Mantle (MNT) has announced its largest AI hackathon to date, drawing backing from Tencent Cloud, Bybit, Byreal, and the Blockchain for Good Alliance.

The event targets developers working at the intersection of AI, decentralized finance, and real-world assets.

What the Hackathon Covers

According to a PR Newswire release published today, the competition is open to global participants across AI, technology, and youth communities.

Mantle describes its network as a distribution layer connecting traditional finance with on-chain liquidity and real-world asset infrastructure. The hackathon is structured to surface builders who can develop applications using those capabilities alongside AI tooling. Specific prize pools and submission deadlines were not detailed in the initial announcement.

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Why the Sponsors Matter

Tencent Cloud brings infrastructure scale. It operates data centers across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, giving participants access to cloud compute for AI model training.

Bybit is the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. Its involvement connects the hackathon to a large retail and institutional trading audience. Byreal focuses on real-world asset tokenization.

The Blockchain for Good Alliance adds a social-impact framing to the competition's stated goals.

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Background

Mantle launched its mainnet in mid-2023 as an Ethereum Layer 2 network. It has since repositioned its public narrative around real-world asset tokenization and institutional DeFi. Prior hackathons drew several hundred developers.

This event is framed as materially larger, though exact historical participation numbers were not provided in the announcement. The broader crypto-AI hackathon space has grown quickly in 2025 and 2026, with protocols including Bittensor (TAO) and several Solana (SOL)-based projects running similar competitions to attract AI-native builders.

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Next Steps

Mantle has not published a full schedule or technical brief at this stage. Interested developers can follow the network's official channels for application details.

The announcement positions the event as ongoing rather than a single-weekend sprint, suggesting a multi-week timeline. Bybit's AI infrastructure team, which separately released an official Model Context Protocol tool for multi-agent trading this week, may contribute technical resources to participants.

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