Why do hackers stop building on your protocol? : What's next after the hackathon? with Eomji Park

hello everyone happy to meet you I hope that um you can have some fun time next 20 minutes discussing why hackers are keep building or like stop building on your protocol this talk is actually made for more protocols itself not the hackers but you can perhaps like see this and maybe come back to me and tell me if it's right or if there's any more reasons first I am OMG head of research and programs at incot club incode club is education Community perhaps some of you already met us because we officially work with the if Denver team to making a solidity boot camp for eight weeks a few weeks ago we are training uh web 3 talents through different programs like boot camps hackathons accelerators and workshops and afterwards we are helping our community members to getting a job so that they can land in web 3 nicely or they're securing the fundings because they are working on their own projects so now like let's talk about uh hackathon why hackathon I love hackathon I used to go to hackathon a Lobby before joining web3 I used to go to like a weekend hackathon with my husband and then like building some stuff for fun learning new things it's a lot of fun there and now I'm making hackathon we talk a lot about hackathon with hackers and also protocols Bounty givers we always talk about like what is good and why we need to build it let's check it out a little bit for hackers like you're gonna make friends you're gonna hang out with the community learn something new test your skills get feedback win prizes it's like very straightforward but for Bounty givers aren't you curious why Protocols are giving bounties to you so they want to test their products they want to find a different solution for a problem they have or they want to inspire the community so that they want to communicate with you or they raise the awareness of their own protocol or they find the talents they need so they want to hire someone or they want to manage their brand so there's a lot of reason why protocols want to support hackathon and there's some mismatching expectation can create a little like conflict so I have been asked like a lot of times what comes after hackathon there's like a lot of things we talk about why we should come to hackathon but we don't talk about what's next there are some hackers like maybe some of you have been hackathon like multiple times and now you're thinking like if I should keep building it or not or like a protocols have been seeing same hackers several times and they're wondering like will to get the new hackers or if they're wondering if they need to keep supporting old hackers all those kind of thing I wanted to talk about today with you guys first I before jumping in there like I wanted to share like a little numbers so these numbers are the numbers of the encode Club at 2022 we have run 23 hackathons over the year 5500 unique hackers has been attending our hackathon so you can imagine if some hackers attended multiple hackathons number is going to go up but this is unique number and 1 200 hackers have been submitting and many of them have been coming to our accelerator or bootcamp afterwards so we had a direct contact with them to have a discussion while they're moving around on the other hand we are working with a lot of different protocols so that we could closely look at their Journeys afterwards so what kind of questions I have been asked so like after multiple winning at hackathons hackers were really confused if they should keep building their projects going further or they should keep doing like bounty hunting just keep building new things because often it's not about like if you're interested in bounty hunting yourself for them it's another simple problem but for example if you are I don't know securing the micro grants so you are now building some projects but then you are getting invited to different hackathons building new things because they want to see your skills they want to test something new then you need to ship your stuff you don't have a time and then you are a little bit confused about the message is that if you need to keep building something new or you need to continue your journey whether your original projects and similar questions come from the protocol side as well we need to support the same hacker who is winning every hackathon but they love those hackers right we are contributing to the ecosystem but how can he then support new hackers why how can you make this one not game of the some just like you know smaller core developers who are enjoying this hackathon and we are like making a barrier for the new hackers or if you don't give a good price to hackers they will not take our boundaries let's give a lot of money or we shouldn't give money there's a lot of questions coming to the protocols as well if it's a right incentive to give a lot of prizes or what kind of supports they need to provide especially hackers are like looking for different types of initiatives and incentives out there if you cannot segment it well you cannot give the right support So in this talk I'd love to share like what kind of Journeys hackers are going through what kind of hacker types are existing and what protocols can do for that uh overly simplified version there's like four types of hackers one is like who wants to learn just have fun around so perhaps they're coming to hackathon they already have a job or like they are not interested in like I keep continuing something but for that time being they just like to learn or building something new second who is looking for a job so they're actively looking for something in web 3 they want to get a job so this is their portfolio and then another one is like they want to build their own projects so they want to become a Founder they want to get funding afterwards so that this is another activity for them to get exposure and meet new hackers and then uh another one is like Bounty Hunters who want to just win the prize due to perhaps Financial incentives so they're going through different hackathons so that they can secure some let's say nice prize money if your protocol here is there any group you don't want to accommodate in your hackathon if you thought about one group now you should rethink about that you don't want to support them in your hackathon because of certain incentives you think that it's not matching to yours you need to design your hackathon track differently to make them contributing to your ecosystem in different way not kick them out or try to like how to set it discourage them to joining that just we need to think about how to segment them differently and providing different workshops and bounties so that they can come along so the problem comes from wrong message expectation perhaps many of you thought about these cases first that some hackers coming to hackathon to get like Bounty monies they're not interested in keep building but then protocols want them to stay and they want you to become a founder of the protocol working there it's quite common cases right you're going to be perhaps contacted by protocols a lot what I want to say here is that it's completely okay so I'm uncomfortable like money bounties it's quite normal that we are spending our time putting effort to earn something so what should you do here is perhaps we need to retune our expectation that they're testing your products they're perhaps like giving you feedback regarding your documentation they make some project which can Inspire someone so they're your extended their real engineer they are not working for you full-time they make some prototype for you the other is going to be watching that and maybe take that idea and gonna build a project on top of it so they don't need to necessarily stay in your ecosystem or they don't need to keep building same projects they can just ignite someone's ID someone's like inspiration they can be an inspirational like projects so in this case like you shouldn't be really mad that they just come for the bounties and go just you need to encourage them how can they try new features because they're great developers normally keep winning like 10 times they must be really good right so either you should encourage them to try new feature so you test it or make them like just try some creative solution even though it sounds like complete for now so that someone else can take it and use it as their idea for further projects so those are the way like we can encourage them and make this relationship a little bit returning and make it work another thing is like a there's a lot of different perhaps like like wrong match but another one is like someone who just want to have fun and you want them to work in web3 so they're lucky I met many hackers that they are working in web to startups like AI engineer cryptography researchers they're having fun blockchain is something their hobby they want to do something and then in web 3 protocols want them to work in full time but they don't really want to but then okay we are suggesting them black or white solution but it's actually it's not true we have a lot of bounties right we have already existing this like a freelancing style of um how to say that like bounties and serving Journeys so what I usually suggest is like those people can be a part-time contributor you don't need to convince them to jump into the web 3 right away you should just offer them in which way they can contribute for example like if someone is working for your documentation together their Tech writer they're just interested in learning your new ecosystem you should provide them some education and let them help you or if they're like developers who are like asking uh to joining and I don't know expanding like your um well-date extension they want to change some stuffs we're casting like pull request and then you need to acknowledge them because their incentives are not money they just want to have fun in that case you need to acknowledge their effort try to communicate with them and giving a new chance if you try to convince them giving a money and working rapidly they will actually lose their interest another thing is hackathon project with a continuity so there is like a project who want to become a startup so they are keep building things and then there's a questions like can we allow existing projects coming into this hackathon should he uh how to say that like disqualify them so it's true it's a little bit unfair if they come with existing projects they have submitted to maybe five different hackathons throughout the year it's not even like a week ago but five five months or so let's say then it's a bit unfair to make them fight with a new project that's correct but we need to accommodate both different groups who are like a new hackers completely new learning something so that they cannot build very complicated stuff and then some of who is existing and they want to keep building on top of it there's multiple ways to hack away one thing is what we are usually doing at our hackathon is for existing projects we ask them to break down their projects so let's say you are making a racing game and then you want to improve your let's say um how to say a front-end so then like that person gonna be bring that piece of things to the hackathon so they're like they can build and test their features what they want to implement it to their startup in the future so that it can be a fair game for everyone but you don't need to waste your time wait waste your waste their time because if you are forcing them to completely building something new to join this game they need to waste their time a lot and perhaps you are making wrong Behavior Dynamics because it becomes much sweeter to doing something new and just get bounties instead of working on their own projects they will leave your protocol because at certain point you will not be interesting anymore so another thing is you can design your price structure differently sometimes we are making a different structures for the newcomers so if they're making easy projects still they can win some bounties a little bit smaller but they can still like have some motivation to create like a simple depth and then they can go further so there's a different way to hack this one just like you need to rethink about uh what is your hackathon strategy so let's a little bit go back to the Bounty givers what was their goal so there was a lot of different goals has been like a test your product find different solutions for problem or inspiring your community and so on but often this conflict come because protocols want to onboard new developers so this is all like a developer a condition Journey otherwise you wouldn't have this kind of friction because all the other things can be achievable and then if you're working a protocol try to like work on the hackathons you're gonna have like some how to set it you need to deliver kpi right if you want to use your money giving a bounty away you want to achieve some goals and then you need to think about what is your kpi for this hackathon and you need to think about the stage of your protocol if you are like an early stage protocol so that nobody even know you and then they don't they cannot like even you don't have even proper tutorial if they're making a project which is exactly same on other chain just testing all the features you built maybe that's already great win but if you your established protocol and you have already a lot of existing debt if super experienced developers are making copy that maybe you don't want to encourage that but new ones can do that because they can practice their skills so all those kind of haircut and Journeys should be designed differently different depending on their skill sets their stage also your protocol stage and also another thing is what kind of incentives they're looking for if they're looking for like a money bounties or like acknowledgment there are a lot of developers actually join in this hackathon for fun it's like a game for everyone and that you want to be acknowledged right you want to get exposure you want to just contribute to ecosystem in that case perhaps at the hackathon you can acknowledge their projects without giving a like big prize and try to support them to grow in your community there's like some protocols who are trying this very nicely some protocols some existing projects doesn't get any visibility so this kind of thing should be redesigned so the hackers Journeys and project journey is going to be different per different group and another thing I would suggest is also like if you are expecting them to test your products I know this is challenging for every protocol but we need to really work on documentations and need to come back to them very quick when we are doing hackathon I know like how much Protocols are working really hard because we are in contact with them directly but often hackers are waiting for API key three days or they reported that this tutorial has a typo and it's not working and it's same after two weeks or a month later this one it's a difficult challenge but we need to fix that because if developers doesn't have smooth user Journey they will not stay around and they will think that they will not be heard we are trying to telling them explaining a lot how Protocols are actually watching you remember you and then they try to work on it it's on their like kanban you know their scrum but just as a hackers if you don't receive the feedback you don't feel like you get hurt and then eventually they think that this community doesn't fit so in a nutshell there's like a few things we need to think about bounties workshops hacker Journeys should be redesigned you need to think about your kpi if you're sponsoring hackathon for example if you want to onboard a lot of new users like get easy with the challenges perhaps smaller projects a lot of them try to encourage a lot of new hackers if you want to test new products you need to design your Workshop cleverly so that they can try that if you want creative solution you need to build like a workshop around and giving us some thought seats and then you need to have a documentation that they can actually fulfill basic boilerplates without any worries so and then for example like a hacker Journey after a hackathon like price payments should be smooth so that they have a great experience and afterwards if you want them to stay around you need to give them a good feedback good feedback here doesn't mean they're giving them your project is amazing good feedback means they're giving a throw feedback about their project what kind of things they can improve and acknowledge them so all these kind of things are not easy to achieve because it's quite customized solution but this is something you must consider especially if you're if your protocol is growing because without this consideration you will just repeat the hackathons but without going anywhere because you don't have your own Target and Target become very simple number and that that number mean nothing so this is the talk I wanted to share and if you're a hacker in this journey especially multiple winning in different hackathons you have a feeling that you got lost and you don't know your way or if you're working a protocol and realize that you have this problem we are open to talk this is my Twitter my DM is open during the middle week and also uh we are hosting a the Pete Hacker House with the job so so nothing happened so um what happened is like uh we are holding a deped hacker house with a jump crypto during the week so they're going to be a lot of different talks and workshops and also have office hours if you want to have a chat with us feel free to visit and you can DM me thank you very much [Music]