Project Evaluation | Blazingly Fast — URL Shortener Hackathon

Find more information about the hackathon details and criteria on the official website.

Judging Criteria & Scoring Guidelines

1. Modern [Rust] Coding (Main Focus)

Language Mastery: Idioms, type system, error handling, concurrency, memory safety.

Ecosystem Usage: Crate selection, async usage, storage, dependencies, tooling.

2. System Architecture (Good to Have)

Design Principles: Modular, scalable, efficient, and maintainable.

Performance Awareness: Optimizations, data structures, bottlenecks, resource usage.

3. User Interface/Experience (Keep It Simple)

Options: HTTP API, CLI tool, or single-page form.

4. Core Features (General Recommendation)

Functionality: URL shortening, redirects, persistence, error handling.

Technical: Concurrency, storage, resource management, readability.

5. Auction Feature (Pick & Implement)

Integration: Implement a selected feature efficiently.

6. Be Innovative & Creative

Approach: Smart Rust usage, unique solutions, optimizations.

Your name

Your email

Submitted Projects

Team A-I-nstein | Shortly

I've built a URL shortener in Rust. The special feature I've decided to use is "custom URL aliases". The tool allows users to select a URL base from a predefined list of 8-letter words. The user can also provide their own custom URL base (8-letters). I've used the Axum web framework and SQLite database.

Discord: @a_i_nstein

Code - Presentation

Modern [Rust] Coding (Team A-I-nstein)

System Architecture (Team A-I-nstein)

User Interface/Experience (Team A-I-nstein)

Core Features (Team A-I-nstein)

Auction Feature (Team A-I-nstein)

Be Innovative & Creative (Team A-I-nstein)

Any comments for the team A-I-nstein? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Asakusa | Cargocut

CargoCut is a high-performance URL shortening service built with Rust, designed for scale and reliability. It leverages Quotient Filters for efficient URL lookups, Redis for caching, and distributed PostgreSQL for storage. The system features automatic data partitioning, multi-layer caching, and asynchronous S3 backups.

Discord: @hiyodori

Code

Modern [Rust] Coding (Asakusa)

System Architecture (Asakusa)

User Interface/Experience (Asakusa)

Core Features (Asakusa)

Auction Feature (Asakusa)

Be Innovative & Creative (Asakusa)

Any comments for the team Asakusa? (They'd be happy to hear them)

just chill guy | notlink

this is notlink - blazingly fast url shortener ever.

Built With - Rust, Actix, Diesel, Shuttle, Neon, NextJS, Typescript

Features:

- Shorten URLs: Convert long URLs into short, easy-to-share links.

- Data Encryption: Encrypt stored URLs to enhance security and protect user data.

- Expiration Dates: Enable URLs to expire after a certain date or number of uses.

- API Access: Provide a minimal RESTful API for programmatic access to the URL shortener.

Roadmap:

- Custom URL Aliases: Allow users to create custom shortened URLs.

- QR Code Generation: Automatically generate QR codes for each shortened URL.

Discord: @hiyodori

Code - Presentation - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (just chill guy)

System Architecture (just chill guy)

User Interface/Experience (just chill guy)

Core Features (just chill guy)

Auction Feature (just chill guy)

Be Innovative & Creative (just chill guy)

Any comments for the team just chill guy? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Team Yashfeen | Url-Shortner

Welcome to our submission for the Blazingly Fast Hackathon! Our project is a URL Shortener built using Rust. We wanted to create a high-performance, reliable, and efficient URL shortener that can handle large volumes of requests with minimal latency — which is why we chose Rust for this project.

Discord: @mystic_rustacean @2621 @yashfeen123

Code - Presentation

Modern [Rust] Coding (Team Yashfeen)

System Architecture (Team Yashfeen)

User Interface/Experience (Team Yashfeen)

Core Features (Team Yashfeen)

Auction Feature (Team Yashfeen)

Be Innovative & Creative (Team Yashfeen)

Any comments for the team Yashfeen? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Single Threaded | tlong

A high performance url shortner service written in rust.

Discord: @htanmo

Code

Modern [Rust] Coding (Single Threaded)

System Architecture (Single Threaded)

User Interface/Experience (Single Threaded)

Core Features (Single Threaded)

Auction Feature (Single Threaded)

Be Innovative & Creative (Single Threaded)

Any comments for the team Single Threaded? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Solo Trooper | Trim It

This is a URL shortener I made in rust using Axum, Tokio. It supports expiration of links.

Discord: @gurshaan_17

Code - Presentation - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (Solo Trooper)

System Architecture (Solo Trooper)

User Interface/Experience (Solo Trooper)

Core Features (Solo Trooper)

Auction Feature (Solo Trooper)

Be Innovative & Creative (Solo Trooper)

Any comments for the team Solo Trooper? (They'd be happy to hear them)

sanjay sah | Blazingly Fast URL Shortener

A high-performance URL shortener service built with Rust features encryption, MongoDB storage, and a clean REST API.

Features

⚡ High-performance Rust implementation

🔒 URL encryption using AES-256-GCM

📦 MongoDB storage with indexed lookups

🔄 Automatic URL deduplication

⏰ Optional URL expiration

📊 Click tracking

🌐 RESTful API

Discord: @sanjaysah, @aashutoshgupta5134

Code - Presentation

Modern [Rust] Coding (sanjay sah)

System Architecture (sanjay sah)

User Interface/Experience (sanjay sah)

Core Features (sanjay sah)

Auction Feature (sanjay sah)

Be Innovative & Creative (sanjay sah)

Any comments for the team sanjay sah? (They'd be happy to hear them)

BitShifters | Shrink

The project is a URL Shortener Service in Rust. The link in the demo is (almost) a shortened URL (please remove .com from the link), but contains the IP of the server where the project is hosted. API details are mentioned in the design diagram of the project's README.md.

Discord: @theteachr

Code - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (BitShifters)

System Architecture (BitShifters)

User Interface/Experience (BitShifters)

Core Features (BitShifters)

Auction Feature (BitShifters)

Be Innovative & Creative (BitShifters)

Any comments for the team BitShifters? (They'd be happy to hear them)

s3r1msultan | rxst.me

rxst.me is designed for speed, security, and full alias control. Here’s what makes it unique: Custom URL Aliases – Choose your own short link like rxst.me/mybrand. Leet-Style Suggestions – If your alias is taken, rxst.me suggests cool variations like myl1nk or my4li45. Expiration & Cleanup – Every short URL automatically expires in 6 months, ensuring no outdated links. Blazingly Fast – Built with Rust and Actix-Web, making it one of the fastest URL shorteners.

Discord: @s3r1msultan

Code - Presentation - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (s3r1msultan)

System Architecture (s3r1msultan)

User Interface/Experience (s3r1msultan)

Core Features (s3r1msultan)

Auction Feature (s3r1msultan)

Be Innovative & Creative (s3r1msultan)

Any comments for the team s3r1msultan? (They'd be happy to hear them)

FlashURL | FlashURL

This is a URL shortener built with Rust and Axum for the BlazinglyFast Hackathon. It provides functionality to shorten URLs and generate QR codes for them. It's deployed with Render, on a free plan. Expect longer wait times after inactivity. You can visit the site at: https://flashurl-2u1k.onrender.com Features Shortens long URLs into short ones Redirects to the original URL when accessing a short URL, which is shareable to anyone Generates a QR code for the URL Technologies Used Rust: Programming language Axum: Web framework SQLx: Database interaction with SQLite qrcodegen: QR Code generation image: Image handling for QR code generation Render: For deployment

Discord: @blazed0ut

Code - Presentation - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (FlashURL)

System Architecture (FlashURL)

User Interface/Experience (FlashURL)

Core Features (FlashURL)

Auction Feature (FlashURL)

Be Innovative & Creative (FlashURL)

Any comments for the team FlashURL? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Dhruvin | blz

I am a solo participant, and I put in a lot of time in it. I just lack skills to write about the project. I can walk through the code should we set up a call, but writing about it is hard. I wrote a gist of what I used here: https://codeberg.org/dhruvin/blz/src/branch/main/hackathon.md Also, I spent all my time developing :(

Discord: @dhruvin

Code - Demo

Modern [Rust] Coding (Dhruvin)

System Architecture (Dhruvin)

User Interface/Experience (Dhruvin)

Core Features (Dhruvin)

Auction Feature (Dhruvin)

Be Innovative & Creative (Dhruvin)

Any comments for the team Dhruvin? (They'd be happy to hear them)

Team Blaze | blazing-fast-url-shortner

A high-performance URL shortener built with Rust supporting custom alias, featuring clean architecture, efficient storage, and robust error handling.

⚡ High-performance URL shortening

🔄 Concurrent request handling

💾 Persistent storage using Sled embedded database

✨ Clean architecture with proper separation of concerns

🛡️ Input validation and error handling

📝 Basic logging

🔍 Health check endpoint

🚀 API versioning

🎯 Minimal dependencies

Discord: @sujalshah

Code - Presentation - Demo