Bitcoin is a better platform for Web3, says Lightning Competition organizer

1 year ago

Bear markets are for gathering Bitcoin (BTC) companies. At least, that’s what the Legends of Lightning, a nine-week contention for competing Bitcoin businesses, would indicate.

The tournament-come-hackathon ran much than 65 events worldwide arsenic 73 projects battled it retired to triumph 3 BTC ($50,000). The contention crowned Bitcoin startups Lightsats and AgriMint arsenic winners of 2 abstracted contention tracks, Global Adoption and Building for Africa.

Organized by Bitcoin startup Bolt Fun, the contention brought unneurotic 260 makers (builders, developers, startuppers and hackers) worldwide. Speaking to Cointelegraph via Google Meet, Johns Beharry, co-founder of Bolt Fun and laminitis and CEO of Peak Shift, explained that the hackathon is the largest yet successful the Bitcoin economy: “There is thing remotely adjacent to this,” helium said.

The thought down the contention was to “Onboard caller makers into the ecosystem, innovate connected bitcoin and lightning, and assistance caller oregon existing projects incubate their ideas and crook dreams into a reality.”

In addition, the contention showcases the Bitcoin improvement abstraction arsenic an arena for developing, tinkering and experimenting successful ways that would wow Web3 builders. Edward Pratt, cofounder of Bolt Fun and a Senior Product Designer highlighted that squad astatine Bolt Fun are laser-eye focused connected pushing Bitcoin adoption done gathering companies and expanding the Bitcoin assemblage into different domains:

“The essence of it is that different developer ecosystems are massive. We privation to bash our portion to propulsion bitcoin to vie for mindshare and attraction connected the exertion layer.”

As shown successful the graph below, Bitcoin has less developers than Ethereum and Polkadot. While Bitcoin is by acold the largest and astir recognized cryptocurrency, information would suggest that Bitcoin is not the abstraction that developers and builders flock to.

Pratt and Beharry reason that Web3 ecosystems specified arsenic Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot, and Cosmos are drafting involvement and endowment distant from the Bitcoin-building space, contempt the information that Bitcoin offers the lone decentralized infrastructure worthy gathering on. The Legends of Lightning contention is an effort to remedy the concern and item the wealthiness and extent of opportunities to physique connected Bitcoin.

Solana Hackathons connection monolithic prize money, and this summer, implicit 350 projects pitched to triumph a $5 cardinal treasure chest. First prize astatine The Legends of Lightning, by comparison, talented 3 BTC ($50,000) to 1 of the 73 competing projects, one-hundredth of the full prize money.

Pratt continued, “It goes to amusement the quality betwixt the Bitcoin ecosystem and different ecosystems specified arsenic Solana.” Ultimately, the Bitcoin abstraction competes for builders and developers that instrumentality portion successful Web3 playgrounds specified arsenic Solana and Ethereum.

“There’s decidedly a batch of enactment [in Bitcoin] but we’re not seeing arsenic overmuch inventiveness successful Bitcoin conscionable yet.”

Curiously, the victor of the competition, Lightsats built their task based connected an thought shared successful a Tweet from Bitcoin entrepreneur Brad Mills. The tweet acceptable disconnected a lightning-fast concatenation absorption of Bitcoin creation. Within a substance of weeks, Lightsats built their “Precoiner onramp project,” submitted it to the squad astatine Bolt Fun, and won the Global Adoption competition.

We won!I’m going to framework this! Where it each started! pic.twitter.com/wLC6Yd8ica

— Lightsats (@Lightsats21) December 7, 2022

One of the ways of drafting much radical to enactment and physique connected Bitcoin is by reaching retired to developers moving successful different ecosystems, Pratt explained. “We privation to people radical connected the fringe of crypto and Web3,” it’s a question of “How bash we get the narratives to speech to those people,” Pratt pondered.

Beharry joked that it could hap naturally; “Your web3 level is offline, Bitcoin fixes this," referring to the galore occasions the Solana blockchain simply stopped working.

The Legends of Lightning squad hopes to repetition the lawsuit annually with heftier prizes, much entrants, and much creativity. The extremity is to scope 1,000 entrants adjacent twelvemonth —a sizeable leap from its existent standpoint.

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