Hosted by GovTech Bhutan, with the support of the Ethereum Foundation.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead, the line that opened the closing ceremony
A week of building on Bhutan's national rails
Over seven days in Thimphu, around fifty Bhutanese participants moved from a three-week online foundation into a hands-on residency and a three-day hackathon. They learned to build on Ethereum and on Bhutan's National Digital Identity, then turned real problem statements from government agencies into working prototypes. Eleven teams reached demo day, each with a public submission and a live build. Most had never deployed on a blockchain before the week began.
The program paired the Ethereum Foundation's mentors and the Bhutan GovTech team around a simple aim: give a new generation of builders the tools, the context, and the confidence to build public-service infrastructure their country can use.
A participant takes the mic.
~50
Participants
11
Teams to demo day
5
Public-service tracks
7
Days onsite
3 wks
Online pre-program
20+
Speakers & mentors
3
Judges, scored /300
1st
Hackathon to judge with AI sims
The 2026 cohort. Thimphu, May. Photography: Tshewang Tobgay.
The five problem tracks
Hover over a track, or tap it, to read the full problem statement the agencies issued.
1
Legal Age & Identity
Age and identity verification, to monitor alcohol purchase by minors.
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Full problem statement
Alcohol consumption among youth is emerging as a growing public health concern in many parts of the world, including Bhutan. In Bhutan, national-level research indicates that alcohol use is widespread, with approximately 30.6% of adults reporting current alcohol use, and alcohol-related harm ranked among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in health facilities. More concerningly, adolescent exposure is also notable. A school-based study reported that around 24% of Bhutanese students below 18 years of age were current alcohol users, highlighting early initiation of drinking behaviour among youth.
At the same time, Bhutan enforces a legal minimum drinking age of 18 years, and vendors are required to verify age before selling alcohol. However, in practice, enforcement of age verification remains inconsistent, particularly in small retail shops, bars, and informal sales environments. This creates gaps where underage individuals may still be able to purchase alcohol due to weak identity checks, lack of reliable verification systems, or reliance on subjective judgment by shopkeepers.
Despite existing regulations, how might Bhutan ensure effective, reliable, and scalable verification of legal drinking age at the point of alcohol sale, while reducing underage access to alcohol and supporting shopkeepers in compliance?
2
Document Signing
Tamper-proof document signing and verification.
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Full problem statement
In many organizations today, getting a document signed especially in a specific order is a slow, insecure, and hard-to-verify process. Traditional signature solutions or thumb stamp marks often rely on manual or wet-ink signatures which can be forged, tampered with, or misused or take a long time to obtain. Worse, when disputes arise months or years later, proving that a document is authentic and unaltered is often difficult especially if signatures aren't traceably bound to real identities. Moreover, it is difficult to make references for the legacy documents if necessary.
At the same time, modern signature workflows must satisfy two critical needs:
Human-readable signature. Signers and recipients expect to see a clear, visual signature like a "wet-ink" mark placed visibly on the document.
Cryptographic non-repudiation. Behind the scenes, every signature must also carry cryptographic proof, ensuring respective signers or an authorized person can verify who signed, in what order, and whether the file has been changed.
3
Academic Credentials
Bhutan's academic credential verification and equivalency process, especially for students studying in India and other countries abroad.
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Full problem statement
The current system for verifying and assessing international academic qualifications in Bhutan is characterized by inefficiencies, inconsistencies, and limited transparency, which collectively hinder effective recruitment processes. At present, the verification of credentials relies heavily on manual review, making the process time-consuming and prone to delays. This not only slows down decision-making but also places a significant administrative burden on reviewing authorities.
Furthermore, the absence of standardized guidelines often leads to inconsistent equivalency decisions. Different reviewers may interpret the same qualifications in varying ways, resulting in disparities that raise concerns about fairness and credibility. Compounding this issue is the growing challenge of verifying the authenticity of academic credentials, as there is no robust mechanism to directly validate documents with issuing institutions, increasing the risk of fraudulent or altered submissions.
The problem is further exacerbated by the lack of a centralized data system that consolidates information on recognized international institutions, accreditation bodies, and past equivalency decisions. Without such a unified platform, decision-making becomes fragmented and repetitive, reducing both efficiency and institutional memory. In addition, the current system offers limited transparency to applicants, who often receive little or no explanation regarding the acceptance or rejection of their qualifications, or the criteria used in determining equivalency.
Given these challenges, there is a critical need to rethink and modernize the system. This raises an important question: how might we design an intelligent, scalable, and blockchain-enabled solution that can automate the verification, interpretation, and conversion of international academic credentials into Bhutanese equivalency standards, while ensuring fairness, accuracy, transparency, and efficiency in the overall recruitment process?
4
Public Procurement
Transparency, audit trails, and on-chain verification for government asset inventory management and/or public procurement.
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Full problem statement
Every year, government agencies procure and manage thousands of assets, from IT equipment to infrastructure components, recorded in centralized database systems. On paper, these systems are structured and efficient. In practice, they tell a different story.
Records can be edited, overwritten, or deleted. Changes are not always visible, and audit trails are often incomplete or difficult to verify. When an asset goes missing, is reassigned, or its value changes, tracing the "true history" becomes a manual and time-consuming exercise. Procurement officers rely on data they cannot fully validate, auditors spend weeks reconciling inconsistencies, and decision-makers operate with limited confidence in the numbers presented to them.
As procurement cycles grow more complex and involve multiple agencies, the gaps widen, creating opportunities for errors, inefficiencies, and in worst cases, misuse of public resources. The system functions, but it does not inspire trust.
How might we transform government asset inventory and public procurement systems, currently reliant on mutable RDBMS records without a verifiable ledger, into a transparent, tamper-resistant, and trustworthy process using blockchain and smart contracts, so that procurement officers, auditors, and oversight bodies can reliably track, verify, and manage assets across their entire lifecycle?
5
Open Track
Any citizen-centred service built on the national identity (NDI) stack.
From students to entrepreneurs
The shift we watched across the week was from studentship to entrepreneurship. Participants arrived as learners and left taking ownership of their ideas: choosing a real problem, building a working answer, and standing up to defend it. The program was designed for that move — the fourth day was framed explicitly as stepping beyond the student toward the builder. Two mechanics helped carry it. The Takin Coin leaderboard, designed by the mentors, turned taking part into a game and rewarded initiative; Pitch the Change, a keynote and workshop on communication and storytelling, gave repeated low-stakes practice at presenting an idea and explaining why it mattered.
Takin Coin — a classroom token in the spirit of Bhutan, with a leaderboard of merit. takin-coin.vercel.app
That ownership showed up in the builds. Pick Me, a small tool to fairly choose who answers next, was built by one participant, reportedly while riding the bus home one night, after he noticed the leaderboard couldn't reliably tell who had raised a hand first. It earned him an individual DevCon ticket for the Mumbai 2026 edition.
What the week demonstrated
The depth of local talent. A largely first-time cohort went from little blockchain experience to eleven working prototypes in seven days.
How much upskilling is possible in a single week. With the right scaffolding, a cohort new to blockchain, AI, and Bhutan's National Digital Identity (NDI) can reach working public-service prototypes in seven days.
How AI is changing the work. AI-assisted prompting is reshaping how a hackathon like this is prepared and delivered, and how this next generation of developers builds.
NDI's versatility. The builds put Bhutan's National Digital Identity (NDI) to work across a wide range of public-service domains: document signing, academic credentials, procurement, age and identity verification, voting, and property records.
A growing community of builders. The program added to a base of Bhutanese developers who can build on the country's own digital rails, and who are keen to keep going.
Bhutan's place in the field. As the first country to anchor its citizens' identities on Ethereum, Bhutan again showed its readiness to lead in digital public infrastructure, including a first-of-its-kind experiment in AI-assisted, values-based judging.
The value of partnership. The Ethereum Foundation's mentors and the GovTech team worked side by side, a collaboration that accelerated what a young ecosystem could achieve in a week.
Thimphu, where the program was held.
The week, day by day
Seven days onsite: a four-day residency to build skills and context, then a three-day hackathon.
Pre-program. A three-week online foundation in Ethereum fundamentals, Solidity, security, and cryptography.
Residency · Days 1–4
Day
Focus
What happened
Day 1 11 May
Introductions & Ethereum basics
GovTech opening, the Digital Service Transformation strategy, the EF mentor panel, first wallets, and Speedrun Ethereum.
Day 2 12 May
Problem landscape & NDI
Bhutan NDI initiatives, the national blockchain strategy, the agency problem-statement panel, and the NDI technical stack.
Day 3 13 May
AI for solution building
Building with AI on Ethereum, the Bhutan AI strategy, a vibe-coding workshop, and an introduction to Simocracy.
Day 4 14 May
Hackathon prep
The multisig build challenge, mentor advice on running a hackathon, Sarang's NDI integration workshop, rules and team readiness.
The residency in session.
Hackathon · Days 5–7
Day
Focus
What happened
Day 5 15 May
Kickoff & build
Aya Miyaguchi's keynote, the 2025 alumni panel, team setup, the first build blocks, a communications workshop, and Tim Bansemer's document-verification session.
Day 6 16 May
Build & unblock
Mentor standups, targeted technical sessions, pitch finalisation, a wellbeing session, and an overnight open hack.
Day 7 17 May
Demo day
Mock demos, the Simocracy presentation, team presentations to the judges, the expo hour, awards, and closing remarks from the Cabinet Secretary.
Heads down during the build.Presenting on demo day.
Everyone who spoke or led a session
Name
Role
Session
Kuenga Zam
Director, Dept. of Digital Transformation, GovTech
Opening ceremony
Sangay Pelzang
GovTech Bhutan
Digital Service Transformation strategy
Shiv Bhonde
Mentor, Ethereum Foundation
Mentor panel · Why Ethereum · AI for Ethereum · judging
Mridul
Mentor, Ethereum Foundation
Mentor panel · online curriculum
Sarang Parikh
Mentor, Ethereum Foundation
Mentor panel · NDI integration workshop & scaffold
Program design · facilitation · communications workshop
2025 alumni
Previous cohort
Alumni panel
Tshoki Lhamo · Kinley Phuntsho
GovTech Bhutan
Session hosting & production
Ngawang Sherpa · Sithar Norbu
Chief DSDD · PSDD
Demo-day judges
Dasho Kesang Deki
Cabinet Secretary
Closing remarks
The 2025 alumni panel shared lessons with this year's cohort.
Key sessions, in brief
The opportunity for Bhutan
Aya Miyaguchi, President, Ethereum Foundation — hackathon keynote
A framing of why this moment matters. Ethereum exists to let people coordinate without surrendering control, protected by what the Foundation calls CROPS: censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. Bhutan, as the first country in the world to anchor its citizens' national identities on Ethereum, is arriving ahead of the mistakes others are now trying to undo. The challenge to the room: you are building the bones of how a country works.
Digital Service Transformation strategy
Sangay Pelzang, GovTech Bhutan
Bhutan's shift from a reactive, ticket-based model of ICT delivery — where agencies request systems one at a time — to a proactive, capability-driven approach. Using a Business Reference Model to find and consolidate shared functions across government, the strategy aims to replace isolated requests with reusable capability strategies by FY 2027–28.
Introduction to Bhutan NDI
Pallavi Sharma, COO, Bhutan NDI
Bhutan's National Digital Identity is a self-sovereign, biometrics-enabled wallet: a citizen's data lives on their own device, not in a central cloud, and they share only what a given transaction needs, using selective disclosure and zero-knowledge proofs. Built on Ethereum DIDs, NDI has already issued 480,000+ foundational IDs and integrated 70+ government services across travel, education, telecom, banking, and more.
The NDI technical stack
Tshendu Gyeltshen, Senior Backend Developer
The architecture beneath NDI: decentralised identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials aligned to open W3C standards, secure peer-to-peer communication over DIDComm and Hyperledger Aries, and passwordless authentication. A walk through the issuance and verification flow that participants would build against.
NDI integration workshop & scaffold
Sarang Parikh, Mentor, Ethereum Foundation
A deep, practical tutorial that turned NDI into something teams could build on inside the week. It covered the protocol, the cloud APIs, and four end-to-end integrations: age verification, passwordless login, credential verification, and credential issuance. It shipped with a companion AI-coding skill so teams' assistants could implement NDI from plain-language prompts. This scaffold was the decisive technical artifact of the hackathon.
Beyond blockchain: tamper-proof document signing
Tim Bansemer, CEO & Founder, inblock.io
Where blockchains fall short for everyday documents — payroll, contracts, medical and legal records that need privacy, offline verifiability, and low cost — and how the open Aqua protocol fills that gap for trustworthy document signing without putting private data on a public ledger.
Communications & pitching workshop
Kim Buisson, Facilitator
How to explain a technical idea and why it matters: framing the problem, telling the story of the build, and presenting with confidence. Repeated practice on the mic, well before demo day, so teams could stand up and defend their work.
Also delivered during the week, and held as part of the record: Blockchain Strategy for Bhutan (Sonam Tshering), the Bhutan AI Strategy (Chief, DSAI), the Why Ethereum and Building with AI on Ethereum mentor sessions, the multisig build challenge, and the 2025 alumni panel.
Guests at demo day
Leaders from the government and from Bhutan's technology and startup community joined the closing ceremony and demo day.
Name
Organisation
Role
Dasho Kesang Deki
Royal Government of Bhutan
Cabinet Secretary · closing remarks
Tshering
Government Technology Agency
Chief Program Officer
Ngawang Sherpa
GovTech Agency
Chief, Digital Service Development Division · judge
Final judging order. Every team has a public SpeedRunEthereum submission; decks, demos, and code are linked where provided.
Each team was scored out of 100 by three judges — an Ethereum Foundation mentor and two senior GovTech representatives — on utility for public services, practicality, execution, future vision, UI / UX, originality, ambition, and demo quality, consolidated to a score out of 300.
One of the eleven teams.
01BondChain· 237 / 300
An NDI-gated platform for document signing, verification, and service requests. It binds a Bhutan NDI identity to a wallet, stores documents on IPFS, signs their hashes, and records audit events on Ethereum, with a public verification route.
A platform for issuing, managing, bulk-generating, and publicly verifying academic certificates, with separate student and administrator flows and Bhutan NDI sign-in.
A document signing and verification app powered by Bhutan NDI and Ethereum, using NDI-backed identity and on-chain records to make signatures easy to verify.
A digital credential platform for secure issuance, verification, and sharing of academic and professional credentials, using decentralised identity, QR-based verification, and privacy-controlled sharing.
An NDI-powered age and alcohol-compliance platform. Stores register with NDI-verified licence proofs, customer age is checked at point of sale, and underage or expired-licence transactions are blocked, with dashboards for operations and compliance.
An SDK that verifies academic credentials through NDI and converts different grading systems into a standardised score, to help employers and institutions trust foreign results.
A blockchain procurement platform with NDI verification, sealed commit-reveal bidding, agency sign-off, and public audit trails across the full tender lifecycle.
A gasless audit and verification layer for e-GP procurement, tying actions to NDI identity, role mapping, proposal encryption, and on-chain proof events, without exposing confidential bids.
Rada Dorji · Phurpa Dorji · Nima Dorji · Chencho Wangdi · Kuenzang Wangchuk
A hybrid voting platform supporting online and in-person voting. Voters verify with CID and national digital identity, with double-voting prevention and a separation of identity from the vote.
A procurement system pairing NDI authentication with Ethereum smart contracts, with role-based portals, sealed bid and tender hashes, and auditor timelines to detect tampering.
A property marketplace for NDI-verified users, supporting document submission, admin review, fractional share minting, resale listings, and on-chain lease records.
For the first time, a hackathon was judged not only by people but by AI "sims" trained on those people's values. The idea began in Bhutan. David Dao's team won last year's hackathon with DeepGov Bhutan, and Simocracy is the evolution of that work. It has since travelled, with the German FDP using the same broad-listening approach to help draft their party program, but its root is Bhutanese. David presented it to the residency participants, then to the judges and the Cabinet Secretary on demo day. Each sim is a digital twin of a person's judgment. Each judge sat for a values interview built around 28 questions, and from it the platform trained a sim that could read proposals and decide, in that judge's voice, which deserved support. This was done not as a replacement to human judging, but as an added evaluation process.
What worked well
It ran smoothly. Across seven intensive days, organisers noted close to zero logistical hiccups, with the venue, food, and breaks centralised and comfortable enough to keep the schedule flexible.
The government was in the room. GovTech and the agencies were closely involved in scoping the problem statements and speaking to them, which kept the builds anchored in real public-service needs.
The judges were invested. They backed the participants' success, learned NDI on the fly, and helped fast-track the cohort on AI, blockchain, hackathon dynamics, pitching, and NDI in a very short window.
The program could flex. A close working relationship with the local team meant the curriculum could be adjusted each evening to meet the room where it was.
AI access and Takin Coin landed. Providing AI subscriptions was a clear win, and the Takin Coin challenge was praised by every participant.
What we'd carry into the next one
A fuller set of learnings from the week, and recommendations for running future editions. Many of these belong to the GovTech team to carry forward, so each round can run more on its own.
Decide what kind of hackathon it is. A community-learning event and an innovation event are different, and they call for different cohorts, timelines, and measures of success. Choose the purpose first, then design everything around it.
Consider two tiers. A learning track and a delivery track let beginners and experienced builders each work at the right level.
Recruit and get to know the cohort early. You can't tailor a program to people you haven't met, and recruitment ran to the last moment this time. Make recruiting an ongoing effort rather than a scramble a month out, and work closely with universities, since most participants come from them. Knowing who is coming, and what they can already do, shapes the curriculum and what you can ask them to build.
Design the hackathon early, and own the stack. Lock the design well ahead, and build a reusable hackathon stack — agendas, modules, the judging rubric, skills docs, demo scripts — that belongs to the GovTech team. That is what turns this into a repeatable program the team can run with less outside support each time.
Define the problem statements first. They are the engine of the week. Written so teams can build against them and tied to NDI, well before recruiting begins.
Design the incentives early. Set the prize pool and, just as importantly, the non-monetary rewards before the event. What moved participants most was access and exposure — the DevCon tickets, travel, mentorship, and continued funding — more than the cash. Announce prizes early so teams aim higher, and consider prizes per track so they don't all chase the easiest problem.
Provision AI access in advance. AI tooling is what let a new cohort build real prototypes. Have the subscriptions and accounts ready on day one.
Treat the NDI scaffold as the model. Sarang's integration guide made NDI buildable inside a week. Keep and extend it as the canonical reference.
Build skills beyond code. AI fluency, NDI literacy, and the ability to pitch were the most transferable things participants gained. Keep teaching them.
Engage year-round. Short, regular hackathons between flagship events keep the community active and skills warm, and build toward running these locally.
Keep tabs on this cohort. Recruitment was the hard part this time, yet these participants showed up and threw themselves in. Track them, stay in touch, and keep upskilling them. Retaining builders who already enjoyed the experience is far easier than recruiting new ones each round, and it turns a one-off event into a growing community.
Bring government officials along too. A dedicated session or track for officials deepens their own understanding of NDI and what is being built. They were engaged here and would benefit from a learning path of their own.
Build on the community workspace. GovTech is already working toward a shared common space; that, with year-round activity, is how a one-off event becomes a standing community of builders.
Open a nationwide AI conversation. The biggest opportunity that surfaced is larger than blockchain: how Bhutan builds AI capability across the public sector. It is worth its own conversation.
What the survey told us
Forty-three participants completed the post-program survey. The signal is clear, and worth carrying into the next edition.
4.5/5
Overall experience
56%
First-ever hackathon
63%
New to building on a blockchain
70%
Said the length was right
How they rated it, out of 5
Overall experience4.5
Onsite week4.3
Online pre-program3.6
Who was in the room
First hackathon56%
New to blockchain63%
Had used AI before91%
What they said they learned
NDI integrationBlockchain fundamentalsAI-assisted codingSmart contractsPitchingDeploying dAppsSpeedrun / Scaffold-ETHGitHubMultisigWorking as a team
Sized by how often each came up across the open responses. For most, this was their first time building a real application on a blockchain.
Favourite sessions
NDI workshops
AI / vibe coding
Pitching
Simocracy talk
Mindfulness
What would help them continue
Funding
AI access
Mentorship
Favourite-session and continuation bars show relative frequency across the open responses, not exact counts.
Thirty of the forty-three wrote that they want to take their projects forward. The clearest thing to strengthen is the online pre-program, the weakest-rated piece, along with more time for teams to present and clearer support for first-time builders.
Demo day in Thimphu.
About
This program was co-curated and facilitated by Kim Buisson in collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation and the Bhutan GovTech team.
