HackerNoon, the independent technology publishing platform, announced the launch of the Decentralize AI Hackathon, a global competition organized in partnership with Nosana, Arweave and MEXC to support developers and early-stage startups building the next generation of open AI infrastructure.
The hackathon will award participants and winners more than $50,000 in compute credits, storage credits, cash prizes and ecosystem rewards across two rounds. In addition, HackerNoon will transfer full ownership of the DecentralizeAI.tech domain and codebase to the hackathon’s overall grand prize winner.
The Decentralize AI Hackathon is designed to advance alternatives to centralized AI systems by encouraging builders to create open infrastructure that supports decentralized compute, user-owned data, and greater transparency in AI development.
Submissions may focus on decentralized GPU orchestration, permanent model and dataset storage,verifiable AI systems, open inference infrastructure, data sovereignty tooling, or related infrastructure for the decentralized AI ecosystem.
“AI is too important to become another monopolized or oligopolized layer of the internet,” said David Smooke, Founder & CEO of HackerNoon. “If the best of machine intelligence is black-boxed behind a few corporate APIs, rented from a few cloud giants, and trained on data that no one can inspect, then builders become tenants instead of owners. Decentralizing AI is not just a technical choice; it’s an economic directive if we want the next generation of projects to have a fair shot at sustainability.”
The hackathon welcomes both individual developers and early-stage startups. Participants may submit entirely new projects or extend existing work, and concept-stage submissions with clear technical direction are also eligible. Projects will be judged based on technical depth, originality and, where relevant, evidence that the project works.
Supporting the Open AI Infrastructure Stack
The Decentralize AI Hackathon is organized around several infrastructure themes, including decentralized compute, permanent storage, verifiable systems and open AI tooling.
Nosana will support the hackathon’s decentralized compute track by giving builders access to GPU infrastructure for AI projects. Participants can use Nosana to run and test compute-heavy AI applications, from AI agents and inference to rendering and model-serving workflows. Nosana is contributing $41,750 in compute credits, including $35,000 in participant credits for the first 500 qualifying participants and $6,750 in winner credits across 15 winners.
Arweave will support builders working on permanent AI storage, model provenance, reproducible systems and immutable datasets. Arweave is contributing 1,000 AR in ecosystem and storage credits, valued at approximately $2,500, as well as an additional 1,000 AR in cash prizes, valued at approximately $2,500, to be distributed across 15 winners throughout the two hackathon rounds.
“Permanent, decentralized storage is a foundational piece of an open AI future,” the Arweave team said. “AI systems need provenance and public records that cannot disappear. We’re glad to support builders thinking seriously about the long-term preservation of AI-related data.”
MEXC will contribute $5,000 in USDT and MX Token ecosystem rewards for standout projects and selected winners across both rounds.
“AI is reshaping how the world works, and decentralized AI ensures that transformation belongs to everyone,” said Vugar, CEO of MEXC. “MEXC is proud to support the builders at the frontier of this movement.”
HackerNoon will also support participants through its publishing platform and the DecentralizeAI.tech project submission flow. The platform includes a specialized writing experience that helps builders turn raw notes, GitHub repositories and architecture sketches into long-form technical posts using custom-engineered prompts and open-source models, including Llama 3, Mixtral and Stable Diffusion.
Prize Pool
The Decentralize AI Hackathon prize pool includes:
- Nosana Compute Credits – $41,750
- Arweave Storage Credits – $2,500
- AR Cash Prizes – $2,500
- MEXC MX Token/USDT Rewards – $5,000
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- Total Prize Pool – $51,750+
The overall grand prize winner will also receive full ownership of the DecentralizeAI.tech platform, including its domain and codebase.
How to Participate
Developers and early-stage startups can participate by submitting a proposal, technical idea, architecture breakdown or project through DecentralizeAI.tech. Participants are encouraged to document their work by publishing on HackerNoon as they build.
Eligible participants may claim Nosana compute credits and Arweave storage credits to support their projects. Participants may either publish a blog or idea first and then claim credits, or claim compute credits first and document their build progress afterward.
Submissions should use the official hackathon tags #decentralize-ai and #decentralize-ai-hackathon, along with the relevant sponsor or topic tags.
For more information and to enter the hackathon, visit DecentralizeAI.tech.
Media Contact
For media inquiries, interviews, or collaboration opportunities, please contact:
Sheharyar Khan,
sheharyar@hackernoon.com
About HackerNoon
How hackers start their afternoons. HackerNoon is built for technologists to read, write, and publish. We are an open and international community of 50k+ contributing writers publishing stories and expertise for 4M+ curious and insightful monthly readers. Founded in 2016, HackerNoon is an independent technology publishing platform run by David Smooke and Linh Dao Smooke. Start blogging about technology today.
About Nosana
Nosana is a GPU compute marketplace for AI and high-performance workloads. It gives developers, startups, and enterprises access to on-demand GPU infrastructure through a global network of providers, helping reduce costs and scale faster without traditional cloud bottlenecks. From inference and training to rendering and large-scale compute tasks, Nosana makes powerful infrastructure more accessible, flexible, and efficient. Learn more at https://nosana.com
About Arweave
Meet Arweave: permanent information storage. The Arweave network is like Bitcoin, but for data: A permanent and decentralized web inside an open ledger. Permanent storage has many applications: from the preservation of humanity’s most important data, to the hosting of truly decentralized and provably neutral web apps.
About MEXC
Founded in 2018, MEXC is a global cryptocurrency exchange built as your 0-fee gateway to infinite opportunities. We remove barriers to participation by offering 0 trading fees, deep liquidity, and one of the broadest selections of digital assets in the market. As a global trading hub, MEXC connects users to emerging opportunities across regions, chains, and market cycles — enabling them to discover earlier, act faster, and trade freely.