This is an analysis and guide to help projects improve their overall judging score and tailor their presentations for the devpost judges. This is loosely based on the top winners chosen by the judges.
There are several important factors when creating your submission.
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Essential to have a well-made presentation video. This is probably what most judges will see as it is the first thing on the page. This video should explain or demonstrate your product to the judges. Make sure to highlight features that could hit each judging criteria below. Be careful about time. No one will watch a 30-minute video.
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Well-Written description. Summarize as much as possible. The judges will be going through over 200+ projects so try to keep it short but also make sure to hit everything. Make sure you specify about TRON or BTTC in your submission. Also, highlight features that may hit the judging criteria below.
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Built with + Try it Out. Make sure you have a link to a demo, product, webpage, or github. If you link it only to a GitHub, remember that most of the judges aren’t technical but have business backgrounds.
The judges in season 2 judged based on the following criteria according to the Hackathon rules. Before you submit your submission, go through the list with your product and try to list out features or how your project fits that criteria. Use whatever you list out in the creation of your video presentation and written submission.
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Originality & Creativity
How novel and innovative is the idea? Does it set out to do something unique or at least improve existing models?
Completely new or innovative projects that have never been done will have an edge in this section. These are projects like Crypto Recycling Machine
If your product is not new then it has to have a UVP or (Unique value proposition). For example: How does your DEX differ from the vast amount of already listed dexs? What makes your project unique?
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Technicality & Design
What is tech like? Is it user-friendly and does it have comprehensive and efficient features? Is it designed to scale?
Does your project have a lot of features? Are they easy to use, easy UI? If thousands of users were to onboard could it handle it?
If we take a look at one of the top winners Kattana, you can easily see that in their presentation video they go through the long list of features in the dapp and make it look easy adjusting their sections.
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Business Model & Feasibility
What is the value proposition and how does it set out to differentiate itself? How will it capture the market and/or generate revenue?
This is pretty straightforward. How can you monetize your product?
Convinving the judges about generating revenue can be tough. Even if you explicitly say they might not think it is feasible.
I’m going to use the top web3 winner again as an example. Kattana quite clearly has a proven business model. They are in the exchange terminal business just like Binance, Poloniex, and so on but what makes them unique is they use and aggregate DEXs. Its quite feasible for them to slap on a fee just like how Binance does it.
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Usability
What is the user experience like? Is it clean and intuitive such that users not familiar with blockchain can easily interact with the program?
This could be lumped in with the technicality + design section. Is it so easy that even web2 users could use it?
For this one let us take a look at Umbre. Clearly in their presentation video they demonstrate how easy anyone can deploy an NFT collection in under 1 minute. They even state this in their written submission.
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Practicality & Use Case
Is this something the community would actually use and want? Will the idea have an impact on the crypto community?
Since the judges aren’t fully familiar with the TRON community this is something that they choose based on if the wider crypto community would use.
Calamus Finance is an example of how DAOs might use their service to pay their employees automatically each month (practicality) and allows token vesting. This has an impact on decentralized business/projects in the space.
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Contribution to the Crypto Ecosystem
How does your idea increase crypto adoption, value for its users, and innovation in the field of blockchain? Does it welcome new users and help existing users?
For this one, I will use the example of MistTrack. They are a crypto tracking and compliance system so already with two words they hit on Crypto adoption. Their mission is to help new/existing users with tracking fraud and providing a platform that helps the overall blockchain field with the big issue of anti-laundering.
So what if my project doesn’t fit all criteria?
You should want to highlight your project video/submission with as many of the criteria as you can but of course, you might be missing some. Some projects will be stronger in some while weaker in others. Try to emphasize your strengths to the judges.
All of these combined make your overall score.
The best thing we can do as a TRON community is take what we have learned from the judge’s choices and use them for Season 3.
