Pitbull has announced the launch of his latest business venture this afternoon, an international blockchain coding competition geared towards disrupting the music industry’s current state named, Smackathon.

Smackathon, named after Hackathon, a popular computer programming event, is a competition which allows participants from all parts of the world to use Ethereum – a decentralized application-building platform powered by blockchain technology – as the judges look for innovative ideas to take on the music industry’s greatest challenges such as artist royalty agreements and curated playlists.

The coding competition is organized by Pitbull, eMerge Americas, and Zeppelin.

“I’ve always wanted to integrate a music component into eMerge. Having Pitbull as a partner in this project, I really think this is going to be something big and special,” says eMerge Americas executive vice president Melissa Medina. “I’ve had a lot of conversations with Pitbull, and he has a lot of frustrations. He’s Mr. Worldwide, he’s wildly successful, but he’s thinking about the artists of the future and the roadblocks they hit.”

The entrants for the competition have one month (April 24 through May 25) to develop a blockchain-based solution powered by Zeppelin’s open-source smart contract platform. The solutions will be narrowed down and the finalists will be flown to Miami to pitch their solution to Pitbull and three other judges including Manny Medina Jr., an Emerge Americas exec and a Zeppelin exec.

While there is no specific criteria for entrants, Smackathon has given a few ideas to get the ball rolling including:

• Represent a song’s copyright as a non-fungible asset, so it can be freely traded, and royalties to the original writer can be paid without intermediaries.
• Collectively curating music through a token curation market, as a means to discover new artists, rewarding them directly as they gain popularity within a platform.
• Creating playlists or arranging festivals, by having a set of curators decide which songs or artists are included in the list, leveraging the power of token curated registries.
• Games for music generation on the blockchain, where the participants collaborate by mix-and-matching pieces of songs, according to a set of established rules.
• Selling concert tickets, represented by tradeable tokens, in an initial ticket offering (equivalent to an ICO), with different crowdsale models.

All submissions will be evaluated and judged by a set of extensive criteria, including originality and usefulness, comprehensiveness, design and polish, technology, and Zeppelin-based. Rules for entrants’ submissions include: all projects must be built on Ethereum and be related to music as their main topic, every participant must be at least 18 years old, all work on the project must be done within the competition’s 1-month timeframe, and more. For full guidelines, rules, and details, click HERE.

“At Zeppelin we try and make it easy and secure for any developer or individual to participate,” say Zeppelin fonder and CEO Demian Brener. “Doing Smackathon and leveraging Pitbull’s brand is a great way to push our goals even further forward.”

The finalists’ ideas will be judged by a panel of four judges including Pitbull himself. The winning team will take home several prizes including:

• The winning team will earn $6,000 plus the chance to secure investment to continue developing the project.
• All finalists (up to 3 per dev team) will be flown to Miami, FL through American Airlines for the finale pitch day.
• All finalists will pitch in front of 4 judges (Pitbull, Manny Medina Jr., Emerge Americas exec and Zeppelin exec).
• Public announcement of all finalists.
• Booth space plus success story showcased at Emerge Americas 2019 (April 29 & 30, 2019).

If Pitbull really likes a presented idea, he’s planning on opening his checkbook on the spot to make an investment to help fund the further development of the project. Zeppelin, eMerge Americas and Medina Capital are also planning to invest in the best solutions.

“We’re not only looking to invest, but we’re interesting in helping bring the ideas to market, grow them, and make them a reality, if possible,” says Medina.

For full information and to register, visit the coding competition’s official website, Smackathon.co!