Role: Community Partner & Hackathon Competitor · 2022

Built a decentralized alternative credit rating system at ETH Toronto 2022 — and won first place in Hedera's $15K prize track, bridging the gap between traditional finance and on-chain identity.

The Challenge

Credit scores are one of the most powerful — and most gatekept — tools in traditional finance. They're opaque, centralized, and inaccessible to billions of people without a formal banking history. The challenge: could blockchain technology offer a fairer, more transparent alternative?

The Project: DeFi Score

DeFi Score is a decentralized credit rating system that replaces the traditional, centralized credit bureau model with an on-chain alternative. By analyzing wallet history, on-chain transaction behavior, and DeFi participation, DeFi Score generates a transparent, verifiable creditworthiness rating — no bank required.

This directly bridges Holly's TradFi background at Envestnet | Yodlee with the Web3 ecosystem, applying years of FinTech expertise to one of the most pressing problems in financial inclusion.

What I Owned

• Concept & Strategy — Identified the problem space at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi
• Hackathon Execution — Built and pitched the project within ETH Toronto's competitive hackathon format
• Community Partnership — Represented Detroit's blockchain community on a national stage
• Presentation — Pitched to judges across multiple tracks including Hedera

Key Decisions & Execution

The insight was simple but powerful: your on-chain history is your financial resume. Rather than relying on a black-box score from Equifax or TransUnion, DeFi Score reads publicly verifiable blockchain data to assess creditworthiness in a way that is transparent, permissionless, and globally accessible.

By targeting Hedera's track specifically — a blockchain known for its enterprise-grade speed and low fees — the project demonstrated real-world viability beyond just a hackathon concept.