Hackathons and Bounties: how to choose the right one for your business
While both hackathons and bounties typically involve a set intention to solve a problem or achieve a specific goal, there are key differences between the two.
Hackathons are a type of event where individuals or teams come together to collaborate and compete for a set period of time, often with prizes for top performers.
Bounties, on the other hand, tend to have a more decentralized structure where individuals or teams work remotely and are rewarded for completing specific tasks or achieving defined objectives.
In addition, hackathons often have sponsors and partners who provide resources such as funding, mentorship, and networking opportunities.
Bounties may also have sponsors or partners, but they tend to be more project or task-specific and may not offer the same level of support as a hackathon.
Overall, while both can be valuable tools for driving innovation and finding solutions, it’s important to consider the specific goals and resources available when deciding whether a hackathon or bounty would be best suited for your needs.
So, let’s go over the key distinctions between hackathons and bounties. By the end of the article, you should be able to draw your own conclusions and have a better understanding of which tool to use.
Table of contents
What's a hackathon?
How do bounties work?
Hackathons or bounties: which one should you choose?
Hackathon benefits
Bounty strategiesWhat exactly is a hackathon? 🤔
To begin, hackathons are innovation challenges promoted by businesses that are looking for new ideas or solutions to certain issues.
Throughout the last three decades, numerous businesses have used hackathons to boost innovation.
Originally, hackathons lasted 48 or 72 hours and were on-site events. Nowadays, hackathons are mostly online or hybrid which is the perfect balance to develop better solutions.
The main goal is for participants to form teams in order to bring new solutions to the organization.
In most cases, they are mentored by experts, and at the end of the hackathon, the team pitches their project to a panel of Juris, who then evaluate the proposal.
Participants attend hackathons for a variety of reasons, including the chance to win money and prizes, network, get hired, and gain experience in development.
On the other hand, in general, these young labor forces provide high-quality solutions that drive innovation breakthroughs and help organizations discover new talent through hackathons.
As a result, it is an excellent method of finding and hiring talents.
Hackathons are also an excellent method to attract and hire young talent.
A healthy, fast-paced hackathon competition enables participants to be on top of their game and put in the extra effort to deliver a great project.
For companies, it’s a fantastic approach to scout and evaluate potential future hiring.
What are web3 bounties? 🧐
Web3 bounties are essentially blockchain-based rewards for those who complete specific tasks, like bug fixing or developing new features.
These bounties provide a decentralized and transparent way for project teams to crowdsource work and tap into a global pool of talent.
By using cryptocurrency as payment, web3 bounties also remove barriers to participation, allowing anyone with internet access to contribute and earn rewards regardless of their location or socioeconomic status.
Overall, web3 bounties offer a more efficient and transparent approach to project development.
Organizations, DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), and protocols can provide bounties to developers in the form of their own tokens, ETH, stablecoins such as USDC, or other ERC-20 tokens.
Many blockchain projects, for example, have bounty programs that reward developers with tokens for reporting bug vulnerabilities.
This type of bounty program is known as a bug bounty, but there are other bounty ideas to consider, such as reviewing smart contracts or developing new features for your project.
Hackathon or bounties: which one should your organization choose? 👀
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It ultimately depends on the specific goals and resources of your organization.
A hackathon typically brings together a larger group of individuals for a set period of time to collaboratively solve problems and build new solutions.
This can be a great way to generate fresh ideas and spur innovation within your organization. However, it may require more upfront planning and resources in terms of hosting the event and providing incentives for participants.
On the other hand, offering bounties allows for a more targeted approach by putting a specific challenge or problem out to a potentially larger pool of individuals who can work on it at their own pace.
This can be a cost-effective option, but may not necessarily foster the same level of collaboration and teamwork as a hackathon. It is important to carefully consider the needs and goals of your organization in order to determine which option would be most beneficial.
In some cases, it may even be advantageous to use a combination of both hackathons and bounties in order to reap the benefits of both approaches.
Ultimately, it is important to carefully evaluate the resources and goals of your organization in order to determine the best approach for driving innovation and problem-solving.
Hackathons: Features and Benefits ⚙️
Hosting a successful hackathon requires more effort from the organization and a higher level of preparation.
However, you will attract more participants and different types of solutions for your business.
There are several reasons to promote an online hackathon and make it available to everyone on a user-friendly global platform.
As a result, ensure that the platform has the following characteristics:
- Accessibility and ease of communication between organizer and participants. Provide a shared space for displaying all event-related information, such as rules and objectives. This avoids misunderstandings, and if the platform supports live streaming, organizers can stream event details, lectures, and manage workshops.
- The platform should allow for managing participants’ registrations and teams, enabling your organization to focus on more important tasks, such as event strategy, marketing and mentoring.
- Teams must have the opportunity to collaborate from the start. As a result, participants should be able to find teammates and submit their projects in rich formats with images, videos, and attachments, resulting in a user-friendly environment. Don’t forget to include a good communication tool.
- A simple and transparent system for evaluating submissions ensures that all participants have equal opportunities and makes the jury’s job easier. Look for a platform that offers quantitative evaluations based on tokens or evaluations based on a set of criteria defined by the hackathon organizer.
- When well-organized, online mentoring sessions are fantastic. Don’t forget to provide a space for mentors to communicate with one another and, of course, with participants.
To combine all of these advantages, you can rely on an all-in-one hackathon platform such as TAIKAI — an all-in-one platform for hosting and managing hackathons.
Bounty network: Features and benefits ♾️
As of today, bug bounty programs have been the most common use for bounties.
However, your organization can use bounties for a long-term strategy, as “bounty hunters” are eager to work on a variety of challenges.
That means bounty hunters could play an important role in the add-on:
- Being part of your strategy for the development of products, services and web3 projects.
- Adding to your team’s skills by opening bounties for specific tasks.
In other words, these professionals could be an option for businesses that don’t have large budgets to hire a blockchain developer, or even to test, fix, and review all of your work on your web3 project.
This is from a technical standpoint, but there is a marketing reason to promote bounty programs, as they help to build brand recognition and engage investors in projects and DAOs.
Bepro Network’s platform was designed specifically for bounties and has everything you need to maximize your company’s development.
Bepro acts as a payment and curation layer for GitHub repositories. A
s a result, in order to manage requests, our protocol requires this specific source code and file hosting platform. Our bounty platform also requires you to connect with a MetaMask wallet.
Keeping this in mind, there are three easy steps to launch bounties:
- Submit a bounty. Create, describe and allocate a reward for the task. When creating and managing bounties, you can use your own token, USDC, or any other ERC-20 token as payment.
- Work with the community. Engage your community and attract developers to build the right solution for your project.
- Validate and reward. Review the code, interact with devs, pay with the token of your choice and grow your ecosystem.
Hackathons and bounties: Conclusion
Both hackathons and bounty networks have their own strengths that can benefit your organization.
Hackathons can bring in fresh ideas, new talents, and boost team spirit, while bounty networks allow for collaboration with the community and a more continuous development process.
In order to plan successful events and implement bounties effectively, consider using specialized platforms like TAIKAI or Bepro Network.
These platforms offer all the necessary features, from communication tools to payment options, allowing you to focus on strategy and growth.
Good luck! 🎉🚀
