I am glad to be able to answer this and contribute to the community.
As I have found the Hackathon S3 has come a long way since the S1 was started and kudos to the team for that.
My suggestion is as follows.
Suggestion 1- Have a greater breakdown of the prizes. Allowing more members to win.
Reason I- Having only large prizes acts as an entry barrier for budding developers. These budding developers if exposed to TRON Community can stick around and build something that is native to TRON.
Reason II- Small prizes can attract more builders expecting that their chance to be rewarded at the end of two months is higher and it will mentally prepare them of being compensated for the time and effort.
Suggestion 2- Run quizzes around TRON & coding challenges during a specific period of the Hackathon.
For example, October 1st to 31st during S3. Prizes could be $200 for first 20, $100 for 21-100 & $50 for the next 500.(just an example, pick any number)
Reason I- Who doesn’t like to see them on the leaderboard and the one which keeps changing daily? This will make Forum the most happening place during the Hackathon and more members will be involved.
Reason II- More members will learn about the TRON, and refer to their documents & many among these will stay with the community longer because of the green cause by TRON blockchain.
Suggestion 3- Allow two verticals for the broader prize. One category for projects built before the Hackathon & submitted elsewhere & another category for projects built only during the Hackathon.
Reason I- This will attract true builders to the community. It is very scary to compete with teams that are dedicatedly building year around for TRON. This discourages new builders or those who will be assessed only based on work done during the specified period.
Suggestion 4- Provide differential weightage to the votes.
Reason I- It is very easy to rig the voting process and I have seen many messages being exchanged for vote exchanging.
Reason II- Members with badges of Level 2 & higher have spent more time in the forum and their vote shall be considered equivalent to 5 votes received from Level 1 badge.
For example,
Level 1 badge(basic) - 1 weight Just like mine
Level 2 badge(member) - 5 weight
Level 3 badge(regular) - 10 weight
Level 4 badge(leader) - 15 weight
Happy to discourse around the suggestions.