As the curtain falls on Consensus Hong Kong 2026, the focus has shifted from corporate boardrooms to the show floor. While institutional chatter dominated the main stages, nearly 1,000 developers spent the week in the trenches of the EasyA x Consensus Hackathon, signaling a definitive turning point in the industry: “The Year of the Application Layer.”
The competition, which has become a staple of Consensus of CoinDesk’s flagship events, saw over 30 projects on demo day. The quality of the builds, greatly aided by generative AI, clearly showed that the barrier between a “proof of concept” and a “market-ready product” has effectively been removed.
A rising bar: From infrastructure to intent
The development of the developer talent at Consensus has grown gradually. In years past, hackathon submissions were often deeply technical, building faster consensus mechanisms or niche scaling solutions that remained out of reach for the average user.
This year, however, the bar has been set to a new level. Developers have evolved into product builders and have shifted their focus from the backend to the user.
“The big thing we’ve seen right now is that developers are actually building things that real people can actually use,” said Phil Kwok, co-founder of EasyA. “We’ve seen a big rise in the application layer. This is the year of the horse in Asia, but it’s the year of the application layer in blockchain.”
This shift toward User Experience (UX) was evident in the sophisticated use of “passkeys,” technologies from iOS and Android that allow users to log into Web3 apps without the friction of 24-word seed phrases, Kwok said. By removing these traditional “clicks” and barriers, developers are finally creating products that feel like the apps people use every day.
The winner’s circle
The judges awarded top honors to projects that prioritized automation, security and risk management, three pillars critical to the next wave of retail adoption, Kwok explained.
First Place: FoundrAI ($2,500)
In first place was FoundrAI, an autonomous AI agent designed to act as a “startup in a box.” The platform doesn’t just launch tokens; it manages the entire lifecycle of a project, including hiring human developers to build out the product. It represents a provocative look at the future of decentralized labor.
Runner Up: SentinelFi ($1,750)
SentinelFi solves the industry’s persistent “rug-pull” problem and delivers real-time security results to crypto traders. By performing six-category on-chain analysis, the tool helps users sniff out scam tokens before committing capital – a critical tool when token launch volume explodes.
Third Place: PumpStop ($1,000)
PumpStop rounded out the top three with a non-custodial layer focused on risk mitigation. Using instant execution on the state channel, it allows traders to set stop-loss orders with on-chain proofs, bringing professional-grade trading tools to a decentralized environment without sacrificing custody.
The ‘show floor’ evolution
The growth of the hackathon reflects a broader shift in consensus ethos. Once a strictly corporate affair, the event has increasingly integrated “builder” culture into its DNA. Dom Kwok, co-founder of EasyA, noted that the hackathon has moved from side rooms to the center of the show floor.
“Typically, every hackathon that we host gets bigger and bigger,” Dom said. “It’s taking up more and more of the conference floor every year. We had people fly in from San Diego just to see what was being built.”
Despite the “depressing” macro environment often reflected in token prices, sentiment on the ground in Hong Kong remained stubbornly bullish. Organizers pointed out that while interest rates and Fed policy drive the charts, the builders are focused on the 93% of the world that does not yet own crypto. The path to the next billion users, it seems, is being paved by developers finally realizing that ease of use is the ultimate feature, Dom said.
Phil and Dom said they can’t wait for Consensus Miami 2026 to see how much more the bar is raised and how many more developers participate with surprisingly good new ideas.
