We're doubling down on what matters! From the Decentralize AI Hackathon to a massive tech category streamline, a brand-new "Published Recently" homepage section, refreshed partner portals, and our newly released Pixel Icon Library Figma plugin, there’s a lot to explore. Whether you’re a writer, reader, or tech enthusiast, here’s everything new across our platform.

Compete for Over $51K in the Decentralize AI Hackathon by HackerNoon, Nosana, Arweave, and MEXC

AI is here to stay. There’s no debating that.

The only problem is that power has once again concentrated itself in the hands of a few dominant players: centralized systems that ingest your data voraciously, train models behind closed doors, and generate billions in value from ecosystems you neither control nor meaningfully benefit from.

The only AI future that benefits everyone equitably (and not just another generation of Big Tech monopolies) is one where builders can own their infrastructure, users can control their data, and intelligence is truly transparent.

But, this future will never come unless we build it.

And that’s why, alongside Arweave, Nosana, and MEXC, we’re pleased to launch the Decentralize AI Hackathon: a global competition for developers and early-stage startups building the future of open AI infrastructure.

Participants will compete for over $51,750 in compute credits, storage credits, and cash rewards across two rounds. And in an unprecedented move, HackerNoon will transfer full ownership of the DecentralizeAI.tech domain and codebase to the hackathon’s grand prize winner.

What We Want to See from Participants

Strong submissions should tackle AT LEAST ONE layer of what’s currently missing from open AI infrastructure, including:

• Decentralized GPU orchestration: scheduling and managing compute across distributed nodes
• Permanent model storage: storing datasets, model weights, or inference logs using decentralized storage infrastructure like Arweave
• Verifiable AI systems: transparency, provenance, and reproducibility in training or deployment
• Open inference infrastructure: decentralized or censorship-resistant AI serving
• Data sovereignty tooling: giving users and builders greater ownership over their own datasets
• and more!

You do not need a finished product to participate. Strong concept-stage submissions with clear technical direction, practical infrastructure ideas, and a compelling vision are also welcome. Projects will be judged based on technical depth, originality, and, only where relevant, proof that they work.

How to Enter the Decentralize AI Hackathon

• Option 1: Generate a Blog on decentralizeai.tech
• Option 2: Write on HackerNoon Directly and select AT LEAST ONE sponsored tag from the list here to qualify for sponsor prizes.

Speaking of hackathons…

Proof of Usefulness: First Round of Winners Announced

The global tech ecosystem is overrun with tools that look convincing on paper—dressed up in polished pitch decks, vibe-coded MVPs, and paragraphs upon paragraphs of seemingly sound financial projections—but ultimately fall short when faced with the question of real utility.

So, when we launched the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon at the start of the year, we had one goal in mind: to platform (and reward) products that solve real problems.

We called for projects, from individual developers and budding startups alike, and evaluated them based on actual human, technical, and financial adoption to answer the most important questions. Is it useful? Do people use it?

The answers poured in throughout the first half of the Hackathon, as hundreds of builders showed up with everything from data infrastructure and developer tooling to marketplaces, AI systems, and community platforms. Some ideas were rough. Some polished, and others stood out immediately.

Last month, just as we set out to do, we recognized the projects that have so far proved their usefulness.

Curious about the winners? Check them out for yourself here.

Just learning about the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon?

You’re right on time. Test your project’s usefulness and submit your report on Hackernoon before August 10, 2026, to compete for over $150,000 in cash prizes and software credits.

Looking to run the next HackerNoon Hackathon?

When you sponsor a HackerNoon Technology Hackathon, you get:

• Dedicated hackathon landing page
• Brand visibility across 4M+ monthly readers
• Newsletter promotions to 500K+ subscribers
• Social amplification to 1M followers
• SEO-indexed developer stories
• Permanent hosting of all submissions as HackerNoon blogposts

And most importantly:

Your technology becomes the foundation developers build on.

Check out our page and find out just how easy it is to give back to the dev community here.

Find Your Stories Faster: We Cut Our Categories From 22 to 6

Supercharge your reading on HackerNoon with our latest category update! We revamped hackernoon.com/c to make finding and tracking your favorite tech topics effortless — streamlining our categories from 22 down to 6. Now it's much easier to navigate HackerNoon stories while staying focused on what matters most to you.

All your favorite features are right where you left them, including the top writers section, trending stories, and related tags, now wrapped in a fresh new design. And if you were subscribed to any previous categories, your regular updates will keep rolling in without a hitch.

Fun fact: Software Engineering is currently our most-read category on HackerNoon. Here's the full breakdown of all 6 categories by reader traffic:

1. Software Engineering:16,506+ Total Stories, 2.3M monthly readers
2. Business: 16,404+ Total Stories, 2M monthly readers
3. AI & ML: 16,362+ Total Stories, 1.8M monthly readers
4. HackerNoon: 16,457+ Total Stories, 1.7M monthly readers
5. Web3: 16,500+ Total Stories, 1.4M monthly readers
6. Cybersecurity: 17,771+ Total Stories, 1.1M monthly readers

PS: If you want to subscribe to any of our 6 tech category newsletters, just visit your desired category and hit the "Subscribe" button at the top of the page:

Speaking of great stories, let's talk about the people behind them…

Top Writers of the Week, STAND UP!

Check out the best of the best in tech writing on the HackerNoon Top Writers of the Week page! Here, you’ll find our most prolific contributors across all six main categories: Software Engineering, Business, AI & ML, HackerNoon, Web3, and Cybersecurity. Give their stories a read and show their work some love — leave a comment, drop a reaction, bookmark a favorite, or share it with your network. They’ve earned it... and who knows? One day, you might see your name up there too!

New Fixes Landed on the Homepage

Because scrolling isn’t the only way to explore tech, our devs deployed a new navigation box that lets you jump to any section on the homepage in one click. To open it, just click the arrow on the left side of your screen, select your destination, and watch the page instantly jump there. Click the arrow again to close it anytime.

But that’s not all. To make discovering fresh content even easier, we also launched a brand-new homepage section: “Published Recently.” True to its name, this is where you’ll find the absolute latest stories as soon as they go live.

If you dig a little deeper, you’ll also spot a bunch of subtle design updates crafted to make your homepage feel cozier—call it the HackerNoon 2026 look!

Scroll through and see if you can catch the new colors, styles, and UI fixes, alongside a few minor updates to our story pages:

• Reactions are now Community Engagement (combining Likes and Linkbacks).
• Related Stories are now labeled Related Blog Posts and it features story recomendations more closely aligned with the one you’re currently reading.

• Story Interactions, Author Info, and emoji credibility indicators are now sticky—so they stay right at the top as you scroll.

• A new "Make us Preferred on Google" button lets you quickly add HackerNoon as a trusted source on Google Search 💚.

HackerNoon Business Hub Got A Facelift

Let’s take a look at all the redesigned pages created for your browsing pleasure:

1. Shop

   Your one-stop destination for all your favorite HackerNoon merch just got a brand-new look—complete with a smoother, faster checkout system. Explore the Shop here.

2. All Partners

   Not technically a new page, but it certainly feels like one! Our Partners page now showcases all current and past collaborators, highlighting their testimonials, published stories, industry tags, and more. It’s our way of giving them the recognition they deserve. Explore this page here.

💡 Pro Tip: You can be featured here, too! Book a meeting with us to learn how your brand can partner with HackerNoon and tap into meaningful exposure.

3. HackerNoon Reader Demographics

Knowing who makes up the HackerNoon audience is just as fun as being a part of it. Check out this page to see our top 10 reader countries, occupation breakdowns, traffic sources, and see if you match our typical reader profile! Explore Demographics here.

Pixel Icon Library Figma Plugin

Browse, search, and insert HackerNoon's open-source Pixel Icons directly into Figma and FigJam.

This plugin allows you to explore and add icons to your canvas as fully editable SVG layers. Choose from a collection of retro pixel-style icons, crafted on a 24px grid for crisp alignment and consistent use across web, app, product, and editorial designs.

Features:

• Fast search and filtering
• One-click insert into canvas
• Clean, grid-aligned pixel icons
• Fully scalable and editable vectors

Vercel To Cloudflare Pages

For a while we have been thing about alternatives to Vercel. Scaling on Vercel has always been expensive for us, mostly due to those serverless and bandwidth fees. To fix this, we have migrated our Next.js app to Cloudflare Pages using OpenNext. OpenNext acts as an open-source bridge, letting framework features run smoothly right on Cloudflare's global edge network. Making the switch has open new doors for improvements while also saving on cost, all without hurting performance.

We’ve hit some fun milestones on social media:

• 114.3k+ downloads and counting on our Pixel Icon Library!
• 317.4 Million views on Giphy!
• We’ve surpassed the 90K followers on X!
• Total of 128K impressions on our LinkedIn in 6 months!

But that’s not all we did! We have also launched your beloved newsletters on LinkedIn so you could always find out the best stories and marketing tips while you’re snooping around the latest corporate gossip 😉

• Subscribe to The HackerNoon Newsletter on LinkedIn here
• Subscribe to The Hack Marketing Newsletter on LinkedIn here

That’s all for this product update!

See you soon!