Overview & Hackathon Recognition
During the BulSU Hackathon 2026 at Bulacan State University - Sarmiento Campus, I served as the Team Leader, Front-End Developer, and Project Manager for CrediLab. Our project won 1st Place for SDG 4: Quality Education, aligning directly with UN SDG Target 4.4 to increase the number of youth with verifiable technical and vocational coding skills.
The Problem
Traditional university programming certifications are static, expensive, and easily falsified on resumes. Students solve hundreds of algorithmic problems across fragmented homework assignments, but they have no tamper-proof proof of what code they actually wrote and executed.
We built CrediLab to replace paper credentials with a verifiable assessment ledger where students solve real Java coding challenges, pass automated test suites, earn CLB tokens (an ERC-20 token deployed on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet), and mint cryptographic skill badges.
How It Actually Works
1. Real-Time Java Execution Sandbox (Judge0 CE)
Instead of relying on multiple-choice quizzes or simulated grading, CrediLab runs student Java code inside a secure, sandboxed compiler environment powered by the Judge0 CE API. Students test their code against hidden and public test cases directly inside an integrated CodeMirror 6 code editor.
2. Behavioral Anti-Cheat Monitoring (useAntiCheat)
To maintain academic integrity during assessments, I developed a custom anti-cheat hook (useAntiCheat) that monitors:
- Focus loss and window blur events (switching tabs or windows)
- Copy-paste attempt interceptions
- Automated session termination and test invalidation upon repeated infractions
3. On-Chain Token Economy & Tiered Badges (CLB ERC-20)
- Automated Reward Pipeline: Passing challenges awards Firestore credits that students can bridge to on-chain CLB tokens via MetaMask and ethers.js 6.
- 20 Rarity Badges: 5 animated progression tiers ranging from Novice to Expert Engineer.
- Cryptographic PDF Certificates: Downloadable certificates stamped with immutable SHA-256 verification hashes for resume validation.
4. Weekly SDG Community Tasks & Automated Winner Selection
Beyond individual challenges, students participate in weekly community challenges addressing sustainability topics (SDGs 4, 9, 13, 15):
- Peer upvote/downvote validation feed
- Hall of Fame showcasing weekly top contributors
- Automated Payout Cron: A Vercel Cron serverless job runs every Sunday at 18:00 UTC, selecting the highest-rated community submission and automatically dispatching on-chain CLB tokens via our system smart contract wallet.
My Role & Technical Contributions
As the team leader, project manager, and lead front-end engineer, I was responsible for:
- Project Scoping & Architecture: Directing the sprint timeline under strict hackathon constraints, managing task delegation across frontend, backend, and smart contract modules.
- Frontend & State Architecture: Building the full user interface in React 19 and Tailwind CSS v4, including the CodeMirror coding portal, interactive leaderboard with profile cards, community voting feed, and dark/light mode toggle.
- Web3 & Cloud Integration: Wiring up MetaMask wallet connectors, Vercel Serverless API proxies for Judge0 code execution, and Firebase Authentication / Firestore data syncing.
What I Learned
Leading a hackathon team from initial ideation to 1st place taught me how to coordinate fast-paced full-stack development under tight deadlines. More importantly, it demonstrated how to bridge real-world academic requirements with Web3 infrastructure without letting blockchain complexity get in the way of a smooth, low-bandwidth student experience.