Dead Man’s Switch App Wins Tokyo Hackathon for Bitcoin Cash Grand Prize

Thirty four tech-savvy engineers, enthusiasts and students gathered at Hash Hub, the co-working space in the Tokyo University neighborhood to participate in a hackathon organized and sponsored by Crypto Age, Yenom and Bitcoin.com last weekend.

Also read: Yenom Launches Bitcoin Cash Library Implemented in Apple’s iOS-language Swift

“Clock Wallet” Team Wins 1 BCH

Prizes in BCH have been awarded to the 3 best teams able to deliver a working mobile app prototype in two days. The hashtag for the event read #???????? in Japanese, roughly meaning “let’s Bitcoin”, except it’s imperative, so rather “Do Bitcoin!” an organizer explained.

“Clock Wallet” was the winning team’s project that facilitates the “inheritance of cryptocurrencies” by allowing users to set time-locked transactions that become effective if the users doesn’t log-in to his/her wallet after a set period.

Akifumi Fujita, 23, from Yenom told news.Bitcoin.com that the event took place two entire days, from August 18 to 19th, and that some participants came from as far as Osaka in southern Japan and also from Iwate, up north. “It was great because the goal for us organizing this hackathon was to give a chance to as many people in Japan to gather and develop apps for Bitcoin, and I’m happy to say we did it, many people said the event allowed them to learn new stuff on Bitcoin apps, and that they are even more excited to keep working on new ideas,” Fujita said. “We had highly motivated participants, 10 of them stayed over night at HashHub co-working space from Saturday to Sunday, taking short naps on 2 couches and a ‘bed’ which we had prepared for the occasion, or some even just slept on their desks,” he said. About half of the participants were Japanese IT students, most of them in their 20s, the rest were professional developers in their mid-30s or 40s, but some said they develop Bitcoin apps as a hobby, he added. There were reportedly 32 Japanese participants and 2 Foreigners.

Let’s Bitcoin!

Gerald Fabrot and Paul Bergamo, (jointly representing one seat) from Bitcoin.com’s business and web development teams, Mr. Jo Miyamoto from Campfire, and Mr. Shigeyuki Azuchi, co-author of a Japanese book on Blockchain programming, were the judges who chose the winning team based on 3 main criteria. The app had to provide a meaningful use of bitcoin, it had to use technology and finally, the judges asked themselves if they would want to use it personally.

Initially Yenom team and the co-organizers expected 3 or 4 teams to compete. This weekend, 34 participants divided into 11 teams of 3 to 4 developers gathered at the hackathon. Team G, represented by Takahiro Hirata, Kawa, Shiho Takeuchi and Shoichi Yamazaki, won the first price of 1 BCH for their “dead man’s switch” BCH app that executes a transaction if the human operator stops being active. With their app, users can set time-locked transactions that become effective if they don’t log-in to their wallet after a set period.

“With traditional banks when someone dies, it’s extremely complicated for the remaining family to easily access the dead persons’ assets,” Shiho Takeuchi, 25, who was one of the only two female participants at the hackathon, told news.Bitcoin.com. “It works like this, every month, you log-in and confirm that you’re still alive, and if you die or if you’re inactive for a certain period of time, your funds can be transferred to someone you have preselected beforehand. You set the trigger period, it can be anytime, like 6 months or 10 years, you can just choose,” Shiho Takeuchi explained, “you see, if I die and cannot access my wallet, then after the time is expired, the funds can be transferred with the app we have come up with.”

“We Need More Apps That solve Real-World Use Cases”

“If a user stops accessing his phone for ‘x’ amount of months or years,” Gerald Fabrot, one of the judges said, “the app aims at releasing the funds to a specific person. Team D’s idea is not entirely new, yet it has never been implemented, and people will increasingly need to deal with the inevitable issues of death/impairment and transmission of assets,” he said.  “We need more projects implementing functionalities that solve real-world use cases. I would use it. The use of time-lock is simple but elegant, and while time-lock transactions need to be re-created several times a year, the predictably low transaction fees of BCH makes it possible to implement for, perhaps, 10 JPY (0.09$) a year,” he added.

The winner team won 1 BCH from Bitcoin.com for their creative work, the second team won 0.5 BCH for putting together a voting system (pageants, etc,) that allows users to write a message to whomever they support as OP_Return in the Blockchain. The third team won 0.25 BCH for making Atomic swaps between lightning network and BCH, Gerald Fabrot said.

What do you think of this team’s mobile app? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Yenom and Bitcoin.com.

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