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  •   over 1 year ago

Someone is paying for votes?

Public voting in these hackathons just leads to unfair outcomes. Some teams participate in numerous hackathons as a primary income source and have dedicated Discord communities that rally for votes. I have seen evidence of previous hackathon winners also using multiple accounts, which trace back to a single person, to manipulate votes.

I just saw an entry openly purchasing votes on Twitter, which has been highly effective for them. The financial incentives for this is significant. I believe the judges are likely aware of the financial incentives for voting manipulation, given their experience in organizing hackathons. Link here: https://x.com/techguyk/status/1818915581325685152

I wanted to bring this to your attention because public voting tends to be extremely biased, with most votes coming from participants family and friends, as well as paid votes in some instances or private discord servers. This undermines the fairness of the competition. Also teams compared to solo entires likely have a huge advantage for accumulating votes. I ain't sure what public voting is really for but I do hope it is not the deciding factor for anyone.

Thanks :)

  • 5 comments

  •   •   over 1 year ago

    I was wondering the same thing myself... Asking people to vote on your socials if they like the project (or they you want to support you irrelevant of the project quality) somehow seems OK. But the moment I've seen huge amount of votes and comments on not so impressive projects I figured there's no way to fight bot farms.

    Same as OP, I am also hoping the public voting won't have a big impact on the final vote. Or if there's a separate Popular Choice award winner track (as indicated in the official announcement here: https://theta2024.devpost.com/updates/31007-public-voting-is-now-open) it would've been nice knowing the reward in advance, so we all know how much effort to put into promotion of our project.

    Looking forward to the judging end! :) And good luck to everyone! ^^

  • Manager   •   over 1 year ago

    There isn't anything in our rules that explicitly forbids this, though maybe that should be added in the future. But we appreciate you bringing it to our attention, and it highlights why we take the public vote with a grain of salt. And in this case will for sure not consider it for these projects engaging in this activity of course. But generally we always assume if there is an outlier in the public vote to disregard that data point because even if they didn't buy votes, it means they got their community to swarm the vote, and we aren't just awarding prizes to whichever team has the biggest twitter following. I would not expect any material impact on judging for prizes, it's just a feature that DevPost has that many people in enjoy paticipating in. Also, that part about a Popular Chocie winner is standard text that comes from DevPost, it is not meant to imply that there is an actual award or prize coming from Theta Labs for the winner of the popular vote (which is often botted as you said). I will see if that text can be edited or removed.

  •   •   over 1 year ago

    Don’t worry, we understand that public votes aren’t the final deciders, but they do provide visibility. We're not paying for votes; rather, we're rewarding our holders for taking the time to vote. This is one of the advantages of having a functional project with real features, not just promises.

    Our project already boasts a fully functional ecosystem on the mainnet. The voting incentive is merely a marketing strategy to generate interest and activity within our market and the broader Theta ecosystem.

    By holding DOGZ, you can participate in our existing games for free. Our participants are from our own community; we’re not drawing in outsiders. Despite having a much smaller community compared to other projects, our engagement is genuine and focused.

  • Manager   •   over 1 year ago

    By the way, to clarify when I say it's not in our rules, I meant the Theta Hackathon rules. Compensating for votes is explictly banned in DevPost's site-wide rules, so it won't be allowed in our hackathon either.

  •   •   over 1 year ago

    Thanks for clarifications, they are much appreciated. It's nice to know public voting and exploiting active product community for votes won't affect the hackathon result.

    @TechGuy K - that's a very good marketing strategy to get the community engaged! Best of luck both with the project and in the hackathon! :)

    The results are closer! :D Aaaaaaa.... Can't wait! ^^

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