Investing.com - Web3 education platform and incubator EasyA said it has educated over 100,000 developers on the Polkadot ecosystem. The achievement came on the heels of two Polkadot hackathons this summer, which attracted nearly 1,000 developers and incubated 111 startups.
As part of their #180DaysofPolkadot campaign, the event was one of several global EasyA hackathons highlighting the opportunities available to developers in the Polkadot ecosystem.
EasyA invited their community, known as gigabrains, to apply for the hackathon. Nearly 1 million members worldwide and thousands applied to hack in-person at Consensus this year.
At the EasyA x Polkadot hackathon in London, the app selected over 400 developers to participate, which it says led to the creation of 56 startups. Among the winning projects were a tool for integrating Farcaster with Polkadot, a real estate management app named Paxmata, and Paperbaum, a custom parachain for secure academic paper publishing. These teams are now looking for additional funding to scale their startups.
Following the London event, EasyA hosted a second Polkadot hackathon at Harvard University, where over 300 developers launched 55 games, leveraging NFTs on Unique Network’s parachain. The event featured a $20,000 prize pool and a guest appearance by INDY500 racer Conor Daly.
EasyA has been a key driver of developer activity on Polkadot, with nearly 1,000 startups coming out of their hackathons this year. The app touts itself as easy to use and fun to learn with, making it a popular choice for aspiring Web3 developers.
EasyA's alumni are said to have founded startups valued at over $2.5 billion and secured funding from top venture capital firms. Cognition AI, a company founded by EasyA hackathon winner Walden Yan, hit a $2B valuation in April. Walden originally pitched his idea for DALLE on the blockchain at an EasyA hackathon at Harvard in 2022.
Founded by graduates from the University of Cambridge and The Wharton School, EasyA has over 1M downloads and has even been named Apple’s App of the Day. The app continues to bring developers into Web3, hosting in-person hackathons in cities like San Francisco, London, and Singapore.