Build Games Offers $1M to Crypto Builders
Avalanche’s Build Games is a six-week test of execution, offering $1 million to builders who can turn ideas into working products.
Avalanche is running a six-week builder competition called Build Games with a $1 million prize pool and a pretty straightforward pitch: build whatever you want, just make it work.
Unlike traditional hackathons that funnel projects into predefined tracks like DeFi or NFTs, Build Games remains deliberately open. Builders can work on applications, infrastructure, tooling, consumer products, or early-stage experiments, provided they can deliver a working product on Avalanche within six weeks.
The Prize
First place takes home $100k, second gets $75k, and third gets $50k, with additional category prizes on top of that. Beyond the prize money, there’s ongoing grant support and a path into Avalanche’s ecosystem programs like Codebase. Winners also get mentorship, PR support, and help actually launching their projects.
How It Works
The competition runs for six weeks with four main checkpoints.
Week 1: One-minute video pitch. What are you building, why does it matter, and who’s on the team?
Week 3: Working prototype. Actual code, a demo, and a walkthrough of what you’ve built so far.
Week 5: Go-to-market plan and progress update.
Week 6: Live finals and judging.
Between milestones, you get workshops, office hours, and feedback from mentors. There’s also a builder community that sticks around after the competition ends.
Who Should Apply
Avalanche is looking for solo developers or small teams who want to build something real. You don’t need a perfect track record or a fancy resume. You just need to be willing to execute.
Selection criteria center on drive, execution ability, understanding of crypto culture, and genuine long-term intent. The key questions are whether you can turn an idea into a working product in six weeks, and whether you want to become a long-term founder in the ecosystem.
Why No Predefined Tracks?
Research shows the best projects from builder competitions come from teams working on ideas they genuinely believe in. When you force people into predetermined categories, they end up retrofitting their projects to fit the track rather than building what they actually want to build.
Build Games is betting on letting good ideas emerge naturally. The focus is on solving real problems, exploring new onchain behaviours, and pushing the Avalanche ecosystem forward in some meaningful way. Early stage ideas are welcome as long as teams are serious about turning them into working products.
Timeline
Applications open in January 2026, with teams announced in February and the competition starting February 15. Finals happen in March 2026. Applications are reviewed as they come in, and spots are limited. Once they hit capacity, submissions close.
More details, including applications are available at build.avax.network.
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A unique experience that will be the next step for builders and people who approach the ecosystem, only a team like avalanche and team1 can make this real.
The no-predefined-tracks approach is refreshing. I've judged enough hackathons to see how forcing categories distorts what teams actually want to build. Six weeks is also a smart timeline, long enough to hit real execution milestones but short enough to filter out teams that arent serious. The checkpoints structure keeps poeple accountable without being overbearing. If Avalanche gets even a handfull of strong projects out of this, that's already better ROI than most grant programs.