The 2024 Pi Commerce Hackathon has officially come to an end, and the Core Team is thrilled to announce two winners and two honorable mentions! The two winning apps, as previously announced on Pi Day, are Map of Pi and PyNook. Today, we are also showcasing two honorable mentions: City for Pi and EasyGoods!
The goal of the Pi Commerce Hackathon was for community developers to come together to build an app to support local Pi commerce all around the globe. The need for such an app was made clear by you, the Pioneer community, during PiFest in December of last year. Pi Network’s inaugural PiFest event brought together businesses and customers for identification and celebration of Pi Commerce at a large scale. PiFest’s global reach was evident, attracting over 21,000 responses from Pioneers in 155 countries and regions.
We applaud all participants of the hackathon; this one-month event was an intense effort from dedicated Pi community developers from all around the world. Read on to learn more about each app, their accomplishments and their plans for the future!
Why We Chose Map of Pi and PyNook
Map of Pi and PyNook are platforms designed to cater to the needs of both Pioneers and merchants within the Pi community. These applications facilitate the discovery of nearby businesses that accept Pi and provide merchants with a user-friendly storefront, streamlining the adoption of Pi as a form of payment. Their emergence reflects a tangible demand within the Pi community, as evidenced by widespread Pioneer engagement in commerce-related activities, potentially unlocking the full potential of Pi cryptocurrency within local economies worldwide.
What sets Map of Pi and PyNook apart is their intuitive user interface and focus on empowering local Pi commerce. Moreover, both platforms leverage the Pi Open Source (PiOS) license, allowing developers worldwide to contribute to their growth and localization. Despite the time constraints of the hackathon, both teams collaborated effectively, demonstrating significant progress within a mere month.
Map of Pi stood out for its intuitive user interface (UI), centering around a map where users can find local Pi businesses. Merchants are already able to go through the flow of adding their business to the map, and the Map of Pi team is adding functionality such as QR codes, menu items, and more. With a strong UI, dozens of sample storefronts around the world, and Pi Authentication and Pi Payments integrations, Map of Pi is off to a great start.
PyNook has built a clear app around the central use case; in addition to the basic functionality of bringing together merchants and pioneers, the PyNook team has added many features, both planned and already functional. The app provides several language options for translations for global accessibility, a searchable list of businesses (in addition to the map), and planned features in the user profile and merchant sections.
Thoughts from the Winning Teams
The hackathon was only the beginning for Map of Pi, according to their team leader: “Now post-hackathon, our big focus is polishing and stabilizing the code, removing those pesky bugs which inevitably exist due to hackathon development speed, and adding in much needed usability features as we get ready to launch the app. We aim to launch as soon as possible after Pi Day. We have a great team committed to the long-haul well into the future after we launch, maintaining, enhancing and marketing the app. We’ve already started working through our long list of exciting new features to build into future versions.”
For the PyNook team, the decision to participate in the Pi Commerce Hackathon came down to confidence in the platform: “We participated in this hackathon because we are confident in the future of the Pi platform and believe it will bring revolutionary changes to technology development. We chose to develop a Pi app because it provides us with an innovative platform to realize our imagination,” shared the team leader.
If you are a developer and interested in contributing code to either of these impactful ecosystem apps, take a look at their repositories, and other Pi commerce PIOS apps, here.
Honorable Mentions
Map of Pi and PyNook weren’t the only strong local commerce apps built during this hackathon; the Core Team is proud to name EasyGoods and City for Pi as honorable mentions.
EasyGoods used the PiOS license and closely followed the Pi Core Team’s app prototype. They made steady progress during the hackathon, and have built a compelling app interface that will eventually allow businesses to create storefronts, and Pioneers to locate them for a visit. Next up for EasyGoods is to develop more functionality that will allow businesses to list their products, and Pioneers and merchants to make real transactions.
City for Pi, on the other hand, followed its own design. This team stood out for their advanced in-app functionality and creativity in design. While City of Pi does support local business, and allows users to select different locations, this app could work further to support local commerce and discoverability of Pi merchants.
There were several other strong Testnet apps submitted, which Core Team was delighted to review. We encourage all apps named today, as well as those not named, to continue building incredible local commerce apps. Diversity of apps provides Pioneers and businesses with choice, allows for strong localization, and contributes a wider variety of utility to Pioneers and the Pi ecosystem. There is ample room in this large global community of over 55 million engaged Pioneers for many commerce apps to flourish together!
