Hedera just opened registrations for Hello Future: Apex, the grand finale of its $550,000 hackathon trilogy. The global, beginner-friendly competition puts $250,000 on the line for builders creating real-world solutions on the network.
This is the largest prize pool of the three-part series. Origins kicked things off in summer 2025 with $150,000. Ascension followed in November with another $150,000. Apex raises the stakes for the finale.
The Hedera Hello Future: Apex Hackathon is open — with $250K in prizes up for grabs!
— Hedera (@hedera) February 2, 2026
Apex is a global, beginner-friendly hackathon focused on real-world solutions.
🔥 Tracks: AI & Agents | DeFi & Tokenization | Sustainability | Open Track | Legacy Builders
🤝 Support from… pic.twitter.com/XwNKWGOltF
The Tracks
Five categories are open for submissions:
- AI & Agents – Autonomous systems, AI copilots, and intelligent on-chain applications
- DeFi & Tokenization – Lending protocols, DEX aggregators, payment infrastructure, and tokenized assets
- Sustainability – Carbon tracking, environmental compliance, and green energy solutions
- Open Track – Anything goes as long as it runs on Hedera
- Legacy Builders – For past participants refining or reworking previous Hedera projects
The Legacy Builders track is a standout feature. Effisend, a biometric payment platform that lets users pay with their face, placed first in Origins and returned for Ascension to claim second in the Legacy track. The trilogy rewards iteration, not just fresh ideas. The first two rounds of the hackathon delivered several standout projects:
Ascension’s AI & Agents: KeyRing built transparent governance infrastructure with real-time dashboards and threshold accounts. Aslan AI Agent Network deployed autonomous agents using x402 streaming payments executing smart contracts in real time.
DeFi: Medq gamified on-chain activity with AI-generated quests and instant rewards. Deraswap tackled liquidity fragmentation by aggregating optimal swap routes across DEXs.
Sustainability: ChargeFrog launched a carbon-negative EV charging network using Hedera’s Guardian-powered digital MRV to mint and retire carbon offset NFTs. VeriCycle built financial rails for South Africa’s informal recycling economy—replacing cash with HTS tokens and creating immutable proof-of-income for 90,000+ unbanked waste pickers.
Origins highlights: GreenTrace delivered verifiable carbon management with NFT certificates. Aegis Protocol built a trust layer for automated payment streams and treasury management. Major Gainz created an AI DeFi copilot turning wallet data into actionable insights.
The bar is high. Apex competitors know it.
Why Hedera
Hedera calls itself the trust layer for the digital economy. The network runs hashgraph consensus—not traditional blockchain—enabling parallel transaction processing with sub-three-second finality.
The specs:
- Fixed fees starting at $0.0001 (USD-denominated, not volatile)
- Carbon-negative operations—less energy than a Visa transaction
- EVM-compatible with full Solidity support and Ethereum tooling
- OFAC-compliant at protocol and application levels
- AI-ready infrastructure—real-time finality and tamper-proof data for autonomous agents
The Hedera Council governs the network: global enterprises, institutions, and universities running nodes and approving protocol updates. Different governance model than most public chains.
The codebase lives under the Linux Foundation’s Decentralized Trust initiative as Project Hiero—vendor-neutral code governance.
For builders, this means enterprise-grade infrastructure without enterprise costs. The Hedera Consensus Service (HCS) appeared repeatedly in winning projects—anchoring AI reasoning steps, recording environmental compliance, powering real-time data streams.
Ecosystem Support
Hedera lined up ecosystem partners to back the event. AWS, Bonzo Finance, Neuron, and Hashgraph Online are providing support, with exclusive bounties expected to drop soon.
Bonzo Finance operates as Hedera’s liquidity layer, offering lending, borrowing, and automated vault strategies. Their involvement signals DeFi-focused bounties are likely.
Hashgraph Online specializes in inscription and on-chain data standards for Hedera. Expect challenges around data permanence and decentralized storage.
Previous hackathons featured problem statements from sponsors at basic and intermediate levels, plus side quests for smaller prizes. Apex will likely follow the same format.
🗝️ EXCLUSIVE: VAULT AUTOMATION STRATEGY ARRIVES ON HEDERA
— Generation Infinity (@Genfinity) February 2, 2026
Managing liquidity can be a full time job.
Bonzo Vaults automate all of it:
• Single asset and dual asset strategies
• Wrapped BTC and ETH vaults live today
• Permissionless deployment for devs
• Built on enterprise… pic.twitter.com/Aa4BexvUY8
How to Participate
Registration is live at hellofuturehackathon.dev, with the official kickoff streaming February 17. Hedera provides mentorship, developer support, and direct access to ecosystem partners throughout the event. The Hedera Discord serves as the hub for announcements, side quests, and bounty drops as they go live.
The Bigger Picture
The Hello Future Trilogy is one of the largest sustained hackathon investments in Hedera’s ecosystem. $550,000 across three events over seven months. That’s serious developer acquisition.
The track selection reveals strategy. AI & Agents positions Hedera as infrastructure for autonomous systems. DeFi & Tokenization targets institutional finance where Hedera already has enterprise traction. Sustainability leverages the network’s carbon-negative status and Guardian framework for environmental use cases.
Winners keep building. Effisend, Lynx Token, and DeCenter AI returned for multiple rounds. The Legacy Builders track creates a hackathon-to-production pipeline. Apex is the final chapter. $250,000 on the table. Largest prize of the trilogy. Registration open now.
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