One of the most common pain points we heard from hackathon organizers: participants waste the first few hours just trying to get API keys working. Some hit rate limits immediately. Others can't afford $20 of OpenAI credits just to build a demo. A few give up before they've written a single line.
Hackathon Mode is our answer to that. Organizers fund the event upfront by bringing their own OpenAI or Anthropic API keys. Participants sign up via a magic join link and instantly receive a tf_proj_xxx proxy key that routes through the organizer's credits. The API surface is identical to the real thing — no SDK changes required.
How it works
For organizers
- Create a hackathon and give it a name and slug.
- Add your OpenAI or Anthropic API keys. They are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM and never exposed to participants.
- Pay the one-time $79 platform fee to activate the event and unlock the magic join link.
- Share the join link (
tokenfund.dev/hackathon/join/[code]) with your participants.
For participants
- Click the join link and sign up or log in.
- A project is automatically created for you with a ready-to-use API key.
- Point your app at
https://tokenfund.dev/api/v1/chat/completionsand use your key as the Bearer token. - Build.
The proxy is model-agnostic
The proxy endpoint accepts any OpenAI-compatible request. Pass a model like gpt-4o and it routes to OpenAI. Pass claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 and it routes to Anthropic, normalizing the response back to OpenAI format transparently.
We also support OpenRouter — pass any model slug that contains a / (e.g. meta-llama/llama-3-70b-instruct) and it routes via OpenRouter.
Rate limiting and abuse prevention
Each participant project has its own rate limit window enforced via Upstash Redis. Organizers can see per-project usage in the analytics dashboard so they can spot runaway loops or adversarial prompts early.
Organizer API keys are encrypted at rest. They are only decrypted in memory at proxy time and are never returned to any client.
Analytics for organizers
The hackathon analytics dashboard shows total token usage, cost breakdown by participant, model usage distribution, and requests over time. It updates in near real-time so you can keep tabs on your credits throughout the event.
What this is not
Hackathon Mode is not a free AI tier. Organizers pay for the credits. TokenFund handles the plumbing — key management, routing, rate limiting, usage tracking — so organizers don't have to build it themselves.
It's also not a sponsorship marketplace (yet). Right now organizers bring their own keys. A future version may let sponsors deposit credits directly.
Try it
If you're running a hackathon and want to give participants a frictionless AI setup, create a hackathon from your dashboard. If you have questions, reach out — we're happy to help you configure it.