Nigeria’s Greenafrica Claims $100k Top Prize as Hedera Hackathon Draws 45,000 Participants

The Hashgraph Association and Exponential Science have concluded a hackathon that attracted over 45,000 participants and generated more than 1,300 project submissions.

Key Takeaways:

The competition resulted in more than 1,300 project submissions, all utilizing Hedera’s distributed ledger technology to address infrastructure challenges in emerging markets. The $1 million prize pool was distributed across four thematic tracks: on-chain finance and real-world assets; distributed ledger technology (DLT) for operations; immersive experiences; and AI and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN).

Greenafrica, a Nigeria-based environmental verification platform, took the top “cross-track champion” prize of $100,000. The platform enables transparent tracking of sustainability initiatives.

“The Hedera Africa Hackathon reached historic heights, scaling the depths of talent and ambition across the continent and beyond,” said Kamal Youssefi, president of The Hashgraph Association. “Hedera has a longstanding commitment to enabling global innovation and powering real utility.”

Other top winners included Egypt’s Carboni Renewable Energy Certificate Platform, which took second place overall, and Mexico’s Effisend X Africa, an AI-powered payment routing system, in third. Organizers noted that the 2025 submissions shifted toward pragmatic infrastructure, including systems for cross-network payments and secure medical record management.

“Any strong, innovative and responsible technical ecosystem begins with education,” said Paolo Tasca, executive chairman at Exponential Science. “We have seen that approach materialize at scale, with participants advancing from learning to the development of meaningful infrastructure.”