Announcing Winners in the StepZen GraphQL Challenge Hackathon
Published: 2022-08-23 08:55:58

From June 6th to July 18th, we ran a 6-week virtual hackathon called "The StepZen GraphQL Challenge"! The challenge brought together developers worldwide, with almost 300 people participating and learning GrapQL. Thanks to everyone participating and for putting in your time and hard work. It was hard to pick the winners from the amazing list of submissions, and the judges have weighed in. We're excited to announce the winners!

> Rewatch the [live hackathon winners announcement](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFoSqf9SVes/) on Youtube.

Hackathon winners
-----------------

We've received many high-quality submissions and appreciate all the work developers did. The judging panel considered originality, technical difficulty, and schema design as the primary criterion for judging. Amongst the winners, a total prize pool worth $14,000 was divided, including fantastic StepZen perks.

Congratulations to the winners of the StepZen Hackathon! You can find information about the winning projects below.

### 1st prize: Kid Vault

[Demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DjfgsrBCEc) | [Source code](https://github.com/stepzen-dev/hackathon-kid-vault)

Kid Vault is an application for busy parents that lets them keep track of administration tasks for their child(ren), such as getting up-to-date information from schools, sports, after-school programs, and medical offices. Kid Vault is using StepZen on top of a managed PostgreSQL database running on Heroku and a couple of REST APIs to communicate with (mocked) and the third-party [Covid Act Now](https://covidactnow.org/data-api) API.

![Hackathon winner Kid Vault](https://stepzen.com/images/blog/winners-stepzen-hackathon-kidvault.jpeg)

Kid Vault was created by [Melanie Wong](https://github.com/melawong), [Anita Lee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitalee888) and [Christian Alcalde](https://github.com/christian-alcalde).

### 2nd prize: Kaleidoscope

[Demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq6P1rW7914) | [Source code](https://github.com/stepzen-dev/hackathon-kaleidoscope)

Kaleidoscope is a location-based application that curates information for users in a frictionless way. Curated details on your current location include the weather, air pollution, currency, holidays, and much more. The application uses StepZen to graphqlize several custom and third-party REST APIs, and uses a set of StepZen GraphQL directives such as `@materializer` and `@sequence` to combine these APIs.

![Hackathon winner Kid Vault](https://stepzen.com/images/blog/winners-stepzen-hackathon-kaleidoscope.jpeg)

Kaleidoscope was created by [Abhishek Dwivedi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/abhishekdwivedi), [Sumit Sarkar](https://github.com/sumitsarkar), [Gaurang Manjrekar](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurang-manjrekar-a3239488/) and [Yashraj Chawathey](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yashrajc/).

### 3rd prize: DeFi

[Demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGhkYtDxJCk) | [Source code](https://github.com/stepzen-dev/hackathon-defi)

DeFi is a web3-focused application where developers can combine web2 and web3 data in one platform. The application combines different social networks plus a decentralized finance component that allows you to crawl crypto transactions quickly and easily. DeFi uses web2 REST APIs from Spotify and Twitter (amongst others) that are graphqlized, and combines them with web3 APIs from Coinranking and Lens.

![Hackathon winner DeFi](https://stepzen.com/images/blog/winners-stepzen-hackathon-defi.jpeg)

DeFi was created by [Isaac Garcia](https://twitter.com/isaacgarcia).

### web3 bonus prize: DeFi

The bonus prize for the best web3 project is also won by DeFi, as it was a great example of how you can combine StepZen with various web3 sources.

Congratulations, and thank you!
-------------------------------

Thanks again, everyone, for putting in your time and hard work. It was hard to pick the winners from the amazing list of submissions. We hope all participants have learned a lot and can use the new experience they've gained in a new project or career.

Head over to [Devpost](https://stepzen.devpost.com/gallery) to view all the hackathon submissions. Keep an eye out for our social channels as we'll be adding more information about the winning hackathon projects on our blog, [Twitter](https://twitter.com/stepzen_dev), and [Discord community](https://discord.gg/9k2VdPn2FR) in the coming weeks.