My First Hackathon and How It Changed the Way I See Many Things

It was in November 2025, I guess.

First, in September 2025, I attended a blockchain event. That's the first time I found out that there was a coding side to blockchain. That's also where I found the hackathon application later. Before that, I used to do airdrops and some meme coin trades, but I didn't know there was code behind it. At that time, I was like, "Wow!" So I thought, I will get into this. I'm pretty sure I will get interesting things out of it. At that time, though, I was literally on my JavaScript learning journey.

Around the hackathon, I guess, I had dived into backend development to some extent. I was so unsure because, first, I had never participated in a hackathon. Second, I didn't even know much about full-stack development yet. I only knew a few things, and even my frontend skills back then weren't that good. Another reason was that I had no PC. I didn't know if I would need one, but since I had heard that you do it in groups, I wanted to give it a try. So I applied as a backend developer.

They accepted me, and when I told them I didn't have a team of my own, they said they would team me up. So they teamed us up, and there were four of us. None of the four of us knew about the blockchain coding side, so the coordinator said, "Okay, one of you must learn blockchain on the fly and do it until I find someone and team them up with you guys."

That's when I decided, okay, let me push myself. I will learn ASAP and apply as a blockchain developer. I don't know what I was thinking. But I told her, "Please, if you get anyone who knows blockchain, bring them to us so that we can do something good."

And I was just thinking, I had a week, and even on the blockchain side, I didn't know much about the concepts, let alone the Web3 coding side. So I was trying to learn, and hell, it was demotivating. There were so many concepts even before I touched the code. It was a lot.

We started. There were two ideas, and after a vote, we chose one of them. But after that, the two girls from AASTU University were so busy with classes that they said they weren't joining anymore. And the fourth one was silent at first.

So I was kinda alone.

When I asked the coordinator, she said, "Just come to the in-person event, and I will team you up with others."

But I didn't want to go empty-handed. So I started vibe-coding the project.

And there were a lot of massive challenges, especially because the borrowed PC I had from my friend couldn't run the backend, frontend, and blockchain all at the same time. So things were really, really getting difficult to manage. It would get stuck in the middle and things like that. But I managed to code some core parts, though I didn't even have one page loading to display at that time. So I just said, okay, whatever, and went to the in-person event.

Turns out it wasn't the final day. It was just an interview and a presentation because it wasn't a country-wide hackathon, which I found out then. The organisers were from across Africa, I think around 10 countries, though I'm not sure.

From each country, the top three teams would be awarded, and the top one would go to Kenya for the next round to compete with teams from other countries. So the final decision was going to be made by the continental judges, not just our country's hosts.

Now, getting back to the event, first, in the morning, we played a game and had the chance to meet and see the ideas other teams were building. At that time, I really loved my idea. So when the coordinator said, "Hey, there is this guy, and he wants a team. Do you want to join him?" I said, "No, I love my idea, and I'm going to build it even if I'm alone because I still have some time."

I started writing some things as well, but the PC got stuck. And I had nothing else to do except prepare for the presentation I had to give there.

So I finished the interview, and when I was preparing for the presentation, the fourth teammate showed up. The event started early in the morning, and she came at 1 PM in the afternoon. The event was about to finish, except for the presentations. But I told her to prepare a PowerPoint presentation. Thank God she had a PC because mine had already said goodbye. And we both did the presentation. The day finished like that.

We had a week after that to submit, and during that week, we had to finish all the code and prepare a lot of documents, like the stakeholder map, community map, problem-solution statement, and another four things, all in a professional way because those people weren't just from our country.

We also had to interview people to find out if the idea was addressing an actual pain point. There was also a bot that tracked all those things in a Telegram group, and I was doing most of those things almost by myself.

I was having a hard time with the PC, so I added another teammate after asking the coordinator.

The new teammate had almost no idea about blockchain either. So I decided that rather than telling and explaining to her everything about blockchain that I had learned by then, I would do it by myself. I had to be strategic.

She was my best friend as well, so I was lucky to have her PC.

Most of the time, she finished using it around 10 PM, early at night for her own stuff, and I would code the whole night, sometimes until 3 or 4 AM, pre-dawn. I would record videos, interview my friends, ask them if they had been having this problem, spam groups and channels, and get their opinions. There were also a lot of memes popping up about my idea. I was adding them so that the bots would give me more points. I had to learn how to structure the stakeholder map, the community map, and how to make those things professional.

We also had an online interview session about our progress in the middle of the week.

So, on the last deadline day, I managed to get a PC from my friend around 4 PM. Everyone was sleeping while I was just getting started. I coded through the night, made the code run, and recorded the demo video. It had to be submitted then. I think it was around 4:30 AM (10:30 LT) when I finally slept, but I had to get up at 7:30 AM because I had a mid exam. After the exam, I attended the DevFest event. That was the end of the hackathon period.

The first teammate helped me with the PowerPoint, logo, designs and things like that which helped a lott. And the last added teammate, I was using her PC almost the whole time and getting a lot of encouragement, which I am so grateful for. And it all ended like that.

I learned a lot, but I was really, really hoping that I would get fourth or fifth place. And if I did, I promised myself I would post it on LinkedIn because it would have been the best thing ever.

We were approaching the final week, so we were studying. In the middle of that, I got a Telegram message. I opened it, and it said: First place: this group. Second place: this group. Third place: this group. And I was like, "Oh, did they already post the winners?" Then I thought, okay, so who are those people? Do I remember them? I read the first place, and it was our group. I couldn't believe it, so I went back to the submission website. I went there and cross-checked our name to see if it was actually our name because I couldn't believe we had won something like that. I was so surprised. I couldn't even express what I was feeling at that time.

And yeah, it happened. We won. It was just crazy. They congratulated us and gave us the award for the three of us. And I had the chance to go to Kenya, but unfortunately, my passport wasn't ready.

It's funny because the passport I had applied for was issued four or five months earlier. Most of the time, after giving them all the required information, the maximum time it takes is two to three weeks. But unfortunately, the M alphabet, out of all the alphabets, had something wrong, and it postponed everything by around four months.

I don't know what happened with the immigration people, but they said only the M alphabet had something wrong, and it took a while to fix.

At that time, they wanted to book the flight ASAP, so I asked some people at the immigration centre. They said they couldn't give me the hard copy yet, but they could give me the passport ID. However, using that, I couldn't book the flight.

But it was a really, really different moment for me. And what made this even more beautiful was that, first, when the Ethiopian people judged us, I guess we were either in fourth or fifth place. The local people ranked us and suggested those rankings to the continental judges. And the continental judges actually loved our project and put us in first place.

This made it such a big deal because that moment taught me that I shouldn't measure myself by the people around me.

And there's no doubt about that. From that point on, I started participating in a lot more hackathons, even international ones, because this time I had the confidence.

It really, really helped me. And that was one of the best moments.

The late-night grinds are what I remember the most. I remember one day I was about to cry (okay, maybe I cried) because I really wanted to do this, and the first borrowed PC couldn't handle it. I couldn't get another PC, and I was so pissed at myself. I even posted on X saying, "It's like a spark out of oxygen." You have the energy, you have everything you need, and everything that is supposed to come from you, but then you don't have this one must-have thing, and you can't just do stuff because you don't have it.

That was really, really frustrating. And one thing I remember is those long nights, the courage I had at that time, and how badly I wanted to make things happen.

Another thing I learned is that I shouldn't measure myself by the people around me. Just because people around you are doing better doesn't mean that's your limit. You might have the potential to compete with people far beyond your immediate environment.

I also learned that I don't have to learn everything before making things happen. That's something I am proud of myself for. After that, I started diving deeper into the blockchain world. But for that moment to happen, I didn't need to figure out everything first.

You can just build it. You figure things out along the way. You figure out later why things were behaving that way. Don't forget to learn and understand the concepts later, though.

And most importantly: Just build stuff. Don't overengineer at first. You don't have to know everything. Just build. Just build that thing. Just see it, build it, and then judge it later. Don't overthink anything before you do something.

For God's sake, just build it.