By Joon Hyuk Lee, APAC Market Development Director, FIDO Alliance
Welcome to the Challenge
The FIDO Alliance is pleased to announce our first global FIDO Developer Challenge, where participating developer teams will create and demonstrate compelling and innovative applications leveraging FIDO standards and technologies. Prior challenges based in Korea over the past two years proved to be very successful and we are now pleased to expand this program globally.
FIDO has come a long way since the Alliance’s inception in 2012, going from a whiteboard concept to a core technology supported by billions of consumer devices worldwide. With over 85% of browsers now supporting FIDO Authentication, now is the time for web developers to ditch password-based logins in favor of FIDO’s approach, which provides a superior user experience and prevents phishing and other computer hacks. We are looking forward to seeing the selection of implementations the developer community comes up with this year, leveraging the public FIDO2 WebAuthn API to bring FIDO Authentications to websites and services.
Projects we are looking for
We are looking for projects that address a technical or social challenge in today’s world. There is no limit on the development ideas, but we expect implementation of FIDO Authentication to take place in various fields such as Fintech, eCommerce, IoT, retail, blockchain, gaming and education. Samples from the previous regional challenge include projects like FIDO-based IoT storage services for low-income families, FIDO-based drone platforms, FIDO-based smart home security systems, FIDO- and DID-based smart health insurance card services and a FIDO-based passwordless WiFi router control system. We are happy to expand this year’s program globally to attract even more innovative ideas to solve technical and social challenges.
The process
The FIDO Developer Challenge takes place in a virtual format and focuses on implementation of the FIDO2 WebAuthn API. The Challenge is open to students, individual developers, and pre-seed stage venture companies only.
Our website contains all the details on how to participate in the FIDO Developer Challenge. Here are a few milestones we are looking forward to:
- We will be accepting applications until July 9. Upon receiving applications from all over the world, we will do the initial screenings and announce the top 20 teams within two weeks of the application submission deadline.
- Then, we will invite 20 teams to implement the FIDO2 WebAuthn API in their inventions, online services or products.
- The teams that successfully implement FIDO2 will be invited to the final evaluation step, where they will give an online presentation and demo. They will also participate in a Q&A with our judges.
- The judges will select the top three teams, all of which will be featured in a session at our Authenticate conference (Oct 18-20 in Seattle, WA; USA), with the winner being offered the opportunity to attend with all their expenses paid by the FIDO Alliance.
Prizes and opportunities
In addition to exposure at Authenticate, the top three teams will receive prizes from FIDO members, awarded public recognition, and the unique opportunity to share their business vision with panels of early-stage investors. More details can be found on the Challenge website.
We encourage you to think outside the box, considering new experiences and benefits that FIDO can bring to users and developers alike. Best of luck to you all. We cannot wait to see your submissions!
For more information visit https://fidoalliance.org/fido-developer-challenge/
