Mantle Holds On-Chain AI Agent Benchmarking Hackathon With $120,000 in Prizes

Ethereum layer-2 network Mantle said on April 23 that it is holding the Turing Test Hackathon 2026 for global AI developers and Web3 builders.

The hackathon began on April 15 and is being run in two stages with a total prize pool of $120,000: $20,000 for ClawHack and $100,000 for AI Awakening.

The event is designed as a competition to benchmark AI agents at scale in an on-chain environment. Related decisions and results will be recorded on the Mantle blockchain.

Global partners include Bybit, Byreal, Blockchain for Good Alliance and Tencent Cloud. Domestic partners include Four Pillars, Hashed, Rocketpunch and Localhost:web3.

Academic partners such as Decipher, Blockchain Valley and Orakle are also participating, along with media partners including Blockstreet, Bloomingbit, Coinness, Decenter and Kyunghyang Games.

Mantle said the hackathon goes beyond a conventional development contest by testing a structure in which autonomous agents generate verifiable value on-chain. The event is focused on combining agent-based AI frameworks with Mantle's distribution layer to demonstrate the potential for next-generation Web3 infrastructure.

The second-stage AI Awakening segment consists of six tracks: AI trading, on-chain alpha extraction, dynamic yield strategies based on real-world assets, consumer DApps, AI development tools and agent wallets. Each agent will be assigned an NFT identity based on the ERC-8004 standard, allowing its on-chain reputation to be recorded.

Judges include Allora Network, Nansen, Z.ai, Four Pillars, Animoca Brands, Virtuals Protocol and Hashed, as well as academic institutions including the University of Hong Kong.

A Mantle official said the hackathon is intended to show how the convergence of AI and on-chain finance is expanding into "verifiable autonomy." The official added that the event could set a new standard for the broader Web3 and AI ecosystems because agent decision-making and performance will be recorded on the blockchain, while demo day and mentoring sessions will be disclosed in real time.