--- title: "Pillar Unconference" url: "https://radix-wiki.miow.me/contents/history/pillar-unconference" updated: 2026-10-03 description: "The Pillar Unconference was a week-long event hosted by the Pillar Project from 15 to 22 July 2018 at the Vilnius Grand Resort in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is…" --- # Pillar Unconference | Event | The Pillar Unconference 2018 | | --- | --- | | Dates | 15–22 July 2018 | | Venue | Vilnius Grand Resort, Vilnius, Lithuania | | Host | [Pillar Project](https://www.pillar.fi) | | Format | Crowd-sourced unconference, free to attend | | Hackathons that week | Unibright, Radix, Pillar | | Radix participation | Three-day developer breakout room and the first Radix hackathon | | Status | Completed | ## Overview The **Pillar Unconference** was a week-long event hosted by the [Pillar Project](https://www.pillar.fi) from **15 to 22 July 2018** at the Vilnius Grand Resort in Vilnius, Lithuania. It is recorded here among the early ecosystem events in the [History of Radix](/contents/history), because [Radix](/contents/history) ran its first hackathon there. An unconference has no fixed programme. Pillar booked the resort's 1,000-seat main hall, ten breakout rooms and several lounge areas, made all of it free to attendees, and let [a meeting each morning decide what the rest of the day would look like](https://irishtechnews.ie/pillar-unconference-in-the-blockchain-heart-of-europe-july-2018/). Talks were allocated space at the end of each day by vote, with the largest sessions going to the main hall and the rest to breakout rooms. The same week-long dates, 15 to 22 July 2018, are carried by [the aeternity team's own thread on the event](https://forum.aeternity.com/t/aeternity-pillar-uncoference-2018-vilnius-july-15-22-2018/638). ## Radix at the Unconference Three separate hackathons ran during the week, hosted by Unibright, Radix and Pillar itself. Per [Pillar's scrapbook of the week](https://medium.com/pillarproject/the-pillar-unconference-2018-f766375b4832), the Radix DLT team, "following the launch of their alpha, locked down a breakout room for three days of intensive coding", where developers "explored fully decentralized commercial applications using the Radix Java and JavaScript libraries". The same write-up places Piers Ridyard at the event alongside Pillar's David Siegel. This was two years before [Scrypto](/contents/tech/core-protocols/scrypto-programming-language) existed and three before the [Olympia mainnet](/contents/tech/releases/radix-mainnet-olympia). The tooling on offer was the pair of client libraries that shipped with the alpha, `radixdlt-java` and `radixdlt-js-lite`, and every project built that week was built against them. ## The First Radix Hackathon Radix ran the tail event of the week. Writing on 2 August 2018, the Radix team recorded that ["the Radix team held its first ever hackathon in beautiful Lithuania"](https://www.radixdlt.com/blog/first-radix-hackathon-highlights-from-lithuania), with **six teams** competing for a prize of **$3,000** and a handful of Ledger Nano devices. The brief was to "create a complete end to end business proposal with tech MVP utilizing the Radix network", judged by the Radix team. - **Winner — Hack.Funding** (micro-lending). A funding mechanism for hackathon projects after the hackathon ends, using micro-loans to spread funder risk. The team's argument was that fees on fiat rails and on other ledgers make micro-lending impractical, and that Radix's low fee is what makes it viable. Their MVP used `radixdlt-js-lite` on the front end and `radixdlt-java` to manage the lending contract. - **Runner-up — RadiXign** (immutable document signing). A Docusign competitor: sign documents onto the ledger without a trusted intermediary. Built in two days on `radixdlt-js-lite`. - **Rad Property Raffle** — a raffle that collects crypto from entrants and draws a winner once a minimum threshold is reached, demonstrated end to end across both libraries. - **Podium** — a decentralized alternative to Twitter. - **Podiloto** — peer-to-peer payment for bike hire. - **Personal Data Locker** — privacy-focused personal data management. Radix and Pillar worked together again six months later at the [Pillar Hackathon #1](/contents/history/pillar-hackathon-1) of January 2019, where Radix took one of three integration tracks and built a bridge to the Pillar wallet. The next Radix hackathon of note was the [Flexathon](/contents/history/flexathon) of December 2020, which [Dan Hughes](/contents/history/dan-hughes) ran alone. ## Gallery ![](https://j9ytchrzkvqpcul7.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/4160ebdd-4f39-4c4b-a55e-d0e0417bf2aa.webp) ![](https://j9ytchrzkvqpcul7.public.blob.vercel-storage.com/0b07e93b-1f36-4cb7-b91f-44a1d92f47cb.webp) ## External Links - ["First Radix Hackathon Highlights From Lithuania" – Radix blog, 2 August 2018](https://www.radixdlt.com/blog/first-radix-hackathon-highlights-from-lithuania) - ["The Pillar Unconference Scrapbook 2018" – Pillar Project](https://medium.com/pillarproject/the-pillar-unconference-2018-f766375b4832) - ["Pillar Unconference in the Blockchain Heart of Europe, July 2018" – Irish Tech News, 22 June 2018](https://irishtechnews.ie/pillar-unconference-in-the-blockchain-heart-of-europe-july-2018/) - ["aeternity @ Pillar Unconference 2018, Vilnius, July 15–22, 2018" – aeternity forum](https://forum.aeternity.com/t/aeternity-pillar-uncoference-2018-vilnius-july-15-22-2018/638) - [Pillar Project official site](https://www.pillar.fi)