After a two-day hackathon held in Vilnius, the Bank of Lithuania has announced the winning team – DLTeam from Ukraine. The hackathon was the first step towards creating the state-of-the-art digital collector coin dedicated to the restoration of Lithuania’s statehood.
“The overall results showed that a mix of ambitious ideas, innovation and tradition may pave the way for a truly remarkable outcome – the first-ever digital collector coin. We will now proceed to assessing the chosen prototypes and discussing further steps in the coin creation process,” said Marius Jurgilas, Member of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania.
According to him, competition at the hackathon was fierce, yet outstanding coin security features and the versatility of its selling platform were the ultimate factors that led the Ukrainian team to victory.
“Digital collectables will undoubtedly gain traction – it will not be long before they enter the global market. What is interesting is that we managed to divide the non-fungible token into pieces that could be traded individually. Having acquired all of them, the collector will be able to redeem the physical coin,” said Pavel Kravchenko, leader of DLTeam.
To commemorate the centenary of the restoration of Lithuania’s statehood, the Bank of Lithuania is looking into the possibility of issuing a digital collector coin designed using blockchain or other equivalent technology. The hackathon was aimed at developing prototypes of the coin. Following their analysis, the Bank of Lithuania will make a decision on further actions to be taken in terms of project implementation.
The hackathon took place on 1–2 June at Rise Vilnius. It brought together eight teams from Lithuania, Cyprus and Ukraine. The prototypes created during the hackathon and their descriptions were assessed and evaluated by a panel of judges as well as IT experts and collectors. The top three selected projects received a cash prize.
The digital collector coin is expected to be issued already this year. Commemorating important events, phenomena or prominent figures, numismatic items issued by the Bank of Lithuania are intended for collection only. Their use as legal tender is not encouraged.
The issuance of the digital collector coin would be yet another step towards implementing one of the Bank of Lithuania’s strategic directions in the field of innovation and FinTech. At the start of the year the central bank announced its intention to create a blockchain sandbox platform, dubbed LBChain. It is aimed at helping Lithuanian and international companies gain knowledge and carry out blockchain-oriented research, thus adapting and testing blockchain-based services in the financial sector.
Saturday, 2 June: final results and awards.
Saturday, 2 June: introduction of the projects.
Friday, 1 June: introductory session, presentation of the ideas
