I wanted to give the community a straightforward update: I’ve decided to discontinue NimConnect. I received detailed feedback from the Cycle 1 judges, and there was a lot in it that I agree with. The onboarding needed work, error handling wasn’t good enough, and the app tried to do too many things at once instead of making identity and contacts the clear focus. The biggest point for me, though, was about reach: NimConnect only really creates value for people who already have a Nimiq address. For something built around identity and human-readable handles, that feels like a fundamental limitation. Ideally, it should help bring new people into the ecosystem, rather than only becoming useful once they’re already there. I could narrow NimConnect down to identity + contacts, improve the onboarding and fix the UX issues — and I think that would make it a much better product. But it wouldn't solve that underlying limitation. So rather than continuing to polish it, I’ve decided to stop development and retire NimConnect. I’ve also decided not to participate in the next competition cycle. That decision is separate from the NimConnect feedback. I appreciate the judges taking the time to give detailed feedback, and I’ll take those lessons with me into future projects. My concern is with the transparency of the competition itself. I think things like how projects are evaluated, how scoring works, and how the final results are determined should have been clear and transparent from the start — not something that needed to be addressed afterwards. For me, that wasn't handled the right way in Cycle 1, and because of that I don't feel comfortable participating in the next cycle. Thanks to everyone who tried NimConnect, claimed a handle, gave feedback, or joined the Sip & Ship calls. I learned a lot from building it, even if this is where the project ends.

If you've ever run, judged, or entered a hackathon or competition, you've probably seen the same problems: scoring lives in spreadsheets, judges can influence each other, results get finalized with little context, and participants often get no useful feedback on where they actually stood. I built OpenScore to fix that. OpenScore is a self-hosted platform for running judged competitions end to end: define a detailed rubric, import submissions from GitHub, assign judges, score independently, generate useful feedback, publish leaderboards and result breakdowns, and keep a full audit trail of how the final outcome was reached. What makes it different: - Independent judging — judges don't see each other's scores while evaluating. - Detailed rubric scoring — score individual sub-metrics, not just broad categories. - Useful feedback — comments, quick tags, and optional generated summaries. - Locked means locked — changes after finalization require a reason and are audited. - Configurable transparency — choose exactly what participants and the public can see. - GitHub snapshots — lock judging to the exact commit that was reviewed. - Verifiable results — assessment sets can be Merkle-rooted and committed to Nimiq. - Full audit history — overrides, role changes, snapshot changes, corrections, and publishing actions are traceable. The goal is also to make competitions more useful for builders. If you didn't win, you should still be able to understand where you lost points, what judges valued, and whether improving the same idea for another round actually makes sense. 🔗 Live demo: https://openscore.nimiqminiapps.com/c/miniappscycle1 💻 Source: https://github.com/NimMiniApps/OpenScore Would love feedback from anyone who's run or participated in hackathons, grant rounds, bounty programs, or other judged competitions.

NimConnect lets users link a readable @handle to their Nimiq address, so apps can show and accept names instead of long wallet addresses. Would you be open to integrating it into your Mini App? If you choose maybe or no, I’d really appreciate hearing why in the comments. It would help me understand what is missing, whether the integration is too much work, or whether NimConnect simply does not add enough value for your use case. The integration uses the @nimconnect/profile-client package, and I’m happy to help or implement it for you if the project is open source. https://nimconnect.nimiqminiapps.com

🥇 1st — Nimiq Space by Harley https://nimiqminiapps.com/apps/nimiq-space 🥈 2nd — NimJump by Emre Alt https://nimiqminiapps.com/apps/nimjump 🥉 3rd — NimQuest by mystiquemide https://nimiqminiapps.com/apps/nimquest Really impressive work from all three! 👏 I’ve featured the winners on the community-run Nimiq Mini Apps catalog, so they’re easy to find and try from the home board: 👉 https://nimiqminiapps.com You can read the official Cycle 1 winner announcement from Nimiq here: https://www.nimiq.com/blog/mini-apps-competition-cycle-1-winner-announcement Looking forward to seeing what everyone builds next!

Cycle 1 is officially in the books. 62 Mini Apps submitted, all of them scored by the Nimiq Community Council, and the results are final. 🥁 Drumroll please… 🥇 1st place: Nimiq Space by @Harley NSpace An open multiplayer world where wallet-signed players can see who is online right now, paint a persistent 500x500 collaborative floor, and build rooms that sync live for everyone in them. 🥈 2nd place: NimJump by @Emre Alt An arcade game built around a minimal client-authority architecture, where the server replays every run itself instead of trusting the score the client reports. 🥉 3rd place: NimQuest by @mystiquemide A learn-and-prove Mini App with server-graded quizzes, where a completion only counts once you sign a one-time message in Nimiq Pay. Congratulations to all three. Winners will be contacted directly to arrange payout. To everyone else who submitted, thank you. You shipped something real in four weeks and set the bar high for future cycles. Every app you built is yours under the MIT License, so keep going with it. 🗓️ Cycle 2 opens August 24. Same $17,000 USDT prize pool, four Sip & Ship calls, submissions close September 18 at 23:59 UTC. If your app did not place this time, you can refine it and submit it again. Full breakdown on all three winners: https://www.nimiq.com/blog/mini-apps-competition-cycle-1-winner-announcement