March 3, 2020 — The blockchain industry survives on its ability to keep evolving. The technology is constantly under improvement, which is vital for what it’s trying to achieve. Blockchain is at a crossroads, where institutional investors are confident in the technology, and money is pouring into development resources. Blockchain development isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it could be a lot simpler.

Developers are the captains of the blockchain ship, keeping track of vulnerabilities, patching bugs, and pushing the technology forward. Countless individuals pool together to develop the decentralized networks we know and love today, and helping their cause is exigent.

Creating a more inclusive global financial services ecosystem is a long and arduous path — taken a step at a time. Blockchain is still incredibly young, and despite its meteoric growth over the last decade, there are still seemingly insurmountable barriers in its way. Scaling and composability are paramount to a thriving decentralized economy, and we want to incentivize you to solve them.

Hackathons are about celebrating software development and creating conducive spaces for developers to learn, discuss and develop new solutions, using blockchain technology. For both new and experienced developers alike, events, such as Unblock, provide tools to learn how to design and create applications for decentralized systems from scratch. It’s also a fantastic resource for casual cryptocurrency enthusiasts, with mentor sessions, panel discussions and talks from renowned developers and blockchain experts worldwide.

Hackathons allow developers to build all kinds of applications, and with inventive projects such as Nano, Near, Elastos, CXIHub and SnapEx onboard, there are thousands of dollars plus incentives to win in the process. From the billions locked in decentralized finance to Bitcoin’s (BTC) unrivaled rise in value to over $55,000, blockchain is blazing a trail to a future decentralized economy.

Unblock 2021 will take place in three phases: “Know,” “Imagine” and “Code.” The “Know” phase will involve learning the basics of blockchain development, including tutorials and in-depth discussions with mentors and other industry experts. The “Imagine” phase allows participants to flesh out ideas, chewing on opinions from veteran developers, and creating a more efficient strategy to develop the application during the “Code” week that follows.

Any financial system is bound to be complex. It not only has to be capable of handling billions of dollars of transactions on a daily basis but also be secure enough that people trust it with their money.

“The innovative contributions from the nano development community is a large part of what makes Nano the world’s most efficient currency to date,” said Colin LeMahieu, CEO of The Nano Foundation. “I am excited to see the variety of fresh perspectives and contributions from the Unblock 2021 hackathon that will continue to expand the nano ecosystem in the future.”

They say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. Experience counts for a lot in blockchain development, and hackathons are events to be experienced by any aspiring DApp developer. We believe in blockchain enough to want to make it better, and helping new developers test the waters is one of the best ways we know how.

Check out the speaker lineup and register for Unblock 2021 here: https://unblock.octaloop.com/.