Hackathons

Hackathons on Nepher Robotics are focused on innovation — exploring novel approaches and opening new genres of robotic challenges. Where Tournaments optimize policies for fixed benchmarks, hackathons generate new ideas, task definitions, and proof-of-concept solutions.

Participate at nepher.ai/hackathon.

Hackathon vs Tournament

	Hackathon	Tournament
Goal	Innovation — new genres and PoCs	Optimization — best policy on fixed task
Examples	Kitchen humanoids, off-road nav, hospital robots	Spot waypoint nav across EnvHub benchmark scenes
Judging	Expert + stake-weighted community voting	Decentralized eval-nav validator scoring
Rewards	USD prizes for ranks 1–3, paid via Stripe Connect	Subnet 49 emissions to the approved podium
Timeline	Time-boxed events (several per year)	Task-driven competitions
Output	Concepts, demos, new challenge areas	Production policies, code, and EnvHub assets
Portal	nepher.ai/hackathon	nepher.ai/tournament

Purpose & Scope

• Purpose: Generate new ideas and proof-of-concept solutions that expand what robotics AI can tackle.
• Scope: Collaborative, time-boxed events solving broad, real-world problems.
• Outcome: Demos, write-ups, asset galleries, and seeds for future tournament tasks.
• Rewards: USD prizes for the top-ranked entries, decided by a blend of expert and community votes.

Timeline

Each hackathon moves through these phases:

Phase	Default length	What happens
Submission	7 days	Participants upload their entries (web or CLI)
Admin review	3 days	The Nepher team accepts or declines submissions
Evaluation (voting)	7 days	Experts and the community vote; the live leaderboard updates every minute
Completed	—	Final ranks lock and prize winners can claim payouts

Exact dates for each event are shown on its page. An event can also end with no winner if no entry qualifies.

Submissions

Each entry includes two archives:

Archive	Contents
submission.zip	Source code, Isaac Lab project, or other technical deliverable
assets.zip	Gallery media — images, videos, PDFs — extracted into a public project gallery after admin review

• One submission per user per hackathon. Re-uploading during the submission phase replaces your entry and sends it back to pending review.
• Up to 10 uploads per user per event (re-submissions count).
• Archives are scanned for secrets (API keys, private keys) and blocked executable types.
• Default media limits: 12 images (8 MB each), 4 videos (120 MB each), 3 PDFs (10 MB each); archives up to 512 MB. Individual events may set different limits — the CLI preflight shows them.

Sign in with your Nepher Account — the same identity used across Tournament, EnvHub, and SimStore.

Participating

Web

1. Sign in at nepher.ai/hackathon
2. Browse active hackathons and read challenge briefs
3. Submit your project (submission.zip) and assets (assets.zip) before the deadline from your dashboard
4. After admin review, your entry appears in the public gallery and can receive votes and comments

CLI

pip install nepher-cli
npcli login --api-key nepher_xxxxxxxx

# List open hackathons
npcli hackathon list

# Submit an entry
npcli hackathon submit \
  --title "My Kitchen Humanoid Demo" \
  --submission ./my-project \
  --assets ./my-assets \
  --description "## Approach\n\n..."

Your API key must have Hackathon access (or be unrestricted). Create keys at nepher.ai/account/api-keys.

Full options:

--hackathon-id <uuid>       Required when multiple hackathons are open
--title <str>               Entry title (max 200 characters)
--description <markdown>    Entry description
--thumbnail <file>          Cover image (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF)
--submission <path>         Project folder or submission.zip
--assets <path>             Assets folder or assets.zip
--public-source             Mark source as public

See Nepher CLI for full command reference.

Voting & Scoring

Voting is open during the evaluation phase. Each ballot ranks three different submissions:

Ballot position	Points
1st choice	5
2nd choice	3
3rd choice	1

You cannot vote for your own submission. Scores combine two pools equally:

$$\text{final score}=0.5\times \text{expert score}+0.5\times \text{community score}$$

• Expert score — points from invited expert judges, averaged per expert.
• Community score — points weighted by each voter's Bittensor stake, measured as a 30-day moving average of the stake on the coldkey registered to their Nepher account (sampled every 3 hours). Voters without registered stake history carry no community weight.
• Some events restrict the community pool to invited voters only.

To have your vote weighted, register your coldkey with npcli account register-coldkey. Final scores lock when the evaluation window closes; tied entries share the same rank.

Prizes & Payouts

• Prizes are set per event in USD for ranks 1–3 (2nd and 3rd place prizes are optional).
• Tied winners split the combined prize slots equally.
• Payouts are made through Stripe Connect. Winners set up (or update) a Stripe Connect Express account from Dashboard → Payouts on nepher.ai/hackathon/dashboard/payouts; Stripe collects the required tax form (W-9 or W-8BEN).
• Once the event is completed and your Stripe account has payouts enabled, claim your prize from the same page.

From Hackathon to Tournament

Strong hackathon outcomes can graduate into formal products:

1. New task genre defined from winning concept
2. EnvHub scenes built for standardized evaluation (nepher.ai/envhub)
3. Tournament launched with a public task repo (e.g. task-spot-waypointnav) and eval-nav config
4. Winning policies made available through tournament downloads and SimStore

This pipeline keeps innovation (hackathons) and rigor (tournaments) connected on one platform.

Sponsored Hackathons

Companies can sponsor a hackathon with their logo, a company challenge statement, and (where enabled) a recruitment track. Sponsors back an event but never create or administer it. See Sponsored Events.

Organization & Announcements

Hackathon dates, registration windows, challenge themes, and submission rules are announced through:

• nepher.ai/hackathon
• Nepher Discord
• nepher.ai/blog and social channels

Related

• Nepher CLI — npcli hackathon commands
• Tournaments — optimization competitions
• Decentralized Physical AI — how tournament validation differs from hackathon voting
• Nepher website — product overview and FAQ