Aligned Monthly Recap - October '24

Another big month of updates for Aligned!

Check out this thread for a recap of our highlights:

✅ Aligned Builders Hackathon

✅ Events (Istanbul Hacker Alignment and Aligned Istanbul Hackerhouse)

✅ New Partnerships

✅ X Spaces, Community calls, and Technical Sessions

✅ Let’s start with our Aligned Builders Hackathon! 🚀

🔹 This hackathon was announced at the end of September and has spanned nearly the entire month.

It's been an incredible journey, filled with a lot of learning. Seeing the community's enthusiasm for using ZK has been fantastic.

You can check out some highlights in the following tweets of this newsletter.

Here's the main announcement:

🔹 Judging criteria and prizes.

We provided information about the judging criteria and prizes.

The criteria included technical soundness, functionality, innovation, impact, and more.

We offered a total of $50,000 USD in prizes

🥇 1st place: $15,000.

🥈 2nd place: $10,000.

🥉 runner-up: 5 prizes of $5,000 each.

🔹 Hackathon judges.

We're honoured to have an esteemed panel of judges lending their wisdom to the hackathon:

> Vanishree Rao, founder Fermah.

> Nader Dabit, director of devrel EigenLayer.

> Austin Griffith, founder BuidlGuidl.

> dcbuilder, research engineer World.

Their insights and expertise made this hackathon an incredibly enriching experience.

We are incredibly grateful for their support in this event.

🔹 Hackathon Reflections:

We witnessed fantastic projects, all captivating and covering a wide range of topics.

The outcome and feedback have been phenomenal. We couldn't be happier with our community's performance.

We're thrilled to see so many Alignoors eager to use ZK.

Congratulations to everyone! We're excited to share the results in the coming weeks, but for now will share some reflections on the experience:

✅ Let’s review the highlights of the events. ⚡

🔹 Istanbul Hacker Alignment!

> We were thrilled to connect with so many Alignoors in Istanbul.

We discussed the possibilities with ZK, Aligned, and how this technology can impact the world.

The Turkish community is incredible.

You can check out the agenda here.

> Diego Kingston’s presentation live.

Our co-founder and Head of Research sharing knowledge and giving valuable insights about the Present and Future of ZK Verification.

We had a great time! Thanks to node101 for publishing the video!

🔹 Aligned Istanbul Hackerhouse.

> The Hackerhouse fostered a vibrant environment for innovation, resulting in exceptional ideas and projects. It's inspiring to see the creative applications of ZK technology and its potential to shape the future.

We're incredibly grateful to node101 for helping us connect with the Turkish community.

> Here's a glimpse of our Istanbul Hackerhouse!

Many thanks to all Alignors who attended.

We are thrilled to have met so many members of our community.

✅ Let’s continue with our new Partnerships! 🎉

🔹 Partnership 29: Fermah.

We're really excited about this partnership.

We are building complementary pieces of infrastructure that will enable wider adoption of ZK technologies.

Fermah generates proofs, we verify them.

🔹 Partnership 30: Orochi Network.

Orochi is the first ZK Modular Data Availability Layer.

We are thrilled to announce this partnership and support Orochi’s ZK products with fast and cheap verification on Ethereum.

🔹 Our Partnerships Recap is here!

30 projects are fully aligned.

It's been an amazing journey, and we're honored to be on this path with these exceptional teams.

Check out all the amazing projects in the linked tweet!

✅ Let’s explore some X Spaces, Community calls, and Technical Sessions. 💻

🔹 What is the future of ZK apps on Ethereum?

We had an X Space chat with our awesome Aligned Builders Hackathon judges.

If you missed it, you can listen to the recording.

🔹 X Space with Anoma.

It was a pleasure to discuss ZK intents.

Thanks to reka and Stefanos Chaliasos for joining the conversation!

🔹 Community Call 004.

Hosted by our co-founder and Head of Research Diego Kingston, and Boris and Geeny from our ecosystem team.

Thanks to everyone who joined us!

🔹 Community Call 005.

Hosted by Geeny and Boris.

Such a great community call! We loved connecting with all of you.

🔹 Community Call 006.

Hosted by Boris and Geeny, who were joined by Austin Baggio from o1Labs / Mina Protocol.

🔹 Community Call 007.

Hosted by Diego Kingston, Boris and Geeny.

What an amazing community call! We loved connecting with everyone and continuing to learn. Thanks to all the Alignoors for participating!

🔹 Technical session 001.

As part of the hackathon preparations, our co-founder Mauro Toscano delivered technical sessions to address participant questions.

🔹 Technical session 002.

The sessions were highly beneficial, providing detailed explanations, ZK applications, and much more.

Stay tuned:  🐦 Twitter | 🗨️ Telegram | 👾 Discord | 🌐 Website | 📝 Manifesto