A developer shares her firsthand experience winning a track at Casa Builder México 2025 hackathon, building a Stellar/Soroban smart contract project with a mixed Web2/Web3 team despite having no prior Rust or Stellar experience. She details the technical stack, timeline, challenges, and key lessons learned about participating in hackathons.
The author, a career-switcher from healthcare to Web3 development, recounts her team's victory at Casa Builder México 2025 hackathon. Working with a four-person team (two Web2, two Web3 developers), she built a Soroban smart contract in Rust paired with a Next.js frontend, despite having zero prior experience with either technology. The article chronicles the intense 72-hour sprint from Wednesday arrival through Sunday 7:57 AM submission, including technical decisions like removing a backend layer due to Stellar's minimal fees, managing 687 frontend changes via Git, and debugging connection issues between frontend and contracts. Key lessons include: participate despite incomplete preparation, build minimum viable products rather than over-engineered scaffolds, ask for help openly, maintain humor during stress, and recognize that practice defeats impostor syndrome. The team successfully onboarded two people to Web3 and achieved personal and group objectives while managing sleep deprivation through meditation.