Builder Season: An experiment in long-form hackathons, Piece of Pie by Gimbalabs

Developers Cardano Projects
1

Project introduction
Name:
Piece of Pie Builder Season Hackathon
Description:
Piece Of Pie is a 12-week, participation-driven hackathon. This is not about judges picking favorites. It is about meeting clear requirements, showing visible effort, and earning your slice by doing the work.
Website:
Piece Of Pie Hackathon by Gimbalabs
GitHub:
GitHub - gimbalabs/Piece-of-Pie-Hackathon: It's builder season with accountability and incentives! · GitHub

We are looking for communities, open-source projects, and builders to run or participate in future Builder Seasons. We are looking for communities that want to help people consistently build, learn, and ship real projects together.

Reason:
The first Piece of Pie Builder Season demonstrated that a long-form, accountability-based hackathon can help builders move beyond prototypes and create real products on Cardano. We’re looking for communities interested in adopting or adapting the model.

Project scope:
Explore the completed projects, share feedback, and help shape future Builder Seasons. We’re interested in communities that want to support open-source contributors, onboard new developers, or organize long-form hackathons.

Paid or voluntary:
Voluntary discussion and collaboration. Future sponsored Builder Seasons are anticipated.

Piece of Pie Builder Season: 15 Mainnet Projects, Real Users, and What’s Next?

Over the past twelve weeks, Gimbalabs ran the first Piece of Pie Builder Season—an experiment in a different kind of hackathon.

Instead of a weekend sprint, builders committed to twelve weeks of public progress, weekly accountability, feedback from peers, and shipping real projects. The goal wasn’t simply to write code—it was to help builders take ideas all the way to usable products.

Some highlights:

  • :technologist: More than 30 builders started the Builder Season.

  • :pie: 15 projects qualified for the Cardano Pie by building on Cardano infrastructure, deploying to mainnet, and implementing a working Cardano payment flow.

  • :rocket: 3 projects attracted real users during the program.

  • :open_file_folder: Every qualifying project is publicly available on GitHub.

  • :multiply: Every project posted weekly updates on X.com

You can explore all of the projects and final presentations in the Piece of Pie Yearbook:

One of the biggest lessons from the season was that accountability and consistency may be more important than intensity. Given enough time and community support, builders were able to move beyond proofs of concept and create applications that reached real users.

We’re interested in hearing from the broader Cardano community:

  • Would you participate in a Builder Season like this?

  • What would you keep or change?

  • How can we make the experience even more valuable for builders and open-source projects?

We’d love your feedback as we begin planning the next iteration.

2 Likes