On Monday (August 5), Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) sent out the following tweet:

As you can see, he was referring to “Game Oasis Hackathon”, a global gaming hackathon being co-hosted by Binance ‘s venture arm, Binance Labs, along with four blockchain startups: Cocos-BCX, Celer Network, Contentos, and Matic Network.

Binance Labs, which was launched in February 2018, is an initiative to “to incubate, invest and empower blockchain and cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and communities.”  It does so by providing project teams with seed funding, mentorship, networking opportunities, and other resources (such as regulatory/legal advice). It is headed by Ella Zhang, who has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

According to Binance’s blog post, this hackathon comprises three rounds:

  • Round 1 (“Ready Player”): The participants need to register as a team.
  • Round 2 (“Multiverse”): The participating teams are asked to create games based on a specified topic (but note that they can that they can use a game “they have previously built”). At this stage, teams are building games using HTML and do not need to use blockchain technology.
  • Following online reviews, the judges will “select teams for offline hackathons.”
  • Round 3 (“Oasis Arena”): This is “a series of 48-hour on-site hackathons.” The teams must build blockchain games in this round. The first onsite hackathon will be held in Shanghai (China), and the following ones are held in Seoul (South Korea), San Francisco (the United States), and Bangalore (India).

The top three teams will win 30,000, 20,000, and 10,000 Chinese yuan worth’ of prizes respectively. The other teams will get “access to discussion with organizers and investors.” The lucky winners of the hackathon will get the chance to discuss receiving funding from Binance Labs.