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NEAR HACKATHON

Loops House
NEAR HACKATHONHackathon

Registration ends

Nov 14

Submission ends

Nov 14

Next phase

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Prize pool

$250,000

Enter Hackathon Space

Build what's next

Official site: nearhackathon.com
Tracks, judges, rules and the HACKATHON.md for your AI agent all live there.

API credits: nearbuilders.org
Backend access for this hackathon is distributed through NEAR Builders. Create a builder profile there to get your credits; access only works for registered builders.

Autonomous payments. Intelligent agents. Money with a mind of its own. The era of programmable money starts here.

Build on NEAR across 13 tracks, from Unstoppable DeFi and Private AI to Agent Economies, AI Swarms, Real-World Money and Games With Real Economies. $250K in prizes, paid in NEAR: a $55K Grand Prize, plus $10K / $3K / $2K for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in every track.

Timeline (UTC)

  • Hackathon starts: 1 Nov 2026, 00:00. No sign-up needed to start building.
  • Development: 1–14 Nov 2026
  • Submission deadline: 14 Nov 2026, 23:59
  • Judging: 16–18 Nov 2026. Results by 18 Nov 2026, 23:59.

How to submit

  1. Build during the hackathon.
  2. Publish a public repository. Judges can't open private ones.
  3. Post a demo on X saying you built it at NEAR HACKATHON, with a video or screenshots.
  4. Submit the repository link, the demo post link and the NEAR wallet address prizes should go to.

One submission per team. A project can enter several tracks and still counts as one submission. No wallet connection is needed to submit.

Judges

Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol), Eddy Lazzarin (a16z crypto), Mert Mumtaz (Helius), Avichal Garg (Electric Capital), Kain Warwick (Synthetix & Infinex), Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly) and Stepan Gershuni (cyber•Fund), with Claude Code & Codex joining as AI judges.

Resources

Sponsor Tracks & Prizes

$250,000 Prize Pool

NEAR Protocol

near.org

NEAR Protocol is a sharded layer-1 blockchain built for apps that people and AI agents can use without thinking about the chain. Accounts have human-readable names like alice.near, transactions are fast and cheap, and one account can act across chains.

What you can build on:

  • NEAR Intents: say what you want (swap, pay, settle) and solvers execute it across chains, with no bridges to manage.
  • Chain Signatures: a NEAR account can sign transactions on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and other chains.
  • NEAR AI: private, verifiable inference in trusted execution environments (TEEs), and Shade Agents that hold their own keys.
  • Named accounts, sub-accounts and function-call keys: give an agent or app scoped, revocable access instead of the whole wallet.

API credits for this hackathon are distributed through NEAR Builders: create a builder profile at https://nearbuilders.org/join to get backend access. It only works for registered builders.

NEAR was co-founded by Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of the Transformer paper ("Attention Is All You Need"), who is also on this hackathon's jury.

Docs: https://docs.near.org/ · Website: https://near.org/

Partners

With the support of

NEAR Intents
Aurora
HOT
Rhea
meme.cooking
HEX
NEAR.AI
SVRN
Trezu
SputnikDAO
OutLayer
GoMining

Mentors | Speakers | Judges

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can take part?

Developers, designers and people with ideas for the NEAR ecosystem. All you need to submit is a NEAR account address.

Do I need a team?

No. Enter solo or as a team, with one submission per team. You can find teammates on the NEAR Discord: https://discord.gg/nearprotocol

When does it happen?

It starts 1 Nov 2026, 00:00 UTC. Development ends 14 Nov 2026, 23:59 UTC, and results are announced by 18 Nov 2026, 23:59 UTC.

Do I need to register before building?

No. You can start building on 1 Nov without signing up; just submit before the deadline.

What should we submit?

A working prototype in a public repository and a public demo post on X saying you built it at NEAR HACKATHON, with a video or screenshots. Send both links, plus the NEAR wallet address prizes should go to, before the deadline. Judges can't open private repositories.

Can a project span multiple tracks?

Yes. Select every track that applies; it still counts as one submission.

How will projects be judged?

By a jury of Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol), Eddy Lazzarin (a16z crypto), Mert Mumtaz (Helius), Avichal Garg (Electric Capital), Kain Warwick (Synthetix & Infinex), Haseeb Qureshi (Dragonfly) and Stepan Gershuni (cyber•Fund), with Claude Code & Codex as AI judges.

What are the prizes?

$250K in total, paid in NEAR: a $55K Grand Prize, plus $10K for 1st, $3K for 2nd and $2K for 3rd place in each of the 13 tracks.

Do I need to connect a wallet to submit?

No. You only give the NEAR wallet address prizes should be sent to.