The contest asks developers to build an AI agent marketplace on BNB Smart Chain, where more than 200,000 ERC-8004 agents are registered, with the winner potentially becoming BNB Agent Studio’s official marketplace.
BNB Chain has launched Build the Era, an open hackathon aimed at creating an AI agent marketplace on BNB Smart Chain (BSC). The competition focuses on solving agent discoverability as activity on BSC expands, with more than 200,000 AI agents now registered on the network under ERC-8004 (onchain agent identity standard), which the announcement says is roughly 60% of all registered agents across 26 networks. Rather than building individual agents, participants are being asked to design the marketplace layer that helps users discover and hire them more easily. The winning project may be adopted as the official BNB Agent Studio marketplace and backed by BNB Chain as a standalone product with its own brand and team. Organizers said submissions will be judged mainly on how effectively the platform makes agent identity and performance data understandable to people choosing which agent to use. The hackathon has no fixed main-prize tracks, though teams can also compete for partner-sponsored awards. Build the Era offers more than $40,000 in prizes from BNB Chain and ecosystem partners, including $30,000 USDT from BNB Chain, $10,000 USDT from TermiX, 1,000 CAKE from PancakeSwap, 8004scan Pro plans from AltLayer, and 50,000 XP from Altana. BNB Chain said it will provide reference agents and skills across monitoring, grid trading, health factor, and yield strategies to help guide development, while stressing those categories are not binding judging criteria. The build period runs from August 5 to September 9, judging runs from September 9 to September 23, and the winner is scheduled to be announced on November 5.