A team of five students from Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation (APU) made a remarkable impact at the IOTA Hackathon Malaysia 2025 by winning First Place and securing the grand prize of USD 10,000. 

The hackathon, organised by the IOTA Ecosystem DLT Foundation, gathered top blockchain and Web3 talents from across the region to build real-world solutions using IOTA’s cutting-edge technologies. 

Competing under the team name “Warlocks,” Teh Jun Heng, Sam Zhi Jian, Htet Aung Hlaing, Junaid Javed, and Chiw Jie Ren stood out among the participating teams for their technical depth, innovative concept, and real-world relevance of their solution, “YumeProof.” 

This success was made possible through the mentorship of APU’s Chief Innovation & Enterprise Officer Professor Ir EurIng Ts Dr Vinesh Thiruchelvam. 

Building Trust in the Digital Age with YumeProof

In an era where fake content and AI-generated media proliferate, YumeProof targets the critical challenge of authenticity. 

The team’s solution uses a layered approach:

1. Verifying that an image was captured by a trusted and authenticated device.
2. Validating device integrity via Google’s Play Integrity Application Programming Interface (API) and using Google Confidential Virtual Machine (VM) for secure execution.
3. Anchoring verification metadata with the IOTA Identity and IOTA Notarisation frameworks.
    

This architecture offers a means to verify, rather than prevent, content tampering or machine-generation, thereby restoring trust in digital media at scale.

By leveraging the IOTA network’s ledger-anchoring capabilities, YumeProof enables a tamper-evident log of device provenance and image capture, opening the door to broader applications in journalism, digital forensics, and supply chain image verification. 

APU’s Innovation in the Blockchain Ecosystem

This success underscores APU’s commitment to nurturing talent equipped for the demands of Web3, blockchain, and cloud-native architectures.

The team’s ability to integrate cross-disciplinary tools, from secure virtualisation to device attestation to distributed ledger anchoring, demonstrates both technical initiative and forward-looking mindset.

Their performance did not only meet the hackathon criteria, but also aligned with the broader vision behind the hackathon itself, which is to attract top blockchain and Web3 talents from across the region, collaborate with industry partners and mentors, and highlight the region’s potential in building real-world Web3 solutions.

As Malaysia advances its digital ecosystem and Web3 infrastructure, accomplishments like this serve as meaningful markers of progress.

Moving forward, YumeProof is expected to continue developing beyond the hackathon stage, with opportunities for further refinement, collaboration, and practical application in promoting trust and authenticity within digital content ecosystems.