In February, the Niantic and 8th Wall team headed to Miami Hack Week (MHW) 2023 and sponsored the first AR+Web3 house, and the response was incredible. The week was a chance to build relationships with developers, identify new Web3 and WebAR use cases, and get developers confidently building with 8th Wall.

Over 90 applicants applied to join our house, and we accepted 30 hackers from around the globe to participate in our MHW AR House hackathon. During the week, 8th Wall and SpotX teams provided motivation and support to these developers as they worked on their projects. By the end, six teams finished and submitted projects to be judged by a panel of judges made up of SpotX, 8th Wall, and Partner Engineering experts. We evaluated each project on how the experience used Web3, how it innovated WebAR, and how complete the project was.

Meet the AR House winners

The winning team at the Niantic AR house hackathon was Wanted for their Grakkthul experience, which placed in the top 5 out of over 60 projects at Miami Hack Week 2023! They built an amazing real-time multiplayer WebAR experience, where everyone in the room had to work together to fight Grakkthul.

Wanted’s innovative approach to combining WebAR and real-time multiplayer gaming blew us away, and we were so impressed with how complete and polished the project was. We're thrilled to hear that the team is continuing to work on the project and is expanding it into a bigger game called EarthMMO. It's exciting to think about what they'll be able to achieve with this project moving forward.

We always love seeing what kind of new ideas and projects developers bring to hackathons like Miami Hack Week, and the teams from our Niantic AR house certainly did not disappoint. 

Building on a strong presence at MHW

In addition to supporting the hackers, Niantic had a strong presence at the MHW headquarters. Phil Keslin, Niantic's CTO, spoke on the "Getting to #1 on the App Store" panel chat, while the SpotX team presented on "Fail Fast and Fail Forward." Andrew Woodbury from 8th Wall Sales and Partnerships, spoke on "The Future is Now: AR & VR in Action" panel, and Tony Tomarchio, Head of 8th Wall Tech Operations, alongside Premier Partner, Buoy, presented on "Building the Real-World Metaverse."

Overall, Miami Hack Week 2023 was a fantastic opportunity for Niantic to support the development of innovative new products while building strong relationships with developers. We're grateful to have taken part in such an inspiring and innovative event. We look forward to continuing our work in supporting developers in the Web3 and WebAR spaces, and we can't wait to see what the future holds!