Community & Progress
August has been a month of steady progress across competitions, research, and community building. From challenge extensions and payouts to team spotlights and product updates, the CrunchDAO ecosystem continues to grow stronger both in scale and in depth.
Here’s a look back at everything that’s been happening at Crunch 
ADIA Lab Structural Breaks Challenge is Extended!
The ADIA Lab Structural Break Challenge deadline has been extended by 15 days, now closing on September 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM CET. If you haven’t started yet, this is the perfect time to jump in and the ADIA Lab team has prepared a quickstarter notebook to help you get up to speed fast.
DataCrunch Payout Processed
The latest DataCrunch payout has been processed, and the leaderboard has been updated. 
Top submissions are in, and the meta-model continues to evolve. If you haven’t submitted your code yet, you’re missing out on future scaling, get your model into the run loop today.
The rewards for Equity Market Neutral Crunch are distributed based on cumulative returns. Submit often, iterate smart, and keep an eye on where you stand.
Team Spotlight - Saroj Mahapatra
Introducing Saroj Mahapatra, Head of Enterprise Data at Crunch!
With 25 years across buy-side and sell-side firms, Saroj brings deep expertise in trading, technology, and product development to our team. At Crunch, his current focus is the Mid-One feed for FX markets building a data product shaped by real trader needs.
Saroj’s extensive background managing complex financial systems gives him unique insight into how predictive intelligence can transform market data.
In his own words:
“I’ve worked with many data vendors and market makers, but the idea of plugging into a global network of predictive intelligence is something entirely new. Crunch is not just building a better feed; it’s opening the feed itself to innovation.”
Cruncher Spotlight - Team Amaris
In the Autoimmune Disease ML Crunch 2, Team Amaris built a winning pipeline to predict immune gene expression directly from tissue images, skipping sequencing altogether.
Using Vision Transformers, multi-headed attention, and a variational encoder-decoder, their model turned raw slides into molecular insight, compressing weeks of lab work into minutes.
Team: Sukrit G., Amit Kumar, Maninder Kaur (IIT Ropar), Dr. Michele Ceccarelli (U. Miami), Dr. Raghvendra Mall (TII, Abu Dhabi).
Read their solution writeup.
Cruncher Spotlight - Manfred Seiwald
After a 30-year career in tech at Skidata AG, Manfred Seiwald has shifted his analytical skills to biosciences, now volunteering with Prof. Fortelny’s group at the University of Salzburg.
In the Autoimmune Disease ML Crunch 2, he built an embedding-based model to predict full transcriptome profiles from small gene subsets showing how structured thinking can unlock new progress in biology.
Crunch Community Call
In August, Jean Herelle and Philipp Wassibaeur joined the community for a live AMA! 
They shared key updates from the past quarter and answered questions on:
→ Transitioning from one-off consulting to scalable product development
→ Progress on bringing Crunch on-chain and advancing privacy-preserving techniques
→ Ongoing collaborations with ADIA Lab and the Broad Institute
→ Community growth and model submission milestones
→ What’s next for upcoming crunches and the protocol roadmap
Build Your Profile on Crunch!
Every Cruncher is building the intelligence layer for tomorrow’s markets and now you can showcase your journey on the new Crunch Profile.
Your profile highlights:
- Bio – share who you are and what drives your work
- Contributions – a heatmap of your daily activity across Crunch challenges
- Competitions – track your entries, progress, and results across ongoing and past crunches
Claim your space and build your profile today → hub.crunchdao.com/dashboard
Stay Tuned
Keep crunching, keep iterating, and let’s shape the intelligence layer for tomorrow’s markets together.
Stay active on hub.crunchdao.com/dashboard and don’t miss the next round of updates!