Proof · Hackathon activation recordAn ETHGlobal Tokyo activation is a sponsor programme FORKOFF runs for the hackathon at its next edition (2027, dates TBA), aimed at the integration decision rather than at brand presence. Because each team may use only three sponsor SDKs, the work happens before the weekend starts: developer-facing docs, a pre-event builder list, workshop presence during the build, and clip distribution afterwards at $0.003 per qualified view.
FORKOFF has run activations across 42 events since 2023, per our own operating record, and the hackathons behave differently from every other format on that list. A conference audience is deciding what to buy. A hackathon audience is deciding what to build on, and it decides in the first two hours, under a rule that lets each team use only three sponsor SDKs. ETHGlobal listed 800+ attendees, 10+ protocols and 29+ workshops for Tokyo 2026. That arithmetic is the whole problem: more protocols than slots, and the slots fill from whatever a team already trusts. A prize sheet does not change that. A room the night before does.
ETHGlobal has changed the starting-point rule for Tokyo. Teams can now bring any repository they already have, and existing code is welcomed rather than disqualified. Read as a sponsor, that pulls your decision window earlier still. A team arriving with a working codebase has already picked its dependencies, so the moment to reach it is the weeks before the opening day, not the opening night. This is also why our Tokyo lead time is six weeks rather than the eight we recommend for a conference: applications closed about two weeks before the 2026 edition and the attending list stopped moving. We plan 2027 the same way until the organiser posts dates, because a fixed list is one you can work through by name.
Tokyo runs on the same operating spine as every week on the roster. The event management service owns the venue, the invite list and the recording. The Web3 marketing service owns the developer narrative, which is the part that decides whether an engineer installs your package or scrolls past it. The clipping service owns what happens to the footage afterwards, priced at $0.003 per qualified view across a network that has processed more than 5 billion. And the events hub carries the rest of the autumn calendar, including the Seoul and Singapore weeks that sat either side of Tokyo in 2026, so a single trip can be planned as a run rather than as three separate decisions.
Reviewed by the FORKOFF events team, the operators who run these activations on the ground.