My first Blockchain Hackathon

I with two other amazing people participated in the I_Hack hackathon organized by E-cell, IIT Bombay in Jan 2019. The hackathon was of blockchain track and the participants were free to choose their own idea and work on it. For me, blockchain was a complete new track, because it is an emerging technology and generally college curriculums does not cover all these yet. I only had attended a workshop a week before the hackthon which was on making a sample toy DApp. However, I participated, looking forward to meet people, explore a new technology and have some goodies :P.

My understanding of Blockchain

Going by the name, It is actually a chain of blocks. It is a growing list of records which we call blocks. The blocks are linked with cryptography. Each block contains three things:

  • A cryptographic hash of the previous block
  • A timestamp
  • Transaction data

So… what’s so interesting about all these? Blockchain actually removes the complete ownership of someone over something by bringing decentralized apps.

oh jeez!(How was the rick and morty reference BTW? :P) What are decentralized apps now? Basically, decentralized apps (DApps) are such apps which run on P2P network of computers rather than on a single computer. To understand this better, let’s dive into a real world example. We use apps like Facebook, uber, youtube etc. They all have a similarity that they are owned by someone or some organisation and the organisation holds the complete power to do any changes to the app, user data, policies etc. We often see a surge price on uber. What if, there is actually no surge and it is business tactic (which I hope not because I love uber as a company and this is just an example). Basically there is no transparency in such apps and and people can not know what’s actually going on at the backend.

DApps come into play solving this problem as they are made on some blockchain network and any changes in the app is verfied by majority of the poeple on the network. Generally, The network is resistant to changes.

What involves in making a DApp?

A DApp consists web apps and smart contracts. A smart contract is simply a contract but digital. It is written with solidity programming language. You can visit remix at https://remix.ethereum.org to try your hands on solidity programs. We can simply summarize a DApp to 60-70 percent of web developemnt and 30-40 percent of smart contract development.

Our project:

After rejecting 2 ideas half way in the development, Finally we decided to make a crowdfunding/donation platform involving only P2P crypto-currency transactions. We imagined a futuristic idea where almost everyone has a hash code to send/receive cryptos and government or any authorised organisation makes a record of the financial status of persons in a nummerical value (let’s say between 1 - 10). And the database is populated with all the entries of person’s hash code and the financial index. We had thought of adding more features to the data like, cause of need for money, location/country etc. Based on the financial index and other algorithms, some profiles of the needy are shown on the homepage to the donor and he/she can choose and donate from them.

What problem it intended to solve?

We donate money for some cause to a 3rd party crowdfunding website or NGO. We put our trust on the party that our fund is going to reach the needy. However, we are not assured what actually happens and how much of it is actually reaches to the people or the community. This platform is intended to bridge that gap between the donor and the needy.

Implementation:

Our project can be found at https://github.com/SiluPanda/CrypDonor