September 3, 2026 - WEEX, a globally leading crypto trading platform, announced the pre-registration opening for WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2: "AI Wars II: The Algorithm Era".
After exploring the path from AI models and quantitative strategies to the real trading market in Season 1, Season 2 further upgrades the competition mechanism to a real "AI vs. Human" trading duel. It invites global AI developers, quantitative traders, Web3 Builder teams, and individuals to join Team AI or Team Human. They will engage in a five-round trading showdown in a real market environment, competing for rankings and rewards based on PnL% return performance.
The WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 runs from September 3, 00:00 to October 12, 23:59 (UTC+8). The event is divided into three stages: pre-registration, five rounds of competition, and the awards ceremony. Pre-registration (https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon) is now officially open, offering an exclusive 100,000 USDT Early Bird Prize Pool, available only to the first 20,000 registrants on a first-come, first-served basis!
From S1 to S2: AI Trading Enters the "Man vs. Machine" Stage
In March 2026, the WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 1, which spanned several months and covered offline events in 9 cities worldwide, officially concluded.
As one of the global events focusing on the Crypto × AI trading track, Season 1 attracted over 200 participating teams and individuals, with a total prize pool reaching $1.8 million. Participants needed to connect their AI models to the trading system to test their strategy's stability, profitability, and risk control under real market conditions. The event ultimately crowned 1 champion, 2 second-place winners, 3 third-place winners, and 4 excellence award winners. The champion received the highest-tier rewards, including a 2024 Bentley Bentayga S, a sponsorship package worth $80,000, and $20,000 worth of WXT tokens.
The practice of Season 1 proved that the core competitiveness of AI trading does not lie solely in the model itself. Data quality, signal generation, parameter adaptation, execution efficiency, and risk management all directly affect whether a strategy can move from a laboratory environment to the real market. During its global BUILDERS series of events in Season 1, WEEX also engaged in extensive on-site exchanges with global developers and quantitative researchers on issues such as data cleansing, signal generation, risk control, model interpretability, and API execution.
Entering Season 2, WEEX brings a highly anticipated question onto the stage of real trading competition: Can AI Agents defeat human traders?
This question is becoming an important experimental direction in the intersection of AI and Crypto.
As the capabilities of large models continue to improve, AI is progressing from information analysis and assisted decision-making to Agents capable of autonomously invoking tools, executing operations, and completing economic activities. Coinbase Institutional noted in its latest research that one of Crypto's significant values lies in providing autonomous AI Agents with infrastructure for wallets, payments, settlement, and on-chain interactions, enabling AI to gradually shift from "helping humans complete tasks" to "autonomously completing transactions."
In this context, trading naturally becomes a crucial scenario for testing AI's practical capabilities. WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 aims to conduct an open, continuous, and quantifiable experiment around the question, "Who is better at trading, AI or humans?" through real trading results.
Battle Reopens: Comprehensive Upgrade of AI Wars II Gameplay
After registering for the WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2, users can choose to join Team AI or Team Human. Users choosing Team AI can connect via API to an AI Agent to participate in trading using automated strategies; users choosing Team Human can rely on personal judgment and manual operations for trading. Both sides will face off in a real market environment, and rankings will be determined based on PnL% return performance in each round. Ultimately, the two factions will compete for event rewards based on actual trading results.
The participation process is mainly divided into three steps:
• First, complete registration (https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon) and activate your account. After the contract account assets reach 100 USDT, event data statistics begin.
• Then, continuously improve the rate of return through AI strategies or manual trading, aiming for the top spots on each round's leaderboard.
• Finally, win corresponding rewards based on competition performance.
This means this AI trading hackathon is not merely an algorithmic showcase, nor a traditional hackathon focused only on code or model parameters. Instead, it is a full-chain competition closer to the real trading environment, encompassing "strategy - execution - risk control - returns."
For AI developers, the core challenge is to enable Agents to truly possess market understanding, strategic decision-making, and dynamic risk control capabilities. For professional traders and individual investors, it requires proving whether human experience, judgment, and on-the-spot reactions in complex market environments still hold advantages difficult for AI to replace.
Five Rounds of Competition: Letting Victory Withstand the Test of Market and Time
WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 will transform the competition between AI and humans from a one-off contest into a continuous strategic confrontation through five consecutive rounds of competition.
The event schedule is as follows:
Pre-registration: September 3 — September 6
Round 1: September 7 — September 11
Round 2: September 14 — September 18
Round 3: September 21 — September 25
Round 4: September 28 — October 2
Round 5: October 5 — October 9
Awards Ceremony: October 12
Compared to traditional competitions, the multi-round format means the impact of one-time luck factors is further weakened. Continuous performance across different market phases and volatility environments will become an important dimension for evaluating trading capabilities.
Especially for AI strategies, the ability of a single model to maintain stability across different market states is more challenging than achieving high returns within a single time window. A review of the winning projects from WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 1 also revealed that structured input, clear scoring logic, dynamic risk exposure, and adaptive parameters are crucial capabilities for an AI trading system to move from experimentation to practical application.
600,000 USDT Prize Pool, Multi-faceted Competition Across Returns, Tasks, and AI Performance
WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 features a total prize pool of 600,000 USDT, with multi-layered incentives designed around different participation methods.
Breakdown:
Main Prize Pool 100,000 USDT: The winning team divides 70%; the losing team still divides 30%.
New User Prize Pool 70,000 USDT: Unlocked by new users completing registration and participating in contract trading.
Task Prize Pool 300,000 USDT: Unlocked continuously by completing daily check-ins and providing support for your chosen team.
AI Elite Performance Award 30,000 USDT: Exclusive reward for Team AI, ranked based on risk-adjusted return performance.
Additionally, the event establishes a separate AI Leaderboard, providing extra incentives for outstanding AI traders. The event features five leaderboards: "Return Rate King," "Risk Control Master," "Trading Volume Pro," "Profit Champion," and "Win Streak King." The Top 10 participants on each leaderboard can share corresponding AI large model token rewards.
This design also means AI Wars II is no longer solely about the single question of "who ultimately wins AI vs. Human." It further decomposes trading performance into multiple dimensions such as return capability, risk control, trading volume, profit stability, and sustained performance capability. In other words, a truly excellent AI trader may not necessarily be the one who earns the most, but could be the one with the best risk control, highest stability, or most consistent performance.
Early Bird Pre-registration: First 20,000 Registrants Share 100,000 USDT
As the warm-up phase before the official start of WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2, WEEX will open Early Bird Pre-registration from September 3 to September 6: https://www.weex.com/events/human-vs-ai-weex-hackathon
The first 20,000 pre-registered users can participate in sharing the 100,000 USDT Early Bird Prize Pool on a first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, early registrants can complete event tasks in advance to accumulate activity points for subsequent competitions. According to the rules, during the event, completing tasks such as registration, daily check-ins, liking, sharing, and contract trading can earn corresponding points. Users can use points to support Team AI or Team Human and predict the final winning faction; successful predictions yield more points, which can be exchanged for corresponding rewards.
Therefore, even if users do not immediately participate in AI trading or manual trading, they can still engage in this event through tasks, predictions, and community interactions. This makes participation in WEEX AI Trading Hackathon Season 2 even more open: you can be an AI developer or a quantitative trader; you can place orders yourself or have an AI Agent execute strategies for you via API; you can even vote for the faction you support based solely on your judgment of the market and AI capabilities.
From AI models to the Agent economy, Crypto is becoming new financial infrastructure for AI. Through two consecutive seasons of the AI Trading Hackathon, WEEX hopes to provide an open experimental field for global developers: let algorithms enter the market, let trading results speak, and let AI capabilities be validated in real environments.
AI Wars II: The Algorithm Era—The true victor is determined by the real market.
