GardaChain: From BI-OJK Hackathon to Huawei APAC 2025
A tragic name for a tragic loss.
In late October 2025, my team Tiwas Tak Gondeli Tenanan 💔, was invited to Jakarta as finalists for the FEKDI X IFSE: BI-OJK Hackathon. Out of a staggering 2,300+ proposals submitted nationwide, we were selected as one of the few to pitch our solution directly to the regulators.
The Genesis of GardaChain
This competition marked the first formal iteration of GardaChain, a smart contract auditing platform. Built upon the foundation of Bagus Raka's Bachelor Thesis, along with the cybersecurity expertise of Moh Rizky Arif, we aimed to bridge the gap between regulatory oversight and decentralized transparency.
It was an intense week of mentoring and pivoting. We spent our days in Jakarta, refining our business model and ensuring our technical architecture met the rigorous standards required by Bank Indonesia and the OJK (Financial Services Authority).
The Result: Top 5
We ultimately finished as 5th in the Student Category, literally the last place among the finalists. Our cope is that we still prevailed over 2,300 other ideas to stand on that final stage and gained invaluable insights from industry leaders in the Indonesian FinTech ecosystem.
Competing at this level taught me that building software for the financial sector isn't just about the code. It's about trust, regulation, and scalability. We might not have taken home the trophy this time, but we left with a battle-tested prototype and a much clearer vision for the future of GardaChain.
Contemplating our loss while waiting for our flight back to Yogyakarta at the airport, I thought of an idea, and said to my teammates:
"What if we bring GardaChain to the competition I won last year, Huawei Developer Competition?
Both of my teammates agreed and thus we decided that we weren't done yet. With my experience and knowledge of the competition, we planned to bring Gardachain to a bigger competition and prove what we are capable of.
With just one week left for the deadline of Huawei Developer Competition 2025 Asia Pacific, We decided to go all in.
Redesigning GardaChain
We took every bit of feedback we had received and performed a massive overhaul of GardaChain. This wasn't just a simple UI polish though, we pushed major architectural improvements to the platform, focusing on how it could leverage Huawei Cloud's ecosystem to provide even more robust decentralized transparency.
The grind was intense, but the vision was clear: we wanted to take GardaChain from a national finalist to an international winner.
From Jakarta to Hong Kong
Our efforts paid off. We were selected as regional finalists and got invited to pitch our solution at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK PolyU).
Standing on that stage in Hong Kong felt different. We had refined the pitch, battle-tested the code, and knew exactly where GardaChain fit in the future of the industry. After a day of competing against the top student talent in Asia Pacific, we were awarded 1st Runner-Up.
Two-Year Legacy
This victory marked a significant personal milestone: back-to-back international wins at the Huawei Developer Competition (Bangkok 2024 and Hong Kong 2025).
It was the perfect way to wrap up my competitive journey at UGM. While I joked about "giving the next generation a chance" next year, the real takeaway was the power of a resilient team.
"Victory is sweet, but the 'regroup and reflect' phase after a loss is where the real engineering happens."
Read more in the official news by DTETI UGM