Flow Foundation Internal Hackathon: A Deep Dive into Innovation
Earlier this year, the team at the Flow Foundation hosted an internal hackathon designed to push the boundaries of what's possible on the Flow blockchain. This event brought together 16 of the talented Flow core team members to build over the course of a week, resulting in 10 unique projects. Each submission was then demoed live to a panel of community judges, to elicit feedback and community input.
Flow is a fast, decentralized, and developer-friendly blockchain, designed to power the next generation of games, apps, and digital assets. This hackathon showcased the versatility of Flow, with projects ranging from smart home microcontrollers to groundbreaking advancements in DNA privacy on the blockchain. These all highlight the immense potential and evolving capabilities of the Flow ecosystem.
This article provides a summary and links to the relevant GitHub Repos of each of the projects to further share with the community. If you would be interested in pursuing one of these ideas further, reach out to the Flow team for help and support in doing so via Community@flow.com.
🧬 GeneFlow
By: Ali Serag
Demo: geneflow.vercel.app
Repo: geneflow
Video: Watch
Ali Serag's GeneFlow was inspired by a data breach that compromised his own genetic information, and led to the development of a revolutionary model for fully private genetic analysis, powered by client-side encryption and large language model (LLM) chat.
This project empowers individuals to engage directly with their genetic data and ask personalized health questions, such as dietary recommendations or medication metabolism, to an AI. All while ensuring secure, on-chain storage of their data and questions, accessible only to the user. Judges lauded GeneFlow as a significant step towards a more private and user-controlled future for sensitive data on the blockchain.
🚀 Warpflow
By: Brian Doyle
Demo: OpenSea Testnet
Repo: warpflow-contracts
Brian Doyle's Warpflow explored what’s possible for fully on-chain generative NFT collections on Flow. This tactical space battle game stores and renders every pixel of its NFT spaceships directly on the Flow blockchain. Ships feature procedurally generated names and their components—like railguns, shields, and drones—are encoded as pure SVG assets, dynamically assembled by an "octopus" of smart contracts.
Brian traced and optimized every image, built a dynamic fleet generator, and laid the foundation for a Warhammer-style points-based PvP game. Judges asked: why aren’t more NFTs built like this?
🐧 Waddle
By: Bz
Demo: waddle-gules.vercel.app
Repo: waddle
Waddle is a decentralized 5G infrastructure network on Flow. Spin up a mini hotspot, track uptime on-chain, and get rewarded. By leveraging Flow’s account linking feature, user assets are always accessible, even across wallets, without compromising security.
Waddle lays the groundwork for a truly community-driven 5G network.
💬 Flow Chat
By: Hao Fu, Chaos Cao, Zena Zhou
Demo: ai-chat-defi.vercel.app
Repo: ai-chat-defi
Flow Chat, a collaborative effort by Hao Fu, Chaos Cao, and Zena Zhou, bridges LLMs with real-time blockchain data. This project allows users to interact with Flow's onchain information using plain english, querying everything from current block heights and decentralized exchange (DEX) activity to generating reports, initiating swaps, and checking wallet balances. Flow Chat is a great example of an AI-native interface for blockchain, making complex on-chain data and actions accessible and intuitive for a broader audience.
🌐 Rift Protocol & Harpoon Wallet
By: Michael Fabozzi
Demo: Watch
Repos: rift-js | harpoon
Video: Watch
Rift Protocol and Harpoon Wallet offer a transformative approach to embedding interactive blockchain experiences into any online content.
Rift Protocol enables developers to integrate interactive blockchain widgets, known as Rift Frames, directly into platforms like X or Medium blogs without requiring complex backend integrations. The Harpoon Wallet detects these frames and injects the necessary interactive user interface. This innovation was hailed by the community judges as "a tooling breakthrough," with the potential to significantly improve user onboarding.
🐦 Project Hummingbird
By: Alex Hentschel, Janez Podhostnik, Jan BernatikRepo: hummingbird
Video: Watch
Project Hummingbird stood out as the only project featuring physical hardware integration. Inspired by the challenges of maintaining hummingbird feeders during freezing winters, this project demonstrated a decentralized smart home automation prototype. A button press on one microcontroller wirelessly signed and sent a transaction to the Flow Testnet, subsequently triggering LEDs, updating displays, and even controlling a lightbulb across different microcontrollers. Judges praised its "brilliant orchestration," sparking discussions about broader applications in smart grid and IoT use cases on the blockchain.
Read more on Blockchain for Decentralized Critical Infrastructure in this article from Alex Hentschel.
💸 SplitFi
By: Chase Fleming & Jordan Ribbink
Demo: splitfi.vercel.app
Repo: splitfi
SplitFi, developed by Chase Fleming and Jordan Ribbink, brings the convenience of bill-splitting applications like Splitwise directly to Flow. This project allows users to easily add any shared expense and settle it with a single USDF transaction. Eliminating the need for convoluted daisy-chains or bank delays, SplitFi introduces features like "PaySpin," where on-chain randomness can determine who pays. The project's blend of "Splitwise simplicity with blockchain speed," offering sub-penny fees, no banks, and no waiting.
🎨 FlowGen
By: Han Zhang
Demo: flowgen.art
Repo: flowgen
Video: Watch
Inspired by the concept of the Million Dollar Homepage, Han’s FlowGen allows users to mint AI-generated NFTs on a shared, evolving canvas. Each unique piece is composable, permanently owned on Flow, and collectively contributes to a dynamic, collaborative artwork.
Han's post-hackathon reflections also provided invaluable, detailed developer feedback on Flow's tooling, addressing everything from command-line interface (CLI) pain points to Cadence formatting. Notes that the Flow team has already addressed across the Flow Developer Portal.
🧻 NFT Shredder
By: Felipe Cavallos
Repo: nft-shredder
The NFT Shredder presents a simple yet important application: providing users with the explicit ability to permanently destroy their NFTs directly. This functionality is a distinct feature of Flow compared to other blockchains, where NFTs are “burned” by being sent to "landfill accounts" rather than being truly eliminated from existence. Whereas on Flow, NFTs are resources that can be permanently destroyed. NFT Shredder showcases Flow's unique capabilities in asset management.
⚔️ Fixes' Battlefield
Fixes' Battlefield is an ambitious tactical board game powered by AI agents. Players mint and train units, but uniquely, they cannot control these units directly. Instead, AI hosts manage battles offchain, while all critical game state, strategic decisions, and rewards are managed onchain.
With over 3,000 lines of smart contract code, this project is still in progress but demonstrates a massive vision for complex, AI-driven gaming experiences fully integrated with the Flow blockchain.
Concluding Thoughts
A special thank you to the guest judges who helped to review and give feedback on all these submissions:
- Noah – A developer and host of a community podcast, recognized for contributions across various projects
- Libruary – An active collector within the Flow ecosystem and the developer of Vaultopolis and $TSHOT.
- Dennis – An early member of the Flow developer community who has made numerous contributions to the Flow protocol and its ecosystem
This hackathon was far more than just a showcase of the team's abilities; it was a powerful example of the potential of building on Flow, a key driver in better understanding the developer experience of building on Flow, and a vital mechanism for exposing real needs within the builder journey.
For developers looking to engage with the Flow ecosystem, you are encouraged to explore these projects: clone a repo, test a tool, or remix an idea. To help you get started, dive into the Flow Developer Portal to get started: https://developers.flow.com/
