Bear markets are for building Bitcoin (BTC) companies. At least, that’s what Legends of Lightning, a nine-week contest for competing Bitcoin companies, would indicate.

The tournament-eat-hackathon held more than 65 events around the world in which 73 projects battled it out to win 3 BTC ($50,000) shared among the contestants. The competition crowned Bitcoin startups Lightsats, Mutiny Wallet, and AgriMint as winners of the competition’s separate tracks, Global Adoption and Building for Africa.

Hosted by Bitcoin startup Bolt Fun, the competition brought together 260 creators (builders, developers, startups, and hackers) from around the world. Speaking to Cointelegraph via Google Meet, Johns Beharry, co-founder of Bolt Fun and founder and CEO of Peak Shift, explained that the hackathon is the biggest yet in the Bitcoin economy: “There is nothing remotely like this,” he said.

The idea behind the competition was “Bring new creators into the ecosystem, innovate on bitcoin and lightning, and help new or existing projects incubate their ideas and turn dreams into reality.”

Furthermore, the competition showcases the Bitcoin development space as an arena to develop, modify, and experiment in ways that would amaze Web3 developers. Edward Pratt, Bolt Fun Co-Founder and Senior Product Designer, noted that the Bolt Fun team is very focused on driving Bitcoin adoption through start-ups and expanding the Bitcoin community into other domains:

“The gist of it is that other developer ecosystems are massive. We want to do our part to push Bitcoin to compete for the exchange of ideas and attention at the application layer.”

As shown in the chart below, Bitcoin has fewer developers than Ethereum and Polkadot. While Bitcoin is by far the largest and most recognized cryptocurrency, the data suggests that Bitcoin is not the space that developers and builders flock to.

Pratt and Beharry conclude that Web3 ecosystems such as Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), Polkadot, and Cosmos are attracting interest and talent from the Bitcoin construction space, despite Bitcoin offering the only decentralized infrastructure it is worth. worth building. The Legends of Lightning competition is an attempt to remedy the situation and highlight the richness and depth of opportunities to build on Bitcoin.

Solana Hackathons offers huge prize money and this summer over 350 projects were submitted to win a $5 million treasure chest. The first prize in The Legends of Lightning, by comparison, awarded 3 BTC ($50,000) to one of the 73 competing projects, one-hundredth of the total prize pool.

Pratt continued: “This demonstrates the difference between the Bitcoin ecosystem and other ecosystems like Solana.” Ultimately, the Bitcoin space competes for builders and developers participating in the Web3 playing fields like Solana and Ethereum.

“There is definitely a lot of activity [in Bitcoin] but we still don’t see that much inventiveness in Bitcoin.

Interestingly, the winner of the competition, Lightsats, built his project based on an idea shared in a Tweet by Bitcoin entrepreneur Brad Mills. The tweet set off a lightning-fast chain reaction of Bitcoin creation. In a matter of weeks, Lightsats created his “Precoiner on-ramp project,” presented it to the Bolt Fun team, and won the global adoption competition.

We won! I’m going to frame this! Where it all started! pic.twitter.com/wLC6Yd8ica

— Light satellites (@Lightsats21) December 7, 2022

Pratt explained that one of the ways to attract more people to participate in and develop Bitcoin is to reach out to developers who work in other ecosystems. “We want to target people outside of cryptocurrency and Web3,” it’s a question of “How do we make the narratives speak to those people?” Pratt mused.

Related: Bitcoin advocate hands out sats on Lightning Network to raise BTC awareness

Beharry joked that it could happen naturally; “Your web3 platform is offline, Bitcoin fixes this,” referring to the numerous times Solana’s blockchain simply stopped working.

The Legends of Lightning team hopes to repeat the event annually with bigger prizes, more participants, and more creativity. The goal is to reach 1,000 participants next year, a considerable leap from his current point of view.