I just returned from #hack4climate. Even if it was just my third hackathon, I can state with certainty that this one was unlike any other. None of the 100 hackers from 33Â countries experienced anything remotely comparable before.
The topic of the event was to develop solutions how blockchain technology can help fighting climate change.
First let me explore how the event differentiated from other hackathons. The hacking session was 24 hours, but the whole event lasted four full days. There were pre-workshops around the world. 100 participants were selected and invited to Bonn. Travel expenses were covered. We stayed on a five star hotel ship. It was adjacent to the UN climate conference. We had balcony suites on the ship. The food was appropriate for a 5 star ship, complete with wine to every dinner. The days before and after the hacking session were filled with interesting talks, a guided city tour, interesting discussions and lots of networking. There were so many interesting people and so much to talk about. At the last day they wanted to make a photo of us on the boat in front of the UN building. Drones were forbidden in the security zone, so the photographer rented a crane to get the perfect shot.
I knew nobody from the event in advance. But I knew that out of the sub topics, I was most interested in “sustainable transportation”. At the team building session, I headed straight to the guy with the most interesting pitch that contained something about cars. Our team was formed soon after, and I had a good feeling from the start. Two were from Singapore who already knew each other. Two were from India one living in San Francisco and the other in China. And one was also from Switzerland, but we didn’t know each other before.
When the hack session started at Tuesday noon, we shaped our rough ideas into a project that we could realize in the short amount of time. Then everybody stated what he would like to do. It all seemed to fit together wonderfully. I wanted to implement the smart contract. I didn’t have much experience in that area, and was grateful that the others could help me and answer my questions. Rather than drawing large diagrams, we collaborated on the interfaces, and then worked towards these. We didn’t hit mayor roadblocks or problems, everything seemed to flow in place. Most of us agreed that we are not productive after 2AM and that is is better to get some hours of sleep. In the morning we went out to shoot a video of our product in action. The guys from SBB (who was a sponsor of the event) were around us most of the time. They helped where they could, and were generally very interested and engaged. We had many great discussions with them.
Our project was about end to end transportation. On the mobile app, you select a destination, and it identifies legs to use different means of transportation. We focused on car sharing, but other options include trains, bikes or buses. Our smart contract abstracts a car that can be rented over the ethereum blockchain. The owner of the car registers it by creating an instance of the smart contract. A person who wants to rent it can do so by sending ether. The required amount is determined by the price per km the owner wants, times the number of km the renter wants. If he doesn’t use up the credit, the rest is reimbursed at the end of the trip. But if he drives too far, the cars performance is degraded by the smart contract. The car was represented by a RaspberryPi running an ethereum node and our backend running on nodejs. Initially opening the car was indicated by an LED attached to the RPI. But to make it more realistic, the RPI then called the Tesla API to open a real car. At the end of the trip the RPI collected information about the car such as odometer and battery level as well as firmware version, stored it on the IPFS and registered the IPFS address with the smart contract to form an unfalsifiable audit trail. Last but not least, one of our team members used data from moving cars and turned it into an appealing 3D animation that highlights the hot spots in a city.
We were thrilled all along, even more after all the positive reactions to our presentation. And hooray, we made it into the finalists! That meant, we could present our project at the COP. That’s the fair for NGO’s which is attached to the UN climate conference. The team that won the hackathon, did so deservedly. Their project was about incentivizing land owners not to cut their trees. They used blockchain and game theory for the monetary part. In addition they trained a neuronal network to predict areas which are endangered most of deforestation, and need special attention.
A first official video appeared here, and I’m sure others will follow on the official website.
Update Dec 16 2017
The official after movie of #hack4climate was released:
https://youtu.be/UOANny6i0QM
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