“SheFi propelled me to hackathons.” I read that on SheFi’s landing page and wished I were that person. Now I am. I entered the program in February with a little bit of skepticism. Many of the lectures blew my mind — we learned about L2s, rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, smart contracts, and decentralized AI models. Little by little, the questions I had in my head got some answers and I cleared many gaps: Now I had a lot of theoretical knowledge… but practical? I started taking some Cyphrin Updraft courses and got froggy! In March, before ending the Shefi cohort, I already had my spot confirmed for the upcoming ETH Global Hackathon in Prague, and I was excited. I hadn’t finished my Cyphrin Updraft courses, but decided to head there anyway, also because it was a web2-friendly developer event and inspired by Shefi, I decided that I wouldn’t wait until I felt 100% ready, but that I would go.
The Team
I met my team through a Discord group. A guy contacted me, thinking I was another guy, and I had to explain (chuckle), but after that hiccup,all was pretty clear. We brainstormed some ideas loosely, and finally, on Friday, May 29th, we met at the venue, which by the way, was beautiful. We started as 5, but lost someone, not in a tragic way, but due to alignment: After the first night, he decided to go solo. This was perfectly mature and ok. The rest of us were still a diverse bunch:
Our team was diverse:
– A former professional dancer pivoting into blockchain;
– A computer science dropout turned security auditor;
– A mobile dev student curious about blockchain;
– And me: literature grad, Web2 engineer, now Web3 curious.
The Project: InspectiFi
At 9 pm, we started hacking away on InspectiFi, a conversational blockchain analytics assistant that allows users to ask natural language questions about blockchain data and returns easy-to-understand answers with accessible, easy-on-the-eye dashboards GitHub Project InspectiFy.
InspectiFi leverages MCP technology and integrates with the sponsors 1inch, Blockscout, and Vlayer to provide real-time Blockchain data in an intuitive way.
The Fun
I drank all the Cokes I hadn’t taken in more than 10 years (Thanks, ETH global,l for providing them). I think my team did too. We stayed late, got stressed, wrangled with the code, taught each other stuff, did some pair programming, debugging, fixing merge conflicts, resurrected code from the dead, because it was important, and in the end, won two pool prizes from the sponsors, 1Inch and Blockscout. I wasn’t counting on this, but it made the experience even better. Also, one week later, I’m still blown away by our team: I got to meet incredible people and am still over the moon about that!
If you're heading to your first hackathon, expect chaos, drink water (along with the cokes), and pair up with someone stronger where you're weaker. That’s how we survived.
The Learnings
Big teams = more communication overhead. Plan for it.
Don’t assume shared Git knowledge. Align early.
Set game rules. Spell out collaboration and review norms.
Deploy often. Avoid one giant, sleep-deprived deploy.
Decide what “done” means early (e.g., qualifying for finalists? Then prioritize deploys).
Our Team was great, however, the bigger the team, the more communication overhead you are going to have. I wouldn’t change our team, but this is something I will have in mind for my next project. Even if you say “let’s use branches,” align on how. Show examples, decide how to handle conflicts, and expect different defaults. Drop assumptions and go for clear communication and setting clear game rules from the beginning. And lastly, set rules about deployment: Do you have the goal of entering the finalist competition? Then Do smaller deploys and avoid fighting a huge monster where all issues have been conflated into one and no energy left to fight that monster.
We left Prague with a lot of swag — and even more curiosity.
Next time, I’m showing up with a bigger water bottle, better Git habits, and clear deployment rules. And probably still a Coke.
Thanks, SheFi.