https://dev.fun/ is an interesting, very early stage, platform for people to build apps against tokens.
it’s glorified landing pages at present but the scope is very interesting as there’s a lot of places they can go (and they are currently going).
It’s full of trading tools, but you can a lot of stuff on here. Seeing more games.
For example I built a very simple tool to “meme-up” a token image.
but… I also tried to build a simple web search app and that has been blowing errors ever since i deployed it.
So it’s definitely a mixed bag still. but things are advancing quickly.
see @buidldao_ on X for examples of what’s been going on.
these templates are good starters too.
My proposal
Let’s run a Sanctum hack-a-thon on dev.fun!
Open up a channel on the Sanctum Discord for people to talk about and show off the apps they’re building.
Make the prizes Sanctum buying a set amount of the token linked to the winning apps.
Got to keep it tightly focused on Sanctum though. You can have different tracks e.g., trading, education, memes, etc… but I think it best to keep it strict as goes what you accept.
thanks for sharing this interesting proposal Andrew!
I fully support on any initiative that makes people build more things on top of sanctum, but my concern is on the prizes "[quote=“andrewsaul, post:1, topic:1441”]
Make the prizes Sanctum buying a set amount of the token linked to the winning apps.
[/quote]
is it possible in dev.fun if the prize in the form of $CLOUD? if sanctum buying a set amount of token linked, I’m afraid people will associate the other token with sanctum, and if it do a pump and dump scheme, will hurt the community. wdyt best possible option about this?
everything is up for debate. this is as much a ‘heatcheck’ as it’s a proposal.
Of course the obvious thing would be to make the prizes CLOUD. Or maybe even Sanctum LSTs.
but every dev.fun app is linked to a pump token so an added incentive to attract entrants could be that Sanctum just buy an amount of the linked tokens of the winning apps.
burning the tokens would probably be the right approach I assume.
but it might be too tricky and just awarding CLOUD is the easiest thing.
you do want to make each part of anything you do, as much as is possible, be working for you. buying (and burning) app creator pump tokens would be (I think) a nice little hook to get more attention.
I guess my main concern is charitably speaking, a lot of these projects look … kinda crappy. Is there a particular niche this dev.fun is serving? Is there something in particular you’d like people to build upon? Would we achieve the same purpose by e.g. sponsoring a hackaton with $20k or $50k USDC?
it’s early. all of this is pretty crappy as the tools are pretty basic.
but if you look at the buidl X account the tools are advancing quickly.
I think you get, potentially, a bigger bang for your buck from something like this as opposed to dropping tens of thousands into a large hackathon alongside many other protocols doing the same thing (and plenty spending even more).
A few thousand goes a much longer way here if you get a few really interesting projects. The bar to entry is much lower too.
The risk is you get nothing.
However a decent result at a large hackathon is pretty the same. least in terms of practicality. go back and look at all the winners from the Colosseum hackathons. yes a couple are wonderful but there’s been 100’s of thousands gifted to pretty middling projects that proceeded to go nowhere.
I’d look on this as a marketing growth hack and price accordingly.
I wonder… could we narrow the contest conditions to be an app that helped you find and buy Sanctum LSTs?
Especially the long tail of validator LSTs?
The tools on dev.fun aren’t that advanced yet so the simpler and more focused the requirements the better.
You also want all the apps to contribute something back to Sanctum in some way and getting people to swap into Sanctum LSTs would do that.
Amazing idea, hackathons are a great way of getting devs into space just like how Solana and Base are doing it. Thanks for sharing dev.fun too, sleek idea