A look at three Proof of Usefulness hackathon winners – Stored Fashion’s Instagram shoppable tool, MirrorFly’s self‑hosted WebRTC SDKs, and Cliprise’s unified multimodal AI workspace – with scores, market context and why their early traction matters.
HackerNoon Projects of the Week – Stored Fashion, MirrorFly & Cliprise
The Proof of Usefulness hackathon continues to surface tools that have moved beyond a prototype and are already serving paying users. This week’s spotlight covers three very different problems: turning Instagram posts into checkout‑ready experiences, giving developers a turnkey stack for custom video communication, and stitching together fragmented generative‑AI tools into a single workspace.
Stored Fashion – Instagram‑first shoppable content
Problem – Fashion brands spend millions on Instagram ads, yet the platform forces a redirect to an external storefront. That extra click costs conversion rates, especially when shoppers are already scrolling through visual feeds.
Solution – Stored Fashion builds a widget that overlays a “shop now” button directly on Instagram posts and user‑generated content. The button opens an in‑app checkout powered by the brand’s existing e‑commerce backend, eliminating the redirect step. Because the UI lives inside Instagram’s native experience, the friction drop is measurable: early adopters report a 12‑18 % lift in checkout completion compared with standard link‑out flows.
Traction & score – The project earned a +6 Proof of Usefulness score. While modest, the score reflects a live product with paying fashion brands (including two mid‑size European labels) and a functional payment integration. The team is already piloting a “carousel‑style” multi‑product view that could push the score higher in the next evaluation round.
Why it matters – Social commerce is projected to exceed $70 billion in 2026, and Instagram remains the top visual discovery channel for apparel. A tool that reduces the purchase barrier without requiring brands to build a custom storefront could become a standard add‑on for any fashion label with an Instagram presence.
Read the full Proof of Usefulness report for Stored Fashion
MirrorFly – Self‑hosted WebRTC APIs & SDKs
Problem – Companies that need video, audio, or chat often choose a hosted service (e.g., Twilio, Agora). Those services trade control for convenience: you cannot modify the underlying media stack, and pricing scales with usage, which can become unpredictable for high‑traffic apps.
Solution – MirrorFly offers a set of WebRTC‑based APIs, SDKs and a managed STUN/TURN server farm that can be deployed on a customer’s own cloud or on‑premise infrastructure. The kit includes ready‑made UI components for one‑to‑one calls, group rooms, screen sharing, and end‑to‑end encryption. Because the stack is open‑source under an Apache‑2.0 license, developers can extend codecs, add custom signaling, or integrate with existing identity providers.
Traction & score – MirrorFly earned a +301.75 Proof of Usefulness score, placing it among the top performers in the cohort. The score is driven by:
- Over 1,200 active developer accounts across fintech, tele‑health and education verticals.
- $150 k ARR from subscription licenses for self‑hosted deployments.
- A documented 99.8 % median call reliability in independent benchmark tests.
Why it matters – As data‑privacy regulations tighten, more enterprises are looking to keep media streams within their own network perimeter. MirrorFly’s model lets them avoid vendor lock‑in while still benefiting from a battle‑tested WebRTC stack. The high score suggests a solid product‑market fit and a growing community of contributors.
Read the full Proof of Usefulness report for MirrorFly
Cliprise – Unified workspace for multimodal generative AI
Problem – Creators working with generative AI juggle separate tools: a web UI for text‑to‑image, a desktop app for video synthesis, and a CLI for voice generation. Switching contexts fragments the creative thread and makes it hard to reuse assets across modalities.
Solution – Cliprise bundles image, video and voice generation APIs behind a single web‑based canvas. Users can drag an image output directly into a video timeline, attach a synthesized voice track, and iterate in real time. The platform also stores prompts and intermediate artifacts, so a single project can evolve from a sketch to a full‑length promotional clip without leaving the interface.
Traction & score – The project received a +41.3 Proof of Usefulness score. Early metrics include:
- 3,400 registered creators, with 18 % converting to a paid tier for higher‑resolution outputs.
- Partnerships with two boutique ad agencies that run weekly batch jobs through Cliprise’s API.
- Average session duration of 22 minutes, indicating that the unified UI reduces the typical “tool‑hopping” time.
Why it matters – The multimodal AI market is still fragmented, and many startups focus on a single modality. Cliprise’s approach of a single workspace could become a reference point for larger platforms that eventually need to support cross‑modal pipelines. The current score shows real user adoption, and the roadmap includes plug‑in support for emerging diffusion models and text‑to‑speech engines.
Read the full Proof of Usefulness report for Cliprise
What the scores tell us
The Proof of Usefulness scoring system ranges from –100 to +1000, rewarding real users, revenue and technical stability. Stored Fashion’s modest +6 reflects early‑stage product‑market fit; MirrorFly’s +302 signals a mature, revenue‑generating platform; Cliprise’s +41 shows solid early traction in a crowded AI tooling space. Together they illustrate how the hackathon surfaces solutions at different stages of the growth curve, providing visibility to investors and potential partners.
Want to be featured?
If you have a project that solves a concrete problem and already has paying users, consider entering the next Proof of Usefulness hackathon. Submissions receive an instant score, a dedicated HackerNoon article and a chance to win cash prizes and software credits from backers such as Bright Data, Neo4j, Storyblok and Algolia.
This article was featured in the Arweave ViewBlock Terminal Lite.
Comments
Please log in or register to join the discussion