Key Insights:
- Prize Pool: With a total prize pool of $250K from our Research & Development fund of $1M, Magic Eden is calling for the greatest minds across the web3 and tech ecosystem to participate.
- Push boundaries with us: Developers, creators and ecosystem partners will join minds and push the boundaries for the long-term growth of the Solana NFT ecosystem
- Long-term solutions: The remaining $750K will be used for a second hackathon, grants for both creators and developers as well as funding for companies
On October 15th, we introduced optional royalties to Magic Eden. This was a decision made after careful consideration and heavy heart. We chose this path to evolve with the rapid changes in the ecosystem and to preserve our business. At the same time, we also have a responsibility to the Solana NFT ecosystem and feel that we need to find solutions to bring back creator royalties in a more sustainable manner.
We invite the community to innovate with us to find solutions to alternative monetization models to the current ecosystem royalty model.
We know that this will be a work in progress to find the best solution to the unfolding future of royalties. So, we devoted a total of $1M to a Creator Research & Development Fund dedicated to finding productive solutions.
Here’s how our $1M Research & Development fund will be allocated:
- First Hackathon (total prize pool of $250K) which will begin from Oct 27th to Nov 29th, 2022. More details below.
- Second Hackathon (totalling $250K) launching by Q2 of 2023 to continue exploring solutions to creator monetization.
- Grants to creators and developers (totalling $250K). Creators will be eligible for grants to support adoption and further expansion of hackathon-founded projects
- Funding for companies (totalling $250K) who are devoted to working on creator solutions.
Magic Eden’s Creator Monetization Hackathon
From Oct 28th to Nov 29th, this month-long hackathon invites you to experiment and innovate with ideas that will allow creators in the Solana NFT space to earn royalties or identify alternative monetization models.
With a total prize pool of $250K, Magic Eden is calling for developers, creators and ecosystem partners to join minds and push the boundaries for the long-term growth of the Solana NFT ecosystem.
We also welcome non-web3-natives, newcomers and builders of other chains to participate, learn and think of solutions with us.
Join our Discord server to connect with fellow builders.
Register Here
Think Big with our Hackathon Tracks
Future of Royalties: From royalty protection to dynamic royalties, participants will be challenged to reimagine how royalties can and should work. In this track, they should consider the motivations that help creators incentivize royalties. Think of platforms and tools in novel ways to manage and motivate the payment of royalties.
Ancillary Revenue Opportunities: NFT creators aren’t limited to earning only through royalties. Participants will be challenged to develop solutions that will help NFT creators develop additional monetization opportunities outside of royalties.
To further empower and inspire developers and creators, we are hosting workshops with Quicknode, Galxe, Thirdweb, Darkblock, Raindrop, Solana FM, H3lium and Horizen Labs. For the full schedule, click here.
Awards
The total prize pool will be distributed to the most compelling ideas.
Future of Royalties
1st Place: $80,000
2nd Place: $30,000
3rd Place: $20,000
4th Place: $15,000
5th Place: $10,000
Ancillary Revenue Opportunities
1st Place: $30,000
2nd Place: $20,000
3rd Place: $15,000
4th Place: $10,000
Judges’ Award
We will be awarding 4 participants with $5,000 each for their notable and inspiring contributions.
Judging Criteria
Innovations presented by participants will be judged by the following criteria:
- Innovation: creativity, originality, and novelty
- Execution: completeness of solution/idea, attention to detail, code quality, polish, ease of use/onboarding
- Impact: potential of the solution/idea to shape the future of royalties
- Solution must be created over the course of the hackathon
Judges: A Panel of Experts & Leaders
- Anatoly Yakovenko: Co-founder of Solana Labs.
- Liberty Square: Innovative NFT project with an experienced and varied background team.
- Helius: Making Solana development easier, faster, and cheaper through Webhooks, RPCs and APIs.
- Vlamz: An active contributor to Solana’s vibrant dev community.
- Bartosz Lipiński: Senior software engineer at Solana Labs.
- Sekrit: Founder of Liberty Square
- Eve: Engineer, artist and co-founder of Infinity Labs
- Tendies: MonkeDAO board member, founder of Jelly Beasts and lead of 313 Labs behind the NFT project Cets on Creck.
- Statik: MonkeDAO member and Solana builder.
- V◎SHY: Helped defined the metadata standard for Solana NFTs, helped 25+ projects and founder/CEO of Blast Ctrl
Join Here
Partners
Darkblock: Blockchain Analytics Platform | Visually Explore the Universe of Blockchain Data
Galxe: Create Impactful Experiences With #Web3 Credentials
Quicknode: Powering Web3 with industry-leading blockchain infrastructure ⚡Launch your node in seconds with a global network of RPC endpoints on 15+ blockchains
Raindrop: The Raindrops Protocol is a series of five a la carte contracts that govern on-chain or proof-on-chain data specifically for games, allowing any player or item to be interchangeable with any game client that can process them.
Solana FM: Bridging the gaps of data accessibility via our indexer, APIs and explorer tools on Solana.
Horizen Labs: We are world leaders in zero knowledge cryptography and key Web 3.0 tools that enable programmable blockchains that are secure, scalable and privacy preserving.
Thirdweb: The complete web3 development framework.
Partner Workshops
11/1: How to Make Quick NFT Apps on Solana with QuickNode
11/4: Beyond Royalties: Monetization with SBTs by Galxe
11/7: How To Create NFTs & Add Creator Royalties Using Thirdweb
11/9: Beyond Royalties: New Revenue Models for NFT Creators with Darkblock
11/11: Boots: Taking the Used Car Sales out of NFTs by Raindrops
11/14: Solana FM and Managing Your Back End Needs
11/18: Align By Phase Protocol with H3lium
11/21: Creating Value Through Tokenization and DAOs with Horizen Labs
For more information on the workshops and timeline of the hackathon, click here.
Our commitment to finding a solution does not stop here. We look forward to the months to come as we work with the community to explore the future of the Solana NFT ecosystem together. Connect with fellow builders on our Discord server here.