Hedera has announced that it will fund $15,000 in bounty prizes at ETHOnline 2026. The network published the breakdown across four tracks on ETHGlobal’s prize page. ETHOnline 2026 runs from September 4 to September 16 as a fully online, async event. ETHGlobal lists a total prize pool above $100,000 for the hackathon. Hedera joins a sponsor roster that includes Chainlink, Uniswap Foundation, The Graph, Ledger, 1inch, World Network, and 0G Labs.
Hey builders 👋
— Hedera (@hedera) August 25, 2026
Hedera is offering $15K in total bounty prizes for the upcoming @ETHGlobal online hackathon 🏆
Check out each bounty 🧵+ in full here: https://t.co/qnl2v3iiRV pic.twitter.com/acOJ7jAPB2
How Hedera Split the $15K
The largest allocations go to two tracks worth $6,000 each. Both pay out to as many as three teams at $2,000 apiece. The AI and agentic payments track asks builders to ship a working x402 service. The tokenization track routes builders toward Hedera’s Asset Tokenization Studio instead. A third track puts $2,000 behind open source contributions to the Hedera Harness, split between two winners. Finally, a $1,000 continuity prize rewards a single team that advances an existing Hedera project. Every track requires a public GitHub repo and a demo video under five minutes.
The Agentic Payments Track Wants Real Transactions
Hedera’s largest-tier bounty centers on x402, an open payment standard built on the HTTP 402 status code. That code sat unused for years. Now it lets a server answer a request with a machine-readable price instead of a paywall. The client then signs a payment, and a facilitator covers gas and submits the transaction onchain. Hedera formally announced x402 support on February 10, 2026.
Importantly, the bounty does not accept a prototype. Teams must host a live x402-gated service on Hedera testnet or mainnet through the Blocky402 facilitator. Additionally, they must build the platform or agent that consumes it, with paid requests running end to end. BlockyDevs built Blocky402 as an open facilitator, and it already covers Base, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Avalanche alongside Hedera. Bonus credit goes to pay-per-call metering, multi-agent settlement, and audit trails. Judges also reward onchain agent identity through ERC-8004 or Hedera’s HCS-14 standard, plus agent discovery via the Universal Commerce Protocol.
🛠️ Open source – improve the Hedera Harness: $2K (2 winners)
— Hedera (@hedera) August 25, 2026
Submit a meaningful contribution or build a new harness that extends or takes direct inspiration from it. pic.twitter.com/GSobQh2eyM
Tokenization Points Builders at a Production Toolkit
The second $6,000 track asks for an enterprise finance application, not a demo token. Builders must use the Asset Tokenization Studio, an open source toolkit maintained under the Hashgraph GitHub organization. The studio handles configuration, issuance, and lifecycle management for tokenized securities and equities. Teams can use the SDK as it stands, adapt the contracts, extend the web application, or improve the codebase directly.
The toolkit carries real compliance machinery, which shapes what judges expect. It supports ERC-1400 for US equity and bond issuers, and Hedera added ERC-3643 in late 2025 for cross-border issuance. ERC-3643, also known as Tokeny’s T-REX standard, brings identity registries and modular compliance to the contract layer. Consequently, submissions need verified contracts on Hedera testnet and a demo covering issuance plus lifecycle operations. Extra points go to secondary markets, KYC and freeze controls, custom fees, and oracle integration.
♻️ Continuity: 1K (1 winner)
— Hedera (@hedera) August 25, 2026
Using a project you have already built on Hedera during a previous hackathon or one that already exists in some form on Hedera – demonstrate substantive new work completed during this event. pic.twitter.com/nHTcoyKSeZ
The Harness Track Rewards Tooling, Not Products
The $2,000 open source track is the odd one out, because it does not ask for a new project. Instead, teams submit a meaningful pull request to the Hedera Harness or build a harness that extends it. The Harness is a specification-driven framework for AI coding agents working on Hedera. It covers PRDs, spec files, validators, Playwright smoke tests, and acceptance contracts that generate Scaffold HBAR templates. Three packaged skills let an agent author, validate, and audit those specs. Judges favor new service coverage, better ergonomics, language ports, tests, and before-and-after evidence.
Continuity Pays for Follow-Through
The smallest bounty targets a familiar hackathon problem. Most projects stall the week after judging ends. Hedera’s $1,000 continuity prize instead asks teams to return to something they already built on the network. Submissions must document prior work against new work in the repo, so judges can see what actually shipped during the event. Traction, newly integrated Hedera services, and a post-hackathon roadmap all strengthen an entry.
EVM Compatibility Puts Hedera in Front of Ethereum Developers
Hedera runs an EVM-compatible smart contract layer alongside native services like the Hedera Token Service. As a result, Solidity developers can deploy without learning a new language. That compatibility is the practical reason a hashgraph network sponsors Ethereum hackathons at all. Hedera followed the same playbook at ETHGlobal Cannes in April 2026, where it put up $10,000 across AI and EVM tracks. That event drew more than 800 builders from 59 countries.
The network reports over 71 billion lifetime transactions and roughly 2.9 seconds to consensus finality. Hedera also lists more than 35,000 testnet developers and close to 9.8 million mainnet accounts. Notably, the two largest ETHOnline bounties map directly onto Hedera’s stated priorities: agentic payments and regulated tokenization. Rather than fund generic builds, Hedera is paying developers to stress-test specific production tooling. Whether that converts hackathon entries into sustained ecosystem projects remains the open question.
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