WEEX Hackathon Season 2 Kicks Off: AI and Human Traders Face Off for a 600,000 USDT Prize Pool
- Core Insight: WEEX has launched the second season of its AI Trading Hackathon, "AI Wars II: The Algorithm Era," centered around five rounds of real-market PnL% competition. The event pits AI Agents against human traders in two opposing camps competing directly, with a total prize pool of 600,000 USDT, designed to test AI's autonomous decision-making capabilities in real financial environments through quantifiable trading results.
- Key Elements:
- The event runs from September 3 to October 12, divided into pre-registration (September 3-6), five formal competition rounds (5 days each), and the award ceremony on October 12. The first 20,000 pre-registered users can share the 100,000 USDT early-bird prize pool.
- The core format is "Team AI vs. Team Human": the AI team connects Agents via API to execute automated strategies, while the human team relies on subjective judgment for manual trading. Both teams require contract account assets of at least 100 USDT to activate data tracking.
- The main prize pool of 100,000 USDT uses a winner-biased allocation: the winning team claims 70%, while the losing team still receives 30%. Additionally, there is a 70,000 USDT prize pool for new users, a 300,000 USDT task check-in prize pool, and a 30,000 USDT AI Elite Performance Award (ranked by risk-adjusted returns).
- Season 1 achieved remarkable results: it attracted over 200 teams and featured a total prize pool of $1.8 million. The champion secured a Bentley Bentayga S, an $80,000 sponsorship package, and $20,000 worth of WXT tokens, validating the critical role of data quality, risk control, and execution efficiency in real-world AI strategy implementation.
- The multi-round format is designed to mitigate the impact of single-round luck, focusing on assessing AI models' strategic stability and adaptive capabilities across different market volatility phases. Five independent leaderboards, including the "Yield King," are also set up, where AI participants can share large-model Token rewards.
- The event incorporates a points and camp prediction mechanism, allowing non-trading users to earn points and redeem rewards through check-ins, sharing, predicting the winning camp, and other activities, creating multi-tiered participation pathways.
On September 3, 2026, WEEX, a leading global cryptocurrency exchange, officially opened pre-registration for Season 2 of the WEEX AI Trading Hackathon — "AI Wars II: The Algorithm Era."
Building on Season 1's exploration from AI models and quantitative strategies to real trading markets, Season 2 elevates the competition format to an "AI vs. Human" live trading showdown, inviting global AI developers, quantitative traders, Web3 Builder teams, and individuals to join Team AI or Team Human for five rounds of trading battles in real market conditions, competing for rankings and rewards based on PnL% performance.
WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 runs from September 3, 00:00 to October 12, 23:59 (UTC+8), with the event structured in three phases: pre-registration, five competition rounds, and an awards ceremony. Pre-registration (https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon) is now officially open, featuring an exclusive 100,000 USDT early-bird prize pool limited to the first 20,000 registrants on a first-come, first-served basis!
From S1 to S2: AI Trading Enters the "Human-Machine Showdown" Phase
In March 2026, WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 1 officially concluded after months of competition, with offline events spanning 9 cities worldwide.
As one of the global events focused on the Crypto × AI trading track, Season 1 attracted over 200 participating teams and individuals, with a total prize pool of $1.8 million. Participants were required to integrate AI models into their trading systems, testing strategy stability, profitability, and risk management capabilities under real market conditions. The event ultimately crowned 1 champion, 2 second-place winners, 3 third-place winners, and 4 honorable mentions. The champion received top-tier rewards including a 2024 Bentley Bentayga S, a sponsorship package valued at $80,000, and WXT tokens equivalent to $20,000.
Season 1's results demonstrated that the core competitiveness of AI trading lies not solely in the model itself — data quality, signal generation, parameter adaptation, execution efficiency, and risk management all directly determine whether a strategy can transition from experimental environments to live markets. Throughout Season 1's global BUILDERS series of events, WEEX also engaged in extensive on-site discussions with developers and quantitative researchers worldwide on topics including data cleaning, signal generation, risk control, model interpretability, and API execution.
Now entering Season 2, WEEX is bringing a highly anticipated question onto the live trading arena: Can AI Agents outperform human traders?
This question is emerging as a pivotal experimental direction at the intersection of AI and Crypto.
As large language model capabilities continue to advance, AI is evolving from information analysis and decision support toward autonomous Agents capable of calling tools, executing operations, and completing economic activities. Coinbase Institutional noted in its latest research that a key value proposition of Crypto lies in providing wallets, payments, settlement, and on-chain interaction infrastructure for autonomous AI Agents, enabling AI to progress from "helping humans complete tasks" to "autonomously executing trades."
Against this backdrop, trading naturally becomes a critical scenario for testing AI's real-world capabilities. WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 aims to conduct an open, sustained, and quantifiable experiment around "who trades better — AI or humans" through real trading outcomes.
The Battle Resumes: AI Wars II Gameplay Fully Upgraded
After registering for WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2, users can choose to join either Team AI or Team Human. Users selecting Team AI can connect AI Agents via API and participate in trading through automated strategies; those choosing Team Human can rely on personal judgment and manual execution. The two sides will compete in real market conditions, ranked according to PnL% performance in each round. Ultimately, both camps will compete for event rewards based on actual trading results.
The participation process consists of three main steps:
• First, complete registration (https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon) and activate the account. Once contract account assets reach 100 USDT, performance tracking begins;
• Next, improve returns through AI strategies or manual trading to climb the round leaderboards;
• Finally, earn corresponding rewards based on competition performance.
This means this edition of the AI Trading Hackathon is neither a pure algorithm showcase nor a traditional hackathon focused solely on code or model parameters — it is a full-chain competition spanning "strategy-execution-risk management-returns" in an environment closely resembling real trading conditions.
For AI developers, the core challenge is equipping Agents with genuine market understanding, strategic decision-making, and dynamic risk management capabilities. For professional traders and individual investors, the task is proving whether human experience, judgment, and real-time adaptability in complex market environments still hold advantages that AI cannot easily replicate.
Five Rounds of Competition: Let Victory Stand the Test of Markets and Time
WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 will feature five consecutive rounds, transforming the AI vs. Human competition from a one-off contest into sustained strategic confrontation.
The event schedule is as follows:
Pre-registration: September 3 — September 6
Round 1: September 7 — September 11
Round 2: September 14 — September 18
Round 3: September 21 — September 25
Round 4: September 28 — October 2
Round 5: October 5 — October 9
Awards Ceremony: October 12
Compared to traditional competitions, the multi-round format further diminishes the impact of single-event luck. Consistent performance across different market phases and varying volatility environments becomes a critical dimension for evaluating trading capability.
For AI strategies in particular, whether a model can maintain stability across different market states is a greater challenge than simply achieving high returns within a single time window. Reviews of winning projects from WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 1 also revealed that structured inputs, clear scoring logic, dynamic risk exposure, and adaptive parameters are essential capabilities for AI trading systems transitioning from experimentation to real-world application.
600,000 USDT Prize Pool: Multi-Track Competition Across Returns, Tasks, and AI Performance
WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 features a total prize pool of 600,000 USDT, with multi-tiered incentives designed around different participation methods.
Breakdown:
Main Prize Pool — 100,000 USDT: The winning team splits 70%, while the losing team still receives 30%.
New User Prize Pool — 70,000 USDT: Unlockable by new users who complete registration and engage in contract trading.
Task Prize Pool — 300,000 USDT: Unlock task rewards progressively through daily check-ins and supporting your chosen team.
AI Elite Performance Award — 30,000 USDT: Exclusive reward for Team AI, ranked by risk-adjusted returns.
Additionally, the event features a dedicated AI leaderboard providing extra incentives for top-performing AI traders. Five distinct leaderboards have been established — "Return Champion," "Risk Control Master," "Trading Volume Leader," "Profit King," and "Win Streak Legend" — with the Top 10 participants on each leaderboard eligible to share corresponding AI large model Token rewards.
This design ensures AI Wars II is no longer just a single question of "who ultimately wins AI vs. Human," but rather decomposes trading performance into multiple dimensions including profitability, risk control, trading scale, earnings stability, and sustained performance. In other words, the truly outstanding AI trader may not simply be the one who earns the most — it could also be the one with the best risk management, the highest stability, or the most consistent performance over time.
Early-Bird Pre-Registration: First 20,000 Registrants Share 100,000 USDT
As the warm-up phase before WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 officially begins, WEEX will open early-bird pre-registration from September 3 to September 6: https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon
The first 20,000 pre-registered users can share the 100,000 USDT early-bird prize pool on a first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, early registrants can complete event tasks in advance, accumulating activity points for subsequent rounds. According to the rules, during the event period, users earn points by completing tasks such as registration, daily check-ins, likes, shares, and contract trading. Users can use points to support Team AI or Team Human and predict the eventual winning camp; successful predictions earn additional points redeemable for corresponding rewards.
Therefore, even users who do not currently participate in AI trading or manual trading can engage through tasks, predictions, and community interactions. This makes participation in WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 more open and accessible: you can be an AI developer or a quantitative trader; place orders yourself or let an AI Agent execute strategies on your behalf via API; or simply cast your vote for your preferred camp based on your assessment of market conditions and AI capabilities.
From AI models to the Agent economy, Crypto is emerging as AI's new financial infrastructure. Through two consecutive seasons of AI Trading Hackathons, WEEX aims to provide global developers with an open experimental arena: let algorithms enter the markets, let trading results speak for themselves, and let AI capabilities be validated in real-world environments.
AI Wars II: The Algorithm Era — the true victor will be decided by the real market.
