Bitcoin is a better platform for Web3, says Lightning Competition organizer

by · December 16, 2022

Bear markets are for building Bitcoin (BTC) companies. At least that’s what Legends of Lightning, a nine-week competition for competing Bitcoin companies, would indicate.

The tournament-come-hackathon ran more than 65 events worldwide as 73 projects battled to win 3 BTC ($50,000). The competition crowned Bitcoin startups Lightsats and AgriMint as winners of two separate competition tracks, Global Adoption and Building for Africa.

Organized by Bitcoin startup Bolt Fun, the competition brought together 260 makers (builders, developers, startups and hackers) worldwide. Speaking to Cointelegraph via Google Meet, Johns Beharry, co-founder of Bolt Fun and founder and CEO of Peak Shift, explained that the hackathon is the biggest yet in the Bitcoin economy: “There is nothing close to this,” he said.

The idea behind the competition was to “onboard new makers into the ecosystem, innovate on bitcoin and lightning, and help new or existing projects incubate their ideas and turn dreams into reality.”

The competition seeks to drive more talent to build in the Bitcoin space. Source: Twitter

In addition, the competition showcases the Bitcoin development space as an arena for development, tinkering and experimentation in ways that would impress Web3 builders. Edward Pratt, co-founder of Bolt Fun and a senior product designer highlighted that the team at Bolt Fun is laser-eye focused on pushing Bitcoin adoption through building companies and expanding the Bitcoin community into other domains:

“The bottom line is that other developer ecosystems are huge. We want to do our part to push bitcoin to compete for mindshare and attention at the application layer.”

As shown in the graph below, Bitcoin has fewer developers than Ethereum and Polkadot. While Bitcoin is by far the largest and most recognized cryptocurrency, data suggests that Bitcoin is not where developers and builders are flocking to.

Graph to show developers by crypto ecosystem in 2020 and 2021. Source: Electric Capital

Pratt and Beharry conclude that Web3 ecosystems such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot, and Cosmos are drawing interest and talent away from the Bitcoin building space, despite Bitcoin offering the only decentralized infrastructure worth building on. The Legends of Lightning contest is an attempt to remedy the situation and highlight the richness and depth of opportunities to build on Bitcoin.

Solana Hackathons offer huge prize money, and this summer over 350 projects entered to win a $5 million treasure chest. The Legends of Lightning first prize, by comparison, awarded 3 BTC ($50,000) to one of the 73 competing projects, one hundredth of the total prize money.

Pratt continued, “It shows the difference between the Bitcoin ecosystem and other ecosystems like Solana.” Ultimately, the Bitcoin space competes for builders and developers who participate in Web3 playgrounds like Solana and Ethereum.

– There is definitely a lot of activity [in Bitcoin] but we don’t see as much ingenuity in Bitcoin yet.”

Oddly enough, the winner of the competition, Lightsats built their project based on an idea shared in a Tweet by Bitcoin founder Brad Mills. The tweet set off a lightning-fast chain reaction of Bitcoin creation. Within weeks, Lightsats built their “Precoiner onramp project”, submitted it to the team at Bolt Fun and won the Global Adoption competition.

One of the ways to draw more people to participate and build on Bitcoin is by reaching out to developers working in other ecosystems, Pratt explained. “We want to target people on the fringes of crypto and Web3,” it’s a matter of “How do we get the narratives to speak to those people,” Pratt reasoned.

Related: Bitcoin Advocate Serves Bet Over Lightning Network To Raise BTC Awareness

Beharry joked that it could happen naturally; “Your Web3 platform is offline, Bitcoin fixes this,” referring to the many times the Solana blockchain simply stopped working.

The Legends of Lightning team hopes to repeat the event annually with bigger prizes, more participants and more creativity. The goal is to reach 1,000 participants next year — a significant leap from its current position.