Imperial AI Agent Hackathon: Build the Agent Economy

Exclusively for Imperial AI Agent Hackathon

The UK AI Agent Hackathon EP5 × Conduct is one of the largest university-led AI agent hackathons in Europe, bringing together builders, researchers, founders, and AI enthusiasts to create the next generation of autonomous agents.

​Hosted by Imperial AI Society, Imperial Blockchain & FinTech Society, and UK AI Agents Lab, the hackathon features challenges from leading AI companies, mentorship from industry experts, and opportunities to showcase projects to top VCs and ecosystem partners.

Learn more: https://luma.com/knoymap5?tk=ANpUn2

Solana x CoralOS Track

The theme is simple and wide open: agents that earn.

Build the thing they buy, and how they compete for it.

Think of it as the plumbing: coordination, LLM bidding, trustless settlement. These are all done and proven on devnet, ready for you build on top.

An example is an LLM seller agent competing for a buyer's business; the winner is paid trustlessly through a Solana escrow, funds released on delivery, refunded if the seller no-shows. The customer is software: it reasons about price, bids at machine speed, settles on-chain, no human in the loop.

Starter kit: github.com/trilltino/solana_coralOS
devnet-ready, pure TypeScript. Fork one function to sell a service for SOL. npm run dev and you're live.

Eight Layers, All Yours to Change

• Frontend : Vite + React dashboard rendering the live auction (bids, winner's reasoning, settlement links). Forkable, e2e-tested.

• The service : deliverService() is the body of a paid endpoint. Return a string; it's sold automatically. The main fork.

• The seller persona : cost floor, inventory, LLM bidding strategy. Discounter, premium specialist, surge-pricer — all config, no code.

• The buyer : an LLM picking best value, not just cheapest, inside a code-enforced budget. Change what it wants and how it judges.

• Solana Pay + escrow : a unique reference binds the deal; pays on release, refunds after a deadline. Set the price, tier it, swap SOL for USDC.

• New agents : drop one in and a pair becomes a graph: an arbiter, a reseller, an oracle paid to verify another's work.

• The runtime : CoralOS client, Solana Pay, provider-modular LLM shim + the market protocol. Import them, write behavior.

• The contract : the escrow program (the only Rust). The settlement spine, not an afterthought.

Why Solana + CoralOS

1. Machine-speed settlement: agents bid and clear faster than any human market

2. Trustless escrow by default: no counterparty risk, no rake, funds locked until delivery

3. Composable by design: every new agent turns a pair into a graph

4. Proven plumbing: coordination, bidding, and settlement already live on devnet

Prize Breakdown (Total: $5,000)

1st: $3,000

2nd - 5th: $500

Judging Criteria

• Technology (40%): effective use of the CoralOS runtime, market protocol, and escrow contract; working devnet demo; quality of architecture and contract design.

• Impact (30%): a service worth buying; clear market and monetization; settlement that holds up under dispute / no-show.

• Creativity & UX (30%): novel agents, personas, or mechanisms; smooth experience watching agents transact; clarity of how the system works.

Submission Requirements

• Working demo: a fork that runs end-to-end on devnet (WANT → BID → AWARD → DEPOSITED → DELIVERED → RELEASED). One command a judge can run, plus a live Explorer link proving settlement.

• GitHub repo: public. No keys committed; .env local only.

• Pitch deck (5 slides): prove an agent does something useful and gets paid on-chain. Every slide serves that:

• Demo video (3 min): Problem → Solution → Demo → Team.

Within your pitch deck and demo video, make sure you mention:

• The customer: agent or human? Why now?

• What it sells: your deliverService, in one line.

• Why they pay: the value, and the price.

• The economy: one seller, a broker, a marketplace? A graph of agents.

• Proof : payment settling live, Explorer link, data delivered. This slide wins.

• Lead with the settlement. Name the moment the agent decides to pay. Don't pitch the plumbing. the rails aren't the story.

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