On June 19-21, the second online hackathon of the 2020 Digital Breakthrough took place, where a case of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ was presented. The case named .РФ Domain was dedicated to the Universal Acceptance of Cyrillic domain names and emails.
Throughout the entire hackathon, Coordination Center experts and guest specialists – Dmitry Belyavsky (Cryptocom), Igor Lidin (Technical Center of Internet), Georgy Georgiyevsky (Coordination Center), Vadim Mikhailov (Coordination Center), Maria Kolesnikova (Coordination Center), Abdalmonem Galila (UA Ambassador, Egypt) and others – worked with teams that had selected the .РФ Domain case.
After 36 hours of active work of the participants with support of experts and the final defense of the projects, the jury chose the finalists: 13 teams made it to the shortlist of the .РФ Domain case. Its participants had to develop an app or a service that could accept, check, store, process, and show Cyrillic domains and emails.
Winners of the second online hackathon of the 2020 Digital Breakthrough were announced during a live stream. The first place was awarded to Team 18: it presented a web service that could be used on any platform with any programming language. This is a unique solution for three levels of cooperation between the client and the email server. The team also managed to develop a patch for an email server during the hackathon. The second place was taken by the Svyaz 1 team: their service to work with various types of email addresses could easily be used in other national languages as well. NaoPlus took the third place by offering a working mobile app with end-to-end support of Universal Acceptance.
“As we thought, the case about .РФ turned out to be one of the most creative. Some teams that chose it said that before this they didn’t regard UA of Cyrillic domains and email addresses important or global. The winning team focused on solving the main tasks of the case immediately. They made a breakthrough in three spheres all at once. We received a final product we can use right now. Together with the hackathon participants, we plan to continue working on the internet infrastructure to make the internet more user-friendly for Russian speakers,” said Coordination Center Director Andrei Vorobyev. He added that a special prize of the Coordination Center would also be awarded to the youngest team, PFH, that performed out of competition, as the Prospective Team.
The winners, the Team 18, thanked everyone who organized the hackathon: “Thanks very much to the experts, it would have been impossible without them. Thanks to all the trackers, you were impeccable. Thanks to the jury: you did not only judge but also taught us too. Thanks to the case holders: your task was complicated and interesting. Thanks to the organizers; you create the future.”
“It is good that in the year when ccTLD .РФ is marking its 10th anniversary we started promoting the Universal Acceptance. .РФ is one of the most popular IDNs in the world, and it is important that it is not only used for websites but also to give all the Russians an opportunity to use Cyrillic emails. The hackathon was the first contest where solutions to introduce IDN emails were proposed. We’ve been discussing ways to do this for many years now, while these young people developed an almost ready solution over 36 hours. The Digital Breakthrough united very cool and advanced teams, and the results of the Coordination Center’s case have proven this,” said Sergei Grebennikov, ROCIT director and member of the Coordination Center Board.
UA Ambassador, expert of the second online hackathon Abdalmonem Galila also noted the importance of the solutions: “It is time to prepare your systems for the Universal Acceptance and create a truly inclusive internet of the future. All internet applications, devices, and systems must accept, check, store, process, and show all domain names and email addresses equally.”
“Russia has talented and professional developers, as the online hackathon of the 2020 Digital Breakthrough has once again shown. Over 36 hours, the teams managed to look into the specifics of Cyrillic internet identifiers and their Universal Acceptance as well as develop fully working products and demonstrate their efficiency. We sincerely hope to support to continue cooperating with them within the Поддерживаю.РФ project and other projects of the Coordination Center,” noted Coordination Center’s Main Analyst Maria Kolesnikova.
