Dogfood 2026: Build the Platform That Will Judge You

Dogfood 2026 is an online hackathon challenge that asks participants to build a submission and judging platform for hackathons. This unique twist on the typical hackathon format aims to address the recurring problems faced by Hackathon Raptors, who have organized 35 hackathons across 85+ countries since 2023. The main issues identified include inconsistent judging scores, access control, and handling large volumes of data.

The event is a 72-hour online competition where teams can compete solo or in groups of up to 4. The prize pool is $2,500, and participation is free. The platform can be self-hosted and is built using the technology stack of participants' choice. However, the winning project is intended to be forked, self-hosted, and used for actual Hackathon Raptors events.

The challenge requires building a reliable system that can handle real-world usage. A significant portion of the difficulty lies in creating a robust system that maintains data integrity and security when used by real participants. The platform must handle various stages such as registration, team formation, submissions, judge assignment, scoring, normalization, results, certificates, and exports.

In addition to building the core platform (T1), participants must also focus on advanced features like judge assignment (T2), public voting and commenting (T3), and stretch goals for infrastructure (T4). Judges should have protected and isolated access to scores, ensuring that they cannot see the scores of other judges or projects outside their track. The platform should also support various voting methods, including quadratic voting, to prevent abuse and provide transparent results.