Inspiration:
In 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global public health concern, with 1 in 3 people worldwide experiencing it regularly (Meta-Gallup). As a traveler to 32 countries and 41 states, I’ve seen firsthand how connection and culture unite us—yet the travel experience often lacks ease and intimacy.
Currency exchange remains outdated, costly, and inefficient, often with 5–25% lost in fees. By leveraging blockchain and crypto, we can simplify global payments, reduce fees, and empower travelers.
I created a mobile app to address both these pain points: making travel transactions seamless and fostering human connection. Rooted in UN SDG 8, it supports local economies, rewards meaningful experiences, and helps tackle the loneliness epidemic...one journey at a time.
Travelers are the light of the world, so let's equip them!
What it does: AURUM is skip-the-line money exchange & gamified collectibles for travelers… no banks, no borders (and exchange fees as low as 3%)! Travelers can voice activate a payment, use any currency or payment method, and collect digital asset rewards everywhere they go!
How we built it: I used Bolt.new to create a clickable, non-functioning MVP with screens I designed in Figma. This helped me create the app flow and think through the functional details of each screen. After that, I started adding in API connections and other integrations, like microphone and camera for voice-activated payments and QR code scanning. I also leveraged APIs from other companies, like ReOwn to create the wallet connection/sign in features.
Challenges we ran into: The voice recognition has been tricker than I thought, it would work and then not work within the same deployment. Sometimes it worked perfectly on desktop and then not at all not the mobile. I tried to optimize this for mobile, but I was running into challenges with this.
Accomplishments that we're proud of: I cannot believe I have an entire app that I can click through with zero coding background. I simply used prompts and API references to create this app. Now I can take this front-end draft to a back-end engineering team to create the full app. I can’t believe I am so close to releasing the first version for real user testing!
What we learned: I need to have developer accounts set up with Google and Apple…. I will leverage this from my engineering team.
What's next for AURUM - MVP - VC: I am looking for a front-end engineer and UX/UI designer to add to my team. I have a blockchain-based back-end developer and smart contracts developer that are interested in working with me to bring this to testnet/mainnet. I can’t wait for people to start using it in the real world. My goal is to have main net deployment for DevConnect/ETHGlobal Buenos Aires in November since that is a huge community of crypto-savvy travelers (~30K people).
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