Movement's M1 Hackathon Reveals 100% AI Adoption Among Blockchain Developers

Winners built tools that make Move development easier, delivering polished front-ends and deep protocol-level innovations in just four weeks

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 05, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Move Industries, the core contributor of the Movement Network, today announced winners of its M1 Hackathon, the first major hackathon on Movement's newly launched Layer 1 blockchain. Participants built DeFi applications, games, consumer products, and developer tools that make it easier for builders to build on the Move programming language, with winning submissions demonstrating production-ready quality that would typically require months of specialized development.

A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on this link.

The four-week hackathon attracted 100+ teams building across multiple categories. What distinguished these winners was not just what they built, but how: every participant used AI coding assistants to accelerate development.

“We actively encouraged developers to build infrastructure tools that benefit the entire ecosystem. In fact, the dev tooling submissions were so strong we added a second winner," said Rahat Chowdhury, Head of Developer Relations at Move Industries. "Trace and Movehat bring about the Hardhat and Tenderly-level developer experience that developers have been asking for in the Move Ecosystem. AI tools enabled teams to deliver polished front-ends while going deep on protocol-level work. Teams like Trace were able to go much deeper into Protocol level work and deliver developer tooling that can 10x the developer experience. I’ve been using these tools myself for work immediately after I finished judging."

Movement's partnership with Replit provided developers with one-month access to cloud-based development environments, removing hardware barriers. Multiple winners leveraged Replit to build out polished front-ends while focusing their expertise on core technical challenges.

The hackathon awarded $30,000 across six categories, with winners selected based on utility, technical execution, and potential impact on the Move ecosystem:

M1 Hackathon Winners:

• Best Gaming App: The Fallen Court - Narrative ASCII dungeon crawler with blockchain-integrated choices and on-chain permadeath
• Best New Devex Tool: Trace - Developer tool suite featuring VirtualNet for safely testing transactions on virtual network forks
• Best New Devex Tool: Movehat - Complete development toolkit bringing Hardhat-level workflow maturity to Movement
• Best Consumer App: SportsMove - Decentralized sports betting platform abstracting blockchain complexity for mainstream users
• Best x402App: AlgoArena - Competitive auto-battler where AI trading agents battle on live crypto price feeds
• Best DeFi App: Predictly - Social-first prediction market platform for small, trusted communities

Five teams will also continue to a separate People's Choice competition later this month, where the Movement community will vote for their favorite application for additional prizes.

Winners receive ongoing support from Movement's developer relations team and ecosystem partners to ship to mainnet. A Twitter livestream will be held February 9, 2025, featuring demos and technical discussions with the Hackathon teams.

For more information about Movement's M1 Mainnet, visit MovementNetwork.xyz and follow @Movement_xyz on Twitter.

ABOUT MOVE INDUSTRIES
Move Industries is building a community-first Move-based blockchain ecosystem. Led by a team of industry veterans, Move Industries maintains a dual focus on technology and community. The organization intends to return to crypto's radical roots: giving financial power and opportunity back to the people.

Media Contact: carmen.pearson@moveindustries.xyz