Is it really fair for new projects to compete against old projects?
A brand new project, competing against the winners of the previous hackathon.
The impact of this unfair system is already showing in the voting going on now.
The old projects already have enough funding and already built community to easily win the hackathon.
What are your thought guys?
The community vote is separated with the vote of the judges. It’s an additional prize to show the involvement of the teams in the community of Tronics and the support of the community for the projects.
The main prizes will be distributed by the judges, based only on the tech and following a list of specific criteria.
Projects that were involved in the last hackathon have started to build the current entries in May. About half of May. While new projects could have started way earlier.
Anyway, the main goal is to grow Tron ecosystem as a whole. And every project will benefit from the Hackathon success 
On the main prizes too
Building tech often requires money, old winners already got prizes to establish so they can comfortably hire workers and build.
I hope the judges take that into consideration too.
Thanks for replying anyway 
Well I know the 4 previous winners and I can tell you that none of them has been comfortably waiting. They’ve all worked very hard to deliver quality products on time and they are all Tron supporters.
One time a winner should not be able to win again. Maybe onky second after that third etv
Well if they get exposure, thats always great
I don’t know any competition telling the previous winners that they shouldn’t expect better than a second spot.
Should we also tell the projects that are backed by VC’s that they are not welcome?
To be decentralised, the competition should be open to every project. We are electing the products/dapps that are the most useful, original, well implemented,… not projects or teams.
Besides, what if a team decides to present a product under an other name? How will you know it’s the same project? It is just impossible to exclude people from the competition. And it doesn’t make sense if they deliver quality and respect the criteria.
I think the projects that have won before and continue to build are of great value of TRON. These are the projects building a community and pulling people into TRON.
If they compete again it is actually a proof that they have used the funds received to continue to build and contribute to a great Ecosystem.
The voting only applies to the Forum entries and only partially. On DevPost it is only about the solution built.
Also looking at most previous winners, the new projects entered are not a progression of the previous one, but a new module, building out the ecosystem.
I think with hackathons or competitions the biggest thing is that the submissions are helping the ecosystem grow. Whether that is an old or new project doesn’t matter as long as they are doing well and can build a great product
Well if you read the rules it’s pretty obvious that the community vote prizes will essentially just be a popularity contest (not saying that it’s bad, difficult to do it differently), so it’s a good thing we have the judge vote prizes as well 
Yeah, helping the ecosystem grow is good, I agree.
Funds are needed to create projects and develop them. When past winners participate together with young projects, the effect of a bird’s nest is obtained - often only those who managed to grab the last time and are already fat and strong receive food.
wholeheartedly agree with you
I totally agree with you
It’s fair. I have yet to see a lot of initiatives taken by younger projects to integrate or piggyback off other communities while also being respectful to those communities.
Don’t expect to win if your project has done nothing in terms of getting out to the community or if you have then ask yourself “Why isn’t it working?”
Do AMAs, Introduce yourself among already popular communities within TRON to garner support. (You can find this from season 1) Make partnerships and grow together. Let TRONICS see your effort because most just copy + pastes their presentation from other non-Tron Hackathons.
Make sure your Forum Presentation is mind-blowing, neat, and organized. Please compare these two posts JustMoney, which is very well done, and Market True NFTS. The community can see how much effort is put in by both and all it takes is time to present yourself well to investors and the community.
Try to give updates every day on your project post, you can also start helpful forum topics or discussions. I created the lazy guide for S2 because I knew it would help smaller projects at least get noticed and make things a lot easier for everyone.
Make an official Telegram, post on the Tronix Reddit on Dapp Friday. I see that @ToyoDev from Toyoworld posted and they got a ton of Reddit Tronics commenting and giving feedback, make sure you are using Twitter and the #TRON , #TRX hashtags. These are all forms of self-promotion to garner support.
If your project just isn’t gaining any traction then it might not be what people are interested in. When creating a project you should try first asking what do TRONICS think will be good or need? (This would be a good forum topic to start)
Starting an NFT market on TRON is going to be tough when ApeNFT.io is already supported by TRONDAO itself. However, BitTorrent doesn’t have one yet. These are questions participants should be going out to ask.
The community prizes are to incentivize projects to do all of the above and grow a base on TRON.
Anyways, if you have 0 community you shouldn’t expect to win the community vote.
Well on devpost voting is completely done by judges so no community involvement.
Only on the forum community can vote their favourite project and the project will earn some extra reward.
So community votes don’t make any impact on devpost results.
So i think it’s fair.
TL/DR Version: Not unfair…in fact I prefer it that way. Read on to see why!
You know, I think this is an awesome question and Im glad someone asked it. Honestly I do see your point. That said, to exclude -NEW- products and services for being associated with established teams would only harm the Tron ecosystem as a whole.
A team that won TronDAO funding still needs to deliver a strong project within the required time frame. Sure, they have funding to help with development and hire help. This is no different than a project backed by a whale.
Example: If Elon Musk were to start a revolutionary service that would positively affect millions of lives, would you turn him away?
The TronDAO Havkathon is as much about community exposure and the prestige that comes with it as it is the funding. Thats not all its about though…
Competiton!
It was the Irish poet Oscar Wilde who once said, “You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.”
Now of course none of us our enemies. The one strength I see in Tron I have yet to see anywhere else is how we all lift eachother up. TRONStrong for real. We all push eachother to do better. To BE better. With strong competition we have to be at the top of our game EVERY DAY.
Is funding an advantage? Sure. Can it be overcome with a strong team? I think so. Besides, while they hear our voices in the public voting, the TronDAO judges seem to put at least a little more weight on the final product/service than the popularity.
It is fair imo, you have to work super hard to make a high quality product, not everything Is about the money, we started as a solo programmer working for 1 full year non stop to come up with the first decent version of our dApp. You have to come closer with the community and be ready to serve. Give first, receive later… some people just want to receive without giving away anything in life and that’s not how it works.
Anyone with a bit of skills, lots of passion and determination can make it.
“Never worry about how much money, ability, or equipment you are starting with; just begin with a million dollars worth of determination”
-John Mason
Yes I believe it is fair it’s all about putting in the effort to deliver a product tronics like.
Even the new projects had months to mix themselves with tronics and build up their community. Like we have seen some doing. And looks like the Tronics like them as I see those are also getting votes.
New or old project need to work and build to achieve their goal and deliver a product in time.
I do bet it is, I mean voting is their key here so it plays with majority and can tell that nothing is wrong with that type of system