Pi Network’s first Open Network hackathon crowned Blind_Lounge and other utility-focused Mainnet apps, highlighting growth but with clear risk disclaimers for usersPi Network’s first Open Network hackathon crowned Blind_Lounge and other utility-focused Mainnet apps, highlighting growth but with clear risk disclaimers for users

Bitcoin bulls cheer Pi hackathon as Blind_Lounge wins 75,000 PI

2025/12/12 22:00

Pi Network’s first Open Network hackathon crowned Blind_Lounge and other utility-focused Mainnet apps, highlighting growth but with clear risk disclaimers for users.

Summary
  • Pi Network’s Core Team picked Blind_Lounge as the top Mainnet app, with Starmax and RUN FOR PI taking second and third in a 215-submission hackathon.​
  • Honorable mentions like Kindrek, Workflet For Pi, PallyPay, SimpleJoy, and Agora Pulse show a push toward payments, work tools, and social use cases.​
  • The Core Team stressed these are independent projects, warning users to expect bugs and use all third-party Pi apps at their own risk.

Pi Network’s Core Team announced the winners of its first hackathon event held during the Open Network era, concluding a competition that ended in mid-October but saw results delayed until this week.

The hackathon, which launched on August 21, received more than 215 Mainnet app submissions through October that met ecosystem requirements, according to the Core Team’s announcement Thursday.

Pi Network goes privacy-first

Blind_Lounge, described as a privacy-first social and dating platform enabling anonymous connections with optional identity reveals, claimed first place and 75,000 PI tokens. The platform allows users to connect anonymously and reveal identities only through mutual choice.

Second place and 45,000 PI (PI) tokens went to Starmax, a loyalty program application that enables users to spend Pi at participating businesses and earn rewards for engagement. Third place winner RUN FOR PI, a runner game incorporating Pi into its in-game economy, received 15,000 tokens.

Five honorable mentions—Kindrek, Workflet For Pi, PallyPay, SimpleJoy, and Agora Pulse—each received 5,000 PI tokens, according to the announcement.

The hackathon included an optional midpoint check-in in mid-September and concluded October 15. The Core Team stated the submissions demonstrate developers’ motivation to build utility-oriented, production-ready applications on the Pi Mainnet.

The Core Team issued a disclaimer noting that some application features may remain in development and could contain bugs or limitations as community-built projects continue evolving post-hackathon. The team clarified it does not officially develop the applications and maintains no affiliation with them.

“All decisions, features, and limitations of these apps are determined solely by their respective app teams,” the announcement stated. “Use of these apps is at your own discretion and risk, and by using such apps you acknowledge and agree that Pi Network is not responsible for any issues you may encounter.”

The Core Team directed users experiencing issues or wishing to provide feedback to utilize application reporting channels or relevant community spaces.

Disclaimer: The articles reposted on this site are sourced from public platforms and are provided for informational purposes only. They do not necessarily reflect the views of MEXC. All rights remain with the original authors. If you believe any content infringes on third-party rights, please contact service@support.mexc.com for removal. MEXC makes no guarantees regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content and is not responsible for any actions taken based on the information provided. The content does not constitute financial, legal, or other professional advice, nor should it be considered a recommendation or endorsement by MEXC.

You May Also Like

The Channel Factories We’ve Been Waiting For

The Channel Factories We’ve Been Waiting For

The post The Channel Factories We’ve Been Waiting For appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com. Visions of future technology are often prescient about the broad strokes while flubbing the details. The tablets in “2001: A Space Odyssey” do indeed look like iPads, but you never see the astronauts paying for subscriptions or wasting hours on Candy Crush.  Channel factories are one vision that arose early in the history of the Lightning Network to address some challenges that Lightning has faced from the beginning. Despite having grown to become Bitcoin’s most successful layer-2 scaling solution, with instant and low-fee payments, Lightning’s scale is limited by its reliance on payment channels. Although Lightning shifts most transactions off-chain, each payment channel still requires an on-chain transaction to open and (usually) another to close. As adoption grows, pressure on the blockchain grows with it. The need for a more scalable approach to managing channels is clear. Channel factories were supposed to meet this need, but where are they? In 2025, subnetworks are emerging that revive the impetus of channel factories with some new details that vastly increase their potential. They are natively interoperable with Lightning and achieve greater scale by allowing a group of participants to open a shared multisig UTXO and create multiple bilateral channels, which reduces the number of on-chain transactions and improves capital efficiency. Achieving greater scale by reducing complexity, Ark and Spark perform the same function as traditional channel factories with new designs and additional capabilities based on shared UTXOs.  Channel Factories 101 Channel factories have been around since the inception of Lightning. A factory is a multiparty contract where multiple users (not just two, as in a Dryja-Poon channel) cooperatively lock funds in a single multisig UTXO. They can open, close and update channels off-chain without updating the blockchain for each operation. Only when participants leave or the factory dissolves is an on-chain transaction…
Share
BitcoinEthereumNews2025/09/18 00:09