A recent hackathon by Coinbase’s base network has come under fire. Investigation by community members revealed that the winning project may be related to Coinbase’s own employees.
Developers have long wondered whether coding contests and hackathons actually help participants. Programmers often share their complaints online about promotional events in the name of supporting developers.
For example, some past contests have faced criticism. Criticisms include the small size of CodeX’s prize money, increased student fees at Hack the Hill, and a 2013 incident in which Salesforce allegedly gave preferential treatment to pre-selected winners.
Coinbase’s on-chain summer awards event comes under fire
The latest controversy involves Coinbase, which held an “On-Chain Summer Awards” contest last month. The event featured over 500 developer teams competing for a total prize pool of $200,000. Organizers said winners will be chosen based on actual user engagement with the application.
But when the results were announced on October 7, the developers discovered a problem. Alanas, co-founder of Ogvio, closely examined the winning entries and uncovered some worrying details.
> Build your base and get rewards
> Coinbase employee wins Base Hackathon @The result of Base Hackathon is really disappointing. Coinbase employees and shell projects are winningDon’t give in to greed. Is that the foundation we should build on? pic.twitter.com/Hmvw0lkjQt
— Alanas (@alanonchain) October 15, 2025
Top projects appear to be fake apps
According to Alanas’ analysis posted on X (formerly Twitter), the second place project called owatch and the third place Opi Trade appear to be fake applications. He explained that both are basic web pages created by AI with no real features or functionality.
The investigation took an interesting turn when a link was discovered between the fake project and a Coinbase employee. This is especially surprising since Coinbase owns the Base network, which ran the contest.
What makes this situation even worse is that legitimate teams with working products have succumbed to these empty shells. The participant list included many developers who had already built and launched real applications that people actually used.
Angry developers have messaged the Base team on social media, demanding answers on how a fake project won a major award. Organizers remained silent and did not address the accusations at all.
