The crypto and blockchain industry is now a multi-trillion-dollar market. The market cap of all cryptocurrencies has surpassed $2.3 trillion and had been approaching the $3 trillion mark earlier this year. It should be clear now that crypto is here to stay and we should all try to get involved in this nascent sector. According to many large corporations, such as Blockchain.com, the developer of a leading crypto wallet, block explorer services, and exchange, it is still early days.

Yes, that’s right, because only around 10% (at most) of the world population actually knows anything about crypto. In the coming decade, however, we will see many more people and business organizations become more active in this industry. And if you are a tech-savvy professional who happens to know how to write advanced software applications, then you may want to consider joining the crypto space.

One of the best ways to start programming smart contracts and deploying decentralized applications (dApps) on blockchains like Ethereum is to sign up to participate in a hackathon. These interactive events allow developers to network with other professionals in the industry and they also provide a competitive environment where you can potentially earn sizable monetary rewards.

Here’s a list of 5 great hackathons that you may consider participating in during 2021.

1. Metis Ethereum Hackathon

The participants of the Metis hackathon will get the chance to build and deploy Ethereum-powered decentralized applications (dApps). These apps may be launched on Metis Layer-2 and you may have a chance at claiming a portion of the $1 million $METIS prize pool!

As noted by its creators, METIS is an Ethereum (ETH) Layer-2 Optimistic Rollup platform for the Internet / digital economy with its native $METIS crypto token. METIS Hackathon's goal is to attract innovative projects (for instance, dApps, DeFi, distributed autonomous organizations or DAOs, and decentralized exchanges / DEXs) into the nascent Metis ecosystem.

You will have the option to create or port an existing Ethereum application onto Metis Layer-2 and then leverage the following benefits while still remaining on the Ethereum blockchain

As mentioned in the update from Metis, the first place DeFi initiative on Metis will get $25,000 in Metis Tokens - which will be determined at the winner announcement.

2. IGNITION | A Global Solana Hackathon

Solana is a fairly quick, low-fee, permissionless blockchain or DLT network developed to support software architects with deploying apps to users across the globe. The Solana community is pleased to start off their 4th online hackathon that will focus on enabling programmers to leverage the Solana blockchain to implement various DeFi projects, Web 3.0 apps, digital art/collectibles or NFTs, and “everything in-between.”

To learn more about this event, check here.

3. The 6-week Smart Contract Hackathon

As noted by its organizers, you would need to identify a problem to tackle. Then learn/master the smart contract language, called Daml. “Code it up, show it off, Mic Drop.”

As mentioned in the announcement, we’re at the beginning of what smart contracts can really do. There are many different industries, like financial services, insurance, and healthcare that are currently working with smart contracts. To learn more about this development and how to participate in this hackathon, check here.

4. DigitalBits Blockchain Hackathon

During this event, you will get a chance to build or integrate an application on the DigitalBits blockchain.

The organizers of the event would like to welcome you to XDB Season, which is the official hackathon for the DigitalBits blockchain, an open-source DLT infrastructure that enables developers to write programs in languages they may already be familiar with. To find out more, check here.

5. AWS Graviton Hackathon

During this event, you can build or migrate an app to Amazon EC2 instances that are being powered by Arm-enabled AWS Graviton2 processors for an opportunity to claim $10,000 in cash and a trip to re:Invent 2021

To learn more about this hackathon, check here.