Accessible Blockchain

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trading part of our platform for users to look into blockchains to invest into that aligns with their values and causes.

Inspiration

As a team, most of us wanted to explore more into the blockchain and web3 world, as we were familiar with the phrase "fintech" but still, what is it and the purpose still sounds foreign. We were also very interested and expanding financial literacy to groups who perhaps wouldn't have the opportunity to gain a financial education and improved on their current living conditions and achieve financial goals. Similar to https://www.alinea-invest.com/, not only do we want to expand financial literacy on the unknown world of blockchain so that individuals of any age groups can read our guide on blockchains, but we also wanted to create a platform where they can trade crypto and build on their portfolios, minus a difficult UX and complex jargon. We were inspired by ZetaChain's services and goals during one of their workshops at TreeHacks. ZetaChain is the first and one public, decentralized L1 blockchain & omnichain smart contract form, and we were very interested and impressed on how the team took advantage of technology to create a impact and provide a service that enables individuals to access their assets, data, and liquidity all in a single place securely. A goal of our project is to enable individuals to manage their assets and financials all in one place while also be able to interact and engage in the platform and continue learning about blockchain and expanding their financial knowledge and investments.

What it does

The platform provides a friendly and welcoming educational page for users of any age group to learn about blockchain, the crypto world, and learn about the definitions of new terms and why blockchain is our future. Our second goal and purpose is after educating the user and they feel comfortable enough to invest in crypto, we also provide a user-friendly trading platform where they can learn about trending cryptos and blockchains and invest in companies they share similar values and causes with, displaying crypto investing in a different light. While the user may potentially make a profit from the blockchain investments, it also makes them feel good that they're investing in a company that are making a positive social impact to the world. Inspired by Alinea's investment app, the users' portfolio would represent their "playlist", where they can continue brainstorming strategies and investing in other blockchains to further diversify their collection of blockchains and investments, lowering their risks of losses and gaining better financial stability.

How we built it

In this project, we used Python, Flask, HTML, CSS, and MongoDB. It is a full-stack web application where Python handles the backend of things, including user accounts, log ins, sign ups, and log out. The frontend is handles by CSS, HTML, and Flask. MongoDB is used to keep a record of the users' accounts, usernames, passwords, so that no two user can share the same username.

Challenges we ran into

We had a lot of trouble with the backend of the project, where we keep track of the users' accounts. There was trouble connecting with our cluster in MongoDB and it took many hours of experimenting and searching for answers and trying all types of solutions. It was also difficult combining the frontend and backend code together and have they function all together as a full-stack. Lastly, the use of APIs was difficult because most of us don't really use APIs in our daily lives, so it was definitely a refresher and even if we aren't successful, we definitely learned more and brushed up our technical skills!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of brainstorming ideas that can potentially be built upon in the future that would create a lasting positive impact in the world. While the coding aspect is difficult, we think coming up with a good idea and inspiring each other to address prominent issues that can be solved with technology is also very hard with all the daily innovations and creations. I'm super glad we got to participate and listen to workshops and use our experiences to come up with ideas and inspiration, such as chatting with the founders of Alinea and how they were accepted by YCombinator, and apply their ideas into blockchain.

What we learned

Through both failures and successes in this hackathon, we all learned something from each other and in workshops. We learned Typescript (although unsuccessfully) and applying it to backend code from Convex, working with hardware through a workshop, Flask, learning more about the blockchain world and why its the future, MetaMask, and how beautiful Stanford's weather is during the daytime but also how cold it can get at night!