Summary:
Since forming in October of 2022, the OpenData Community (ODC) has grown its community and held 2 productive Hackathons. As we move into a new season, the ODC is committed to supporting public goods through regularly scheduled Hackathons as well as project development via our recently launched Sandbox workstream. In this document, we review the results and successes of our Data Builder Hackathon and outline the upcoming Regen Ranger Hackathon to be held April 25th - May 15th, 2023.
More information about the OpenData Community is available on our website.
Our mission remains to protect web3 from:
- Fraudsters including Sybils
- The risks of centralization at the data layer
In addition to hosting quarterly hackathons, the OpenData Community seeks to achieve its mission by:
- Supporting the development and usage of decentralized data projects through the Sandbox program
- The Regen Rangers program whereby data scientists, analysts, and software developers document their expertise and agree to an Oath to use their skills to defend web3
We are working with potential Hackathon sponsors now to finalize the design of this hackathon.
The ODC Hackathon Journey:
The OpenData Community has recently led two large Hackathons. The Data Builder Hackathon was held in January 2023 and drew 56 submissions. Contestants competed for $35,000 in bounties split across four sub-competitions. Judges and the OpenData community utilized quadratic voting to allocate rewards to 29 participants. This Hackathon saw a huge growth in sponsorship including new collaborating sponsors TrueBlocks, Pocket Network, Ocean Protocol, and Supermodular.xyz alongside our long-term supporter Gitcoin. In addition to funding the hackathon, our sponsors helped to promote the hackathon while providing coaching and technical support.
The DataBuilder hackathon also used a new framework to ensure simple data access through the use of the Ocean Protocol data marketplace. We also increased education for participants via regularly scheduled Twitter Spaces and virtual Office Hours and collaboratively authored FAQs and other content.
The ODC Data Builder’s Hackathon included four sub-competitions:
- Exploratory Data Analysis:
- This sub-competition examined votes and activity within a public goods funding grant round. Winning competitors used data analysis to better understand trends and highlight activity that could better identify Sybils. This work provides the foundation for robust defense against bad actors during a grant round and other activities likely to be attacked by Sybils, such as airdrop farming and other types of identity impersonation.
- Lego Packaging:
- This sub-competition tasked participants with the creation of fully packaged Legos with a binary output for use in Sybil defense. Legos offer flexibility in Sybil detection as they are modular and composable, and thereby can be chosen and tailored to fit a specific round. Additionally, by breaking down analysis into multiple steps, each of which is a documented Lego, it is easier to explain why a particular address was flagged, improving transparency and credibility.
- Documentation on Legos including how to package them and existing Legos can be found here: GitHub - Fraud-Detection-and-Defense/lego-docs: home for lego documentation
- Lego Dashboards:
- This sub-competition focused on creating dashboards to summarize the results of many Legos and other analysis.
- Lastly, Hack on the Hackathon
- Hack on the Hackathon rewarded contributions to the hackathon itself, including new FAQs and instructional videos and other forms of support.
Additionally, contestants were encouraged to use decentralized data systems, such as Pocket Network and TrueBlocks. Data sets were provided on the Ocean Protocol by the ODC and many contestants shared their analysis and data sets on the Ocean Protocol as well.
To find out more on the Data Builder Hackathon and the submissions that won, please see this post on the Gitcoin governance forum: https://gov.gitcoin.co/t/gitcoin-founded-opendata-community-kicks-off-databuilder-hackathon/12489/3
Regen Rangers Hackathon:
We look forward to continuing a regular cadence of Hackathons with our Regen Rangers Hackathon in late April 2023. We anticipate the Regen Rangers Hackathon to be our largest hackathon to date with approximately $45,000 in bounties.
Please note that the following details are subject to change - as we gather feedback from sponsors and partners including Gitcoin. For example - we propose working with the Passport product however it could be that the Passport product team would not prioritize this effort. We are still having these conversations and look forward to your feedback here or in the Google doc write-up here:
[OpenData Community - the Q2 2023 Regen Rangers Hackathon - Google Docs](https://Regen Rangers Hackathon write-up)
We need to finalize details by the second week of April.
The focus of the OpenData Community in this upcoming Hackathon is:
-
Finding fraud in public goods funding:
Leveraging data sets provided by Gitcoin and the ODC from the late April through early May public goods funding round to be hosted by Gitcoin
Sybil identification and defense
1. Use existing Legos & algorithms & dashboards to find potential Sybil attackers
2. Contribute new Legos, algorithms, or dashboard improvements to find potential Sybil attackers
3. The Sybil Identification Sandbox project hosted by the OpenData Community will be a foundation of this bounty.
Grant screening and review
1. Screen grant applicants, using existing algorithms, Legos, and dashboards.
2. Perform intra round analysis of potentially problematic grant applications, using existing algorithms, Legos and dashboards
3. Contribute new algorithms, Legos and Dashboards to Grant screening and review
4. The Grant Review Sandbox project hosted by the OpenData Community will be a foundation of this bounty.
- Perform quests:
In the quest section of the hackathon, contestants will be able to opt into bounties by documenting their work. All those that complete these tasks will split the allocated bounties.
Improve docs: Take existing Legos and list those that are not already documented in the docs as explained here:
https://github.com/Fraud-Detection-and-Defense/lego-docs
Contribute to Passport: Find 1-2 useful Legos and integrate those into Gitcoin Passport, as explained here:
https://docs.passport.gitcoin.co/stamps/integrating-a-new-stamp
TrueBlocks and Pocket for data access and analysis:
Demonstrate the integration of TrueBlocks with Pocket Network RPCs
Use common ETL frameworks with Ocean Protocol:
Stand up an ETL pipeline from a given chain to Ocean Protocol using a pipeline from https://github.com/blockchain-etl/ethereum-etl
- Exposing DeFi and DAO fraud and manipulation
Apply existing ODC and FDD Gitcoin-developed Legos - to other related use cases such as:
- Wash trading: Derive a score showing what percentage of trades in a given period on a given chain appear to be due to Sybil coordinated wash trades
- Airdrop manipulation: Examine the Arbitrum or other recent airdrops and suggest additional approaches that could have further assisted in finding and disqualifying Sybils or that could have reduced the incidence of false positives.
Bounties and Benefits:
We are currently in conversation with our previous hackathon sponsors and supporters and actively reaching out to potential collaborators. Partners that would like to work with the OpenData Community to craft the hackathon and the future direction of the OpenData Community should get in touch immediately.
Additionally, all contestants whose submissions receive at least some bounties will receive voting rights in the ODC. Contestants will compete for at least $45,000 in bounties. Other benefits include potential inclusion in the OpenData Community Sandbox to help grow projects and give access to mentorship and advancement towards becoming a Regen Ranger or a potentially elected governance leader.
Conclusion:
With each hackathon, the OpenData Community improves its ability to protect web 3 from fraudsters and from the risks of centralization at the data layer. In the upcoming Regen Rangers hackathon from April 25th through May 15th of 2023, the ODC will continue to provide useful analysis and tools while also furthering knowledge of how to use data decentralization technologies.
Interested partners should get in touch with the ODC immediately in order to assist in crafting this and future hackathons.
We are also speaking to a handful of founding sponsors. These founders will help to shape the direction of the ODC itself and will receive governance tokens, marketing, and many other benefits in return for their support.