Each hackathon runs in two consecutive phases. You can enter one or both.

Phase 1 — Build Phase (Week 1)

Goal: Ship a working product and submit your builder proposal.

You have one week to build the core product. Before the decision market opens (deadline announced on the hackathon page), you must submit:

• Your working product — deployed, testable, ready to demo
• Your builder proposal — a milestone plan with deliverables and a budget drawn from the project treasury

All code must be open source. This is a requirement for participation.

What the jury evaluates:

• Does the product work?
• Is the code clean and documented?
• Does it deliver on the original project brief?
• Is the milestone plan realistic and well-structured?
• Is the budget efficient? At equal quality, a leaner proposal has an edge.

At the end of Phase 1, the jury trades on the Combinator.trade decision market to express their conviction on which builder proposal delivers the most value. The market includes a "no one deserves to win" option — if the jury is not convinced by any submission, no one wins. The result is on-chain and fully transparent.

Only the Phase 1 winner is paid. Non-winners retain ownership of their code but receive no compensation.

Phase 2 — Growth Phase (Week 2)

Goal: Bring real users to the winning product.

Phase 2 opens after Phase 1 ends, with a short gap for applications. It follows the same application and shortlisting process as Phase 1 (up to 5 finalists). Phase 2 is open to everyone: Phase 1 participants, new teams, marketers, growth specialists. You do not need to code to compete in Phase 2.

All Phase 2 participants work on the same product: the one that won Phase 1. You are competing to grow that specific product.

What is measured: