Hey everyone,
It’s happening! The thing originally called Polkadot 2.0 Launch Party is now coming into reality as Polkadot Build Party! (Before you read on, join our open “Polkadot Build Party” Telegram group)
The Polkadot Build Party is a campaign to onboard new Web2 and Web3 developers into Polkadot. It combines a 6-week online hackathon, physical meetups around the globe, and a social media campaign. It starts on 6th October 2025, leads to Sub0 and concludes shortly after. The thematic focus is on building “radically open, radically useful” apps that leverage Polkadot 2.0, parachains, and related technologies. It is supported by the Web3 Foundation, and many teams in the ecosystem, including Parity!
This is a permissionless event: You are invited to co-create it!
Hackathon
Lead by @radha from the W3F, we are organizing a global online hackathon with a 30k USD prize pool. The motto is “radically open, radically useful” and we are partnering with hackathon platform Devpost to bring in a new cohort of Web2 builders that experience building in Web3 for the first time. Our “Polkadot Cloud” framing is perfect to explain Web3 primitives to Web2 developers in a manner that is familiar to them.
Ecosystem Teams are invited to co-host the event!
If you are part of an ecosystem team, we have created this briefing for you.
Hackathon timeline:
- Hackathon Start: 6th October, 2025
- Final Submissions: 17th November 2025
Tracks
On three tracks, there is something for everyone:
- Track 1: Apps that change the world - Use the Polkadot Cloud services to build something that is truly useful and impacts human lives
- Track 2: Build a chain - Create new Polkadot Cloud services to unlock novel use cases
- Track 3: The Bleeding Edge - Our open track for experiments and tinkering
Track 1 is all about building on parachains. Each parachain is a service of the Polkadot Cloud. For Web2 app developers, this means we have a ton of SDKs they can add to their stack: payments, identity, gaming, socials, robotics, storage, compute, DeFi, NFTs, AI, machine economy, knowledge graphs, supply chain tracking, and many more
For people curious to build a chain, the Polkadot SDK is the centerpiece of track 2. Builders can create standalone chains or join the Polkadot network. To get started, they can roll out ready-to-use templates with EVM support on the Polkadot Deployment Portal in minutes without ever touching a line of code.
Track 3 is for open experimentation: Zero-knowledge privacy apps, cross-chain composability with XCM, high-performance on-chain compute with PVM, or our various smart contract environments.
Prizes
In total, there are 30k USD in prize money :
- On each track, we will reward the top 4 submissions
- 1st Place: $3,000 in cash
- 2nd Place: $2,000 in cash
- 3rd and 4th Place: $1,000 in cash
- 15x Certified Polkdaot Tinkerer: We will reward 15 further submissions: $500 in cash
- 3x Audience Prize: Following an on-chain vote, we will reward the top 3 highest-voted submissions: $500 in cash
Meetups
The Polkadot Roots program is working with us to organize grassroots events all across the globe. We will publish more info soon on how to join or host an event. But it’s fairly simple to get started.
We will soon launch a calendar. Please let us know in the TG if you are hosting an event and we will add it.
Stay in the Loop
Join the public Polkadot Build Party Telegram Group! We will be posting updates for everyone here throughout the coming days.