Stellar Hack Pera: Turkey’s Largest IRL Web3 Hackathon with 200+ Participants, 70+ Projects

In June 2025, Stellar partnered with Rise In to run a 36-hour hackathon during Istanbul Blockchain Week - and together, we delivered Turkey’s largest Web3 hackathon to date.

The goal was clear: support local builders, increase meaningful adoption of the Stellar ecosystem, attract high-quality projects with real potential and create on-chain value.

Key Results

• 🧑‍💻 200+ developers on-site, selected from 500+ applications
• 🔥 72 projects submitted, 10 awarded a share of $25,000 in prizes
• 🎯 1 winning team launched on Stellar mainnet during the hackathon - and started gaining traction with 100+ users within hours
• 🚀 40% of winners were alumni of the Rise In x Stellar Bootcamps - and the remaining winners were active members of the Rise In community.
• 👩‍🦰~25% of participants were women.
• 🌍 50+ travel scholarships provided, ensuring national and international access
• 🌟 Participant satisfaction score: 4.86/5
• ✅ Participation from both newcomers and elite builders (incl. past grant winners)
• 🤝 Every project received mentorship from Stellar & Rise In teams and past Stellar grantees

A Hackathon Like No Other - at the Historic Pera Palace

Hack Pera took place at Pera Palace, one of Istanbul’s most iconic and historic venues - a place that has hosted diplomats, writers, and dreamers for over a century. It's said that Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express here, drawn by the building’s timeless energy.

That energy shaped our approach: What happens when you code the future in a place built for the past?  The result was a 36-hour immersive experience that blurred the lines between past and future. Teams:

• Coded day and night, without sleep
• Joined workshops and mentoring sessions with ecosystem professionals and Rise In team
• Built working prototypes from scratch

“Hack to the Future” wasn’t just a theme - it became the mindset. A reminder that the future isn’t something we wait for. It’s something we build - line by line, block by block.

Why This Hackathon Was A Success

1. Top of the Funnel Pipeline Worked

Before the event, we ran a Stellar Bootcamp focused on both technical foundations and use-case development. Many participants applied what they learned directly into their hackathon projects - leading to higher quality outcomes. 

One winning team even launched on mainnet during the hackathon and began gaining traction with 100+ users. Several others are now progressing toward SDF grants - clear signs that the builder pipeline is working.

2. Mentorship That Actually Moved Projects Forward

This wasn’t surface-level feedback. It was a full-stack builder support system, from onboarding to launch - and beyond.

Over 36 hours, the Stellar team showed up in full force - with more than 10 team members on-site, offering 1:1 technical guidance, answering questions in real time, and making sure no builder felt stuck or lost. To ensure clear communication, professional translators were on-site.

At the same time, the Rise In team offered continuous support across business strategy, technical guidance, and team motivation.

Local mentors - including past Stellar grantees - worked closely with over 70 teams, helping them validate ideas and unblock problems in real time.

3. Real Builders, Real Projects - Why Experienced Builders Showed Up and Stuck Around

Most hackathons don’t attract experienced developers - they’re too basic or lack meaningful follow-up.

This one did.

Nearly half of all participants were past grant recipients, hackathon winners, experienced devs or startup founders. They joined because they saw:

Top builders joined because they saw:

• 🧑‍💻 Consistent, hands-on support from Stellar & Rise In - before, during, and after the event
• 🧭 A clear path beyond the weekend - toward grants, network support and real traction
• 🤝 A trusted, active local community

Builders left the event not just with ideas - but with pathways to grants, product feedback, and further ecosystem integration. 

This wasn’t just about prizes. It was about building something that could last - and they knew it.

4. Community Was the Advantage

Participants weren’t strangers - many had already met through Rise In’s bootcamps and builder programs.
During the hackathon, they supported each other as much as they competed: sharing ideas, solving problems together, and genuinely rooting for each other’s success.

That collaborative energy was reinforced by mentors like Mert Kaya (Blockera), Cihan Dağdeviren (StableJack), and Arda Gülbahar (XBANK) - local Stellar grant recipients who had been through the journey themselves - and came back to support the next generation of builders.

It didn’t feel like a contest. It felt like momentum.

What Rise In Delivered

Execution at Scale, Without Compromising Quality -200+ developers. 72 submissions. Zero chaos.

We managed every part of the experience from application and team selection to logistics, workshops, mentorship, and judging with clarity and care. Everything worked. Seamlessly.

Rise In weren’t just the local partner, were the engine:

• Designed and ran a high-impact builder education program
• Curated and filtered 500+ applications to select high-signal participants
• Ensured developer quality through pre-selection and mentorship
• Provided on-site logistics, mentorship, workshops, and tech support
• Created a culture of excellence and collaboration, not just participation
• Delivered real projects, not just demos
• Created a trust-based community environment

This wasn't just a weekend event, it was a strategic ecosystem activation, with long-term outcomes already underway.

Winners of the Hack Pera

Consumer Track

• 1st Place - Kale Predict: A Soroban-based prediction market where users bet KALE tokens on future contract activity. An admin sets thresholds, and users predict "Higher" or "Lower" - with winnings distributed proportionally from the opposing side’s stake.
• 2nd Place - Luminate: A decentralized publishing platform on Stellar that uses AI and on-chain incentives to gamify content creation and reward engagement. (on Mainnet)
• 3rd Place - BrainOn: Featured a custom hardware integration, turning brainwaves into on-chain actions on Stellar. Think. Trigger. Transact. 
• actions on Stellar.
• 4th Place - DJai: An AI-powered music platform that generates personalized, copyright-free beats and streams them 24/7 - with Stellar handling secure payments and a blockchain-based revenue model.
• 5th Place - Oblivion:A zero-fee content and education platform built on Stellar, offering censorship-resistant publishing, AI-powered business tools, and cryptographic ownership through Forever Post™ technology.

DeFi& Infra Track

• 1st Place - Riskon: An on-chain credit scoring system that enables undercollateralized lending on Stellar - bringing more flexible, reputation-based access to capital.
• 2nd Place - PayStream: A payroll solution built on Stellar that enables employees to receive their salaries in real time - with the ability to request credit from employers based on individualized risk assessment. 
• 3rd Place - Parallax: Instant, cross- chain liquidity for Ethereum liquid - staking assets on Stellar.
• 4th Place - Steptions: The First Options Protocol on Stellar. Insure any asset. Hedge price risk. Earn yield.
• 5th Place - FlashPerp: A perpetual futures exchange built on Stellar - offering fast, decentralized trading with a focus on scalability and user experience.

What’s Next?

Several teams are now preparing Stellar grant applications. Others are iterating on their projects and connecting with ecosystem partners. And a new cohort of developers, many of them first-time Stellar users, now see it as their primary development environment.

This event showed us that:

• When education is tied to action, builders show up prepared
• Local execution partners bring crucial context and momentum
• Strong communities don’t just build,  they help each other grow