WTF !! hackathon summer edition

Overview

The WTF!! Hackathon Summer Edition is an online builder challenge focused on leveraging Nox, iExec's confidential smart contract layer, to bring privacy features to existing open-source protocols. Participants are tasked with creating innovative use cases that integrate Nox while maintaining the original protocol's functionality and composability. The core challenge involves enhancing established, public-by-design protocols with confidentiality. Builders should focus on creating integrations clean enough to be considered real products, rather than just proofs-of-concept. This means finding ways to route interactions through Nox to ensure privacy without modifying the underlying transparent infrastructure, potentially using batching or layering mechanisms. Examples of target protocols include popular wallets like MetaMask, DeFi platforms such as Aave and Uniswap, and treasury management tools like Safe. The goal is to demonstrate how Nox can add a layer of privacy to these systems, for instance, by enabling private swaps or confidential payouts, while preserving their core functionality and user experience. Projects from previous iExec hackathons will be disqualified, encouraging new innovations. Nox is a confidential computing layer that facilitates computations on encrypted data while preserving DeFi composability. It achieves this by combining on-chain smart contracts with off-chain Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), ensuring that plaintext data is never exposed on-chain. This allows for the creation of confidential smart contracts that can process encrypted inputs, execute private computations, and manage hidden balances without requiring users to change wallets or developers to rewrite contracts.

What to build

Participants must build a use case on Nox, iExec's confidential smart contract layer, that integrates with an existing open-source protocol to add privacy. The project should be a clean integration that could become a real product, enhancing an existing protocol with privacy without requiring modification of the underlying transparent infrastructure. This could involve routing existing functionalities (e.g., swaps, lending, treasury moves) through Nox confidential contracts while maintaining composability. The project must be deployed on ETH Sepolia.

Prizes

Key dates

• Pre-registration opens2026/07/01 18:00
• Submission opens2026/07/05 18:00
• Submission deadline2026/08/01 17:59

Eligibility

Teams can include up to 5 participants. Builders reusing a project from the previous Vibe Coding Hackathon will be disqualified.

How to enter

1. Join the Challenge on Discord via the iExec Discord server and head to the WTF hackathon channel: https://discord.gg/RXYHBJceMe.
2. Submit your project by publishing a post on X (Twitter) that includes a short description of your project, a demo video, a link to your public GitHub repository, and tags @iEx_ec.

Submission requirements

• A public GitHub repository containing complete, viewable, open-source code.
• A README file with clear instructions for installation and usage.
• Comprehensive documentation for setting up, deploying, and using the dApp.
• A functional front-end for the dApp.
• A brief demo video (maximum 4 minutes) showcasing your dApp's functionality.
• The project must be deployed on ETH Sepolia.
• A feedback.md document about the iExec tools directly in your GitHub repository.
• The project must be original; specify any existing work and what was done during the hackathon if integrating iExec dev tools into an existing project.

Judging criteria

• Project creativity
• Accessibility and end-to-end functionality without mock data
• Deployment on ETH Sepolia
• Provision of feedback about iExec tools (feedback.md doc)
• Maximum 4-minute demo video
• Technical implementation: How well the confidential DeFi project leverages iExec Nox Protocol
• UX: User-friendliness and intuitiveness of the application

Sponsors & partners

Resources

• iExec Discord server
• Nox Protocol Documentation
• iExec Nox packages on npm
• Confidential smart contracts wizard
• Nox Hardhat plugin
• Nox hardhat starter
• Additional developer resources (Linktree)