Hack to the Future: InfluxDB 3 Hackathon

By Charles Mahler / Developer
May 05, 2025

To celebrate the GA launch of InfluxDB 3, we’re running a month-long hackathon starting on May 5, where developers will have the chance to win a total of $8,000 in prizes and swag by building projects using InfluxDB 3 Core and Enterprise.

Hack to the Future

InfluxDB 3 provides a whole new host of features and functionality that improve performance and developer experience when working with time series data. We want you to use those features to have fun and be creative while tackling real-world problems involving time series data. Here are a few InfluxDB features to consider using as part of your project:

InfluxDB 3 Processing Engine

InfluxDB 3’s Processing Engine provides an embedded Python VM that allows you to collect, process, enrich, and take action on your data from within InfluxDB. The Processing Engine builds and improves upon the functionality of tools like Kapacitor, Flux Tasks, and Telegraf. You can trigger your plugins to execute when data is written, at scheduled intervals, or via HTTP requests. You can create a plugin for your specific use case or make a more general-purpose plugin beneficial to the entire community.

InfluxDB 3 Enterprise server modes

Enterprise provides scalability and flexibility in how you deploy InfluxDB. Server modes allow you to have dedicated nodes in your cluster, allowing you to optimize and fine-tune performance for your use case. The following modes are available:

• Ingest: Handles writing incoming data.
• Query: Serves queries and ensures consistent performance. You can scale these nodes horizontally by adding nodes and pointing them at object storage.
• Compact: Compaction optimizes storage costs and maintains query performance. Splitting off a compactor node isolates this process without impacting write and query performance.
• Process: Allows for a dedicated processing engine node, useful for custom transformations or heavy data processing isolated from reads/writes.
• All: You still have the option to run all operations on a single node, although this is typically used for prototyping or small deployments.

Latest Value and Distinct Value caches

InfluxDB 3 provides two different in-memory caches for optimizing query performance for different types of queries, giving you further control over the performance of your application.

The Latest Value Cache (LVC) is designed for a common time series use case, the need to get the most recently written data for a specific field. Using the LVC can reduce the response time for these queries to below 10 milliseconds. When configuring the LVC you can define the N value for the number of most recent values you want to be stored.

The Distinct Value Cache (DVC) is used to return tag values and metadata. It works similarly to the LVC and is typically used for UIs that require custom data to be returned with low latency for exploratory data analysis.

Get inspired

The InfluxData team participated in some earlier hackathons, so if you need some inspiration for what to build using InfluxDB 3, here are some of the projects they built:

• Iceberg table export: Exports data from InfluxDB as an Iceberg table, allowing any tool with Iceberg compatibility to access the data.
• Natural language to SQL query: This plugin accepts natural language queries and then uses your database schema to create a valid SQL query and return the data without having to write SQL.
• Data generator: Sometimes, you just want to get started with InfluxDB without connecting to your data source. This plugin allows you to define a YAML config for your data and then creates data to fit your schema.
• Edge to cloud data replication: Sends data from your InfluxDB instance to another remote InfluxDB instance, with support for queuing, compression, downsampling, filtering, and data validation.
• Time series forecasting and visualization plugin: Demonstrates how the processing engine can be used to create forecasts and visualizations from your data without requiring external tools.

Key details for the Hackathon

• Hackathon submissions will open at 9:00 AM PT on May 5 and close at 11:59 PM PT on June 8th.
• Enter as an individual or as a team with up to 3 members.
• Build whatever you want, as long as it uses InfluxDB 3 as a key component.
• Entrants must be 21 years or older and legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia.

Learn more on the registration page at influxdata.com/influxdb-3-hackathon-2025.

Prizes

The top 3 overall projects will win the prize money, while all participants have the chance to earn InfluxDB swag.

• 1st place - $3000
• 2nd place - $2000
• 3rd place - $1000

In addition to the grand prizes for the top overall projects, there will be additional category prizes with the chance to win $250. The categories are:

• Best usage of AI: The best usage of machine learning or LLMs with InfluxDB 3
• Most Valuable Plugin (MVP): The best plugin built using the InfluxDB 3 processing engine
• Best IoT application: The most impressive IoT-focused project
• Best 3rd party integration: The best utilization of a third-party integration with InfluxDB 3
• Most creative: The project that is most creative in terms of functionality or use case

Every winner and runner-up will also receive InfluxDB swag. Members of the InfluxData team will review and score projects. Full details on the judging criteria and prize eligibility can be found on the registration page.

Submission

Submit your project using this form before 11:59PM PT on June 8. Make sure to register before submitting your project. Your submission must contain a link to the GitHub repository and a demo video.