September 11, 2017 Join Topcoder's Exciting Blockchain Challenge Series with IBM and Wipro

We recently completed the first blockchain challenge in our Intro to Blockchain Series, sponsored by IBM. Much of the thanks is due to our members in the Topcoder Community for their great participation. As a part of this challenge,  a list of regulations was provided for implementation, and Topcoder members attacked that list. We received 13 submissions, all of which were reviewed by IBM’s blockchain team. IBM appreciated the attention to detail from the Topcoder Community, and were especially impressed with the different approaches to the challenge and the winning solutions.
John Wolpert, Director of Blockchain Ecosystem at IBM, says, “We are extremely happy with how the Topcoder contest turned out. The ideas were surprising and insightful and their execution showed high-quality work. The developers clearly showed the potential of this movement we see toward instrumenting local, state, and federal regulations on blockchains. They used Hyperledger Composer to quickly put together viable applications in just days, without having to know anything but standard JavaScript.”

Building on our first blockchain challenge

The winner for the first challenge was selected, and so now, in the next blockchain challenge the goal is to build a basic UI Prototype around this solution. The participation has been good, and because we ask that members implement this solution in the best way possible — with the focus on functionality and code quality, rather than on the design — we’ve had lively conversations in the forums. We’re nearing the end of this challenge and hope to see more of the unique approaches and innovative solutions we saw in the first one.

What’s coming up next?

Looking forward, the next challenge hosted by IBM and Wipro will be a real-world problem statement to be solved using distributed ledger technologies (aka blockchain). The real-life challenge is simple: life insurance companies spend a significant amount of time tracking down people who have unclaimed money due to outdated customer details. The task, however, is more complex. Submitters will be tasked with building a new application that allows one or more members of a forum to share data, and then allows a member to log in and request a specific data set — such as the latest contact details of a client who has not claimed their insurance. This should then trigger an approval request to concerned approving members who have that data. We’ll have more details on that challenge soon.
In the meantime, we look forward to more great work from our members and exciting results from our Intro to Blockchain Series with IBM.