The second installment of the Hello Future hackathon trilogy, the Ascension Hackathon, has come to a close! In November 2025, hackers from all around the world came together to build their projects on Hedera.
With expert mentorship, familiar developer tools, and a vibrant global community, the Ascension hackathon set the stage for hackers to bring their vision to reality and compete for $150,000 in prizes. Builders developed new solutions in the areas of AI & Agents, DeFi & Tokenization, and Sustainability. With the Legacy Builders track, participants also had the opportunity to continue refining and optimizing their existing builds from previous Hedera hackathons.
Here are the results by track. The winning teams took home a total prize pool worth $150,000 USD!
AI & Agents
1st Place: Key Ring – Lynxify
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
KeyRing empowers Web3 teams to establish transparent governance from day one without slowing down development or breaking the bank. Its token model aligns incentives between projects seeking transparency and key holders who provide accountability services. A Next.js dashboard provides real-time visibility into validation activity, scheduled transactions, and threshold account status.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
2nd Place: Aslan AI Agent Network – Cappuccino Assassino
Prize: $6,000
Project Description:
Deploy autonomous AI agents powered by x402 streaming payments that collaborate, trade, and execute smart contracts in real time. Built on Hedera with EIP-8004 for enterprise-grade performance.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
3rd Place: Gathoora – COKK
Prize: $4,000
Project Description:
Gathoora makes knowledge and human expertise more accessible. Each insight becomes a module users can rent and use instantly, while creators get paid for every chat. Instead of generic training data, responses are backed by real experts. With the Debate Arena, ideas are tested, rated, and proven, turning expertise into a living marketplace.
Project Demo:
Click here to watch the project demo video.
DeFi & Tokenization
1st Place: Medq Quest – Medq
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
Medq Quest gamifies DeFi on Hedera by turning on-chain activity into AI-generated quests with instant, verifiable rewards. Users connect their wallet, complete daily or weekly quests, submit transaction hashes as proof, and automatically receive MEDQ ERC-20 tokens and ERC-721 badge NFTs. XP, leaderboards, and portable reputation deepen engagement, all with a protocol-agnostic design.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
2nd Place: Deraswap
Prize: $6,000
Project Description:
The DeFi landscape is hindered by fragmented liquidity across multiple DEXs, leading to inefficient routing, higher slippage, and poor execution. Traditional token-based incentives can be unsustainable, diluting value and failing to build lasting user loyalty. Deraswap aims to address these challenges by aggregating liquidity into the most efficient swap routes using EtaSwap’s open-source smart contracts. It pairs that with a gamified reward system designed to align users and protocols, encourage long-term participation, and move past the limitations of classic tokenomics.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
3rd Place: Prism Finance
Prize: $4,000
Project Description:
Prism Finance lets users earn yield on global currencies, swap forex instantly, and access tokenized assets. Acting as a Global Currency Exchange (CX) and synthetic asset platform, Prism provides zero-slippage forex operations, making USD yield accessible to anyone.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
Sustainability
1st Place: ChargeFrog
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
ChargeFrog is a community-led, carbon-negative EV charging network on Hedera. Network users pay with on-chain credits for a transparent charging economy, while investors decide how the network scales. A Guardian-powered digital MRV (dMRV) system automatically mints and retires CarbonFrog NFTs to verify real-time carbon offsets and reduce greenwashing. The Super App unifies the experience, enabling users to interact directly with custom-engineered stations throughout Europe.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
2nd Place: ParkPulse
Prize: $6,000
Project Description:
ParkPulse is a geospatial intelligence platform that visualizes park greenness, pollution levels, and environmental quality using satellite data and advanced analytics. It enables statewide comparisons, detailed park insights, funding and proposal notifications, and a governance-ready admin dashboard. ParkPulse also functions as an on-chain environmental compliance and transparency protocol by tracking city-level greenness, NDVI, pollution, and park accessibility and storing it directly on the Hedera Consensus Service. Communities can vote on smart-city proposals with secure, decentralized governance, giving cities and residents real-time, verifiable environmental intelligence.
Project Demo:
Click here to watch the project demo video.
3rd Place: VeriCycle – VeriSwagger
Prize: $4,000
Project Description:
VeriCycle is a Web3 financial infrastructure built to upgrade South Africa’s informal recycling economy. It replaces risky cash payments with EcoCoin, an HTS-based token, and uses Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) to create an immutable “Proof of Income” for unbanked waste pickers. This unlocks formal banking for 90,000+ workers and provides verified data to municipalities. VeriCycle aims to turn a daily survival activity into a verifiable asset, driving 450k+ daily transactions and showing that Web3 can reduce inequality while cleaning the planet.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
Edge & IoT Infrastructure (DePIN)
Winner: AlgoAir – brolab
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
AlgoAir is an end-to-end IoT air quality monitoring system that rewards users for contributing data. Its core innovation is integrating with the Hedera blockchain, where data is immutably recorded on a public topic. Users are rewarded with AIR tokens for their submissions. A public website visualizes the collected data on a map and in a table, showcasing a complete, decentralized data-gathering and incentive model.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
Open Track
1st Place: Ontologic
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
Ontologic turns AI reasoning into a verifiable on-chain artifact. Each reasoning step is executed deterministically, attested through Hedera Consensus Service (HCS), and minted as a Hedera token called a Morpheme, compressing logic, consequence, and meaning into a single hash. This creates transparent, reproducible proofs of why a model or agent made a decision.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
2nd Place: Dotto
Prize: $6,000
Project Description:
Dotto’s goal is to prevent silent schema, logic, and intent drift. It detects schema drift and lays the foundation for full semantic and logic drift verification across services. Each detected schema drift is converted into a tamper-proof compliance artifact anchored on Hedera, giving every code change verifiable, auditable intent. Dotto turns system evolution into auditable proof.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo video.
3rd Place: Golden Needle
Prize: $4,000
Project Description:
The Grenfell disaster exposed how missing, unclear, and unreliable building safety information can cost lives. The UK’s Building Safety Act 2022 and Golden Thread report now require complete, trustworthy records throughout a building’s life, yet most systems today remain fragmented and easy to manipulate. Enter Golden Needle: a unified platform where every safety document, decision, and approval is recorded, verified, and linked to proven identity. Using Hedera for tamper-proof event logging, it helps ensure that critical information cannot be lost or altered, restoring accountability and strengthening public trust in the built environment.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo video.
Legacy Builders
1st Place: Torch
Prize: $10,000
Project Description:
Torch is a decentralized, AI-powered prediction system for crypto price discovery. It turns predictions into a real-time probability map of token prices, combining AI agents and human insight. The InfoFi approach transforms raw speculation into actionable insights, helping market observers identify emerging trends early and capitalize on high-quality market signals.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
2nd Place: Effisend
Prize: $6,000
Project Description:
Prompt and pay with Effisend, a payments and identity platform where users pay with their face. Users can move and spend stablecoins through a single prompt and a quick photo. By combining AI agents with secure HCS10/HCS11 communication, it enables autonomous decisions, real-time routing, and cross-chain transfers. It also features an Agent Hub that selects the right agent for each task, optimizes flow, and delivers instant, identity-verified payments to any crypto card or device. By merging biometrics, agents, and Hedera’s reliability, Effisend seeks to make global crypto payments more accessible for users.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
3rd Place: DeCenter AI
Prize: $4,000
Project Description:
DeCenter AI is a B2B unified API platform that connects developers and organizations to a decentralized network of premium AI tools. Users generate API keys to access the network and connect directly to 400+ AI models and agents. Powered by a Super Agent (a Hedera AI agent) that intelligently selects the best-performing model for every task, the platform delivers transparent, verifiable, and low-cost AI inference at scale.
Project Demo:
Click here for the project demo.
Problem Statements (Basic & Intermediate) & Side Quest Winners
The Hello Future Ascension Hackathon featured bonus problem statements for each main track, giving builders additional opportunities to tackle specific challenges. Alongside these, side quests encouraged creativity, exploration, and deeper engagement with the Hedera ecosystem. These additions created more opportunities for learning, networking, and competing for smaller prizes.
Winners for the problem statements and side quests will be announced via the Hedera Discord by mid-February.
Ascension’s Closing Celebration on January 12!
Congratulations to all winners and participants! The Hello Future Hackathon Trilogy is a groundbreaking three-part saga powered by Hedera, offering $550,000 in prizes across Origins, Ascension, and Apex: The Finale.
Join us for the closing ceremony of the second hackathon in the trilogy on Monday, January 12th, and celebrate the creativity and achievements of the Hedera builder community!
