The Chainlink Virtual Hackathon, held from October 14th to 31st, aims to foster the development of smart contracts leveraging off-chain resources through secure oracles, which is seen as a key driver for the next phase of smart contract innovation. Open to global participants, the event offers direct access to mentors, educational resources, and live workshops to assist developers in creating decentralized applications (dApps) using Chainlink's ecosystem. Participants are encouraged to utilize new Chainlink resources like reference data sets and a marketplace of oracle nodes, with over $60,000 in bounties awarded in LINK tokens and additional sponsor prizes. The hackathon includes workshops and a community platform on Discord for networking and project planning, with judging taking place from November 1st to 7th and winners announced on November 8th.