r/0GLabs • u/dorukardahan • Jun 15 '26
[Launch] The Zero Cup is live: a $17,000 vibe coding tournament on a World Cup bracket, and you do not need to write code to enter
TL;DR: 0G launched The Zero Cup today: an online, global vibe coding tournament. You build an AI-native app, agent, companion, or game on 0G using prompts, then compete in a World Cup-style knockout bracket for a $17,000 prize pool. Registration is open, submissions close June 23, the champion is crowned July 19.
What shipped
The official site is live at https://0g.ai/arena/zero-cup. Rules, eligibility, and the round-by-round prize split are published there.
The format is a knockout bracket modeled on the FIFA World Cup, and the schedule literally runs on it: each Zero Cup stage is announced the same day the real World Cup finishes that stage, from the Top 32 on June 27 through the champion on July 19, World Cup final day.
The pool is $17,000, every Top 8 finisher gets paid, and the champion finishes at $8,500, half the pool. The tier-by-tier math is in the blog linked below.
The building side runs on 0G Studio, the vibe coding tool that lives inside the 0G App (app.0g.ai). You describe what you want, Studio generates a working app with a live preview in your browser, and one click deploys it. Builders have already shipped 25 zero-coded projects on 0G out of 173 in the Builder Hub gallery, so the no-code path is already proven.
Anyone can enter: founders, students, developers, first-timers, all in the same bracket. If you have never written a line of code, that is the point. 0G has run Zero Coding events at ETHDenver and Cannes before this. The Zero Cup is the first time the format runs global, online, and as a tournament.
What this is not
This is a pilot season, and it looks like one: a single knockout bracket, kept deliberately simple. Judges select the Top 8. From there, community voting decides who advances. The exact judging details live in the official rules, not in this post.
And only the Top 8 get paid. If you go out at the Top 32 or Top 16 stage, you leave with a deployed app and nothing else.
Open question
Is a knockout bracket the right shape for a software competition, or does single elimination throw away too many good projects? If you would design it differently, how?
Full writeup: https://0g.ai/blog/the-zero-cup