

Huy Dinh

Paul GohJamerson Aw

* Proposed a fast crypto wallet fraud analyzer integrated with popular messaging platforms via API

SOOHO

Jisu ParkSanggu HanHeejin Hwang

Heewoong JangJeonghwa Heo

* Best Technology honors at SAFU Hacakthon* Winner of Seoul pre-hackathon* Proposed potentially large scale mal-address DB and the way to find malicious account in real-time

Team Ambrosio

Michael Gabriel Ambrosio

Ohmarkely Ambrosio

* Proposed an online database for fraud wallet addresses

Team Shark

Victor TongIan Woo

* Finalist at SAFU Hackathon* Winner of Hong Kong pre-hackathon* Proposed an e-commerce platform for building an open relational database of user reputation

Trustme

Felix Ng

Pisuth Dae

Cut Rudi

* Proposed a crowdsourced reporting service, using near instant payments incentivizing contributors