Rules and Guidelines

[UPDATED 10/28/2020]

Make sure to read through the rules and guidelines prior to submitting your project. Extended 'Official Rules' can be found here.

 
Dates and Timing

Hackathon Details Release: October 28, 2020 at 8:30 AM PT

Hackathon Submission Period: October 28, 2020 at 8:30 AM PT - November 8, 2020 at  11:45 PM PT.

Selection Period: November 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM PT – November 11, 2020 at 6:00 AM PT

Selected Winners Announcement: The week of November 9th, 2020

Final Prize Allocation Announcement: November 19, 2020

Participation Requirements

To participate in the Meridian Hackathon, you must first register on Devpost. 

You (individual or representative of a team)  must submit your project — including a link to a code repository and project video — before the end of the Submission Period by filling in the Submission Form on meridianhackathon.devpost.com. The video should clearly demonstrate your project’s features and functionality. 

Voting process

A nomination panel will evaluate each project by looking at the submission writeup, the code, and the demo video, and will choose the top 5 to present to Meridian attendees.  That panel will assess:

The quality of the idea: 

  • Is it creative? 
  • Is it based on sound assumptions? 
  • Is it well suited to Stellar?

Implementation:

  • Does the product work?
  • Is it user friendly? 
  • Does it make effective use of at least one of the four new features?

The potential impact:

  • Does the product address a real-world problem?
  • Does it provide an intelligent, intuitive solution?
  • Will it excite Meridian attendees?

The 5 finalists will be featured on the Meridian website, and throughout the course of the conference, we'll be encouraging attendees to read up on them, watch the demo videos, and vote for their favorite.  Since all kinds of people are coming to Meridian, make sure your submission is compelling to a general-interest audience, not just to experienced developers. 

Submission Eligibility

Applicable law and our internal policies restrict us from providing lumen awards to certain categories of projects. If your project is in one of our prohibited categories, it will not be eligible for an award. If you are unsure whether your project falls into these one or more of these categories, please contact us and verify.

Regardless of the voting outcome, a submission will be ineligible to receive an award if it:

  • violates any applicable laws, regulations, orders, judgments, decrees, guidance, or other legal authority;
  • involves, facilitates, supports, or promotes unlawful activities, including, but not limited to: fraud, drug trafficking, purchases on dark web markets, theft, illegal arms trafficking, human trafficking, abduction, extortion, embezzlement, corruption of public officials, acts of terrorism or terrorist financing, and intellectual property violations;
  • involves, facilitates, or promotes gambling;
  • is offensive, deceptive, harmful, or libelous;
  • is or contains sexually obscene content;
  • is discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group;
  • contains, transmit, or instills malware or phishing pages or devices; or
  • infringes or violates any proprietary right of any party, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of privacy, right of publicity, or other rights.
Participant Eligibility

Stellar Development Foundation intends to comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the distribution of lumen awards. All winners will be required to submit KYC documentation and fill out an applicable tax form. Failure to submit appropriate documentation or failure to pass our KYC checks will result in your rewards being forfeit. These tax forms will be used for accounting and tax reporting purposes, so please be aware of your country’s applicable laws regarding tax-filing. Lumens will be reported at closing price on the day they are sent to you.

You must be at least 18 years of age to participate in the Meridian Hackathon unless your country's minimum age for receiving a cryptocurrency award is older, in which case you must meet the minimum age applicable in your jurisdiction.

Unfortunately, if you’re a national or resident of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, or the region of Crimea, we are unable to send you any lumens. Additionally, we may be unable to send lumens to winners in countries where local law makes it unlawful for residents to hold or receive cryptocurrencies. Please note: we currently cannot send lumens to residents of the US states of Alabama, New York, Georgia, Connecticut, New Mexico, Hawaii, Vermont, and Washington.

Manipulation and Disqualification

The Stellar Development Foundation retains the right to disqualify entries and timeout participants without warning or explanation in order to maintain a fair and profitable experience for everyone. 

Engaging in vote manipulation will cause your proposal to be disqualified. This includes botspam, fake/sock puppet accounts, and brigading. The Stellar Development Foundation has the right to withhold awards from participants who have abused these eligibility requirements.

Please feel free to share direct entry links with your own community, but please don’t mass message strangers or attempt to "game" the system in any way. 

Please do not use any Stellar channels for defamation either of the program or of individual participants. Such behavior is a bannable offense.