New: Hackathon, Competitions, and Builder Funding Opportunities

Hey there, Stacks developer 👋

The upcoming months are stacked with opportunities to learn, earn, and build. From new hackathons to fresh dev tools and tutorials, here’s what you should know.

👨‍💻 Opportunities & Programs

• Vibe Coding Hackathon starting September 26 with a $25K prize pool on the line. This new competition will help builders supercharge Stacks apps with AI tools like Cursor and Claude Code.

• Stacks Expedition 31 announced: winners of the new Vibe Coding Hackathon, builder competitions, and other efforts will receive a sponsored travel invite to the Stacks Hacker House in Buenos Aires during DevConnect.

• SIP-031 Interim Grants revealed: established builders with indicators of traction or demand can now apply for the new interim grants program.

• Decentralized Grants Program: Cohort three, with a $100K pool, has been announced. Applications open this week on the official DeGrants website.

📃 Dev updates

• Stacks Labs: officially created as the new operational entity managing the Stacks Endowment, designed to fund ecosystem growth.

• Clarity 4: a major upgrade for security and developer experience, including verifying a contract’s code body, native post-conditions inside Clarity contracts, easier string conversion, block timestamps, and more.

• Hiro Release Roundup: Clarinet v3.4.0 and Hiro Docs 3.0 — faster, clearer, and reorganized for easier navigation.

• Meet the Stacks builders: join us at Building on Bitcoin Singapore (September 30), Bitcoin Builders Buenos Aires (November 19), New York (October 8), or Bitcoin is more with Stacks Niamey (October 11).

⭐ Dev Reward Programs

• Stacks Ascent: up to $25K in grants + fundraising support for aspiring Stacks founders.

• Code for STX: 10,000+ STX distributed monthly. Submit valid PRs, improve projects, and get rewarded. The new Streaks feature rewards consistent builders with even bigger payouts.

🍀Evergreen Learning Resources

• LearnWeb3 Course 3: build DeFi on Stacks: vaults, flash loans, lending pools.

• Stacks Builder’s Primer: a 5-day crash course for brushing up your Clarity skills.