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  Main trade screen - Live Webapp

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  Main Trade Screen - Figma Draft

About BarterHarbor

Inspiration

BarterHarbor was born out of a genuine concern for the web3 community. We observed a disturbing trend of scams in peer-to-peer trading, where trust was a currency that was too often devalued. Our team was driven by a vision of a safer trading environment, akin to the simple days of trading Pokémon cards, but now with the added complexity and value of NFTs. We identified a glaring gap in the market - the need for a secure, trustless platform where people could trade NFTs without fear of being scammed. This gap led to the inception of BarterHarbor, a platform that not only facilitates fair trading but also preserves the joy and authenticity of peer-to-peer exchange.

What We Learned

Our journey was as much about learning as it was about creating. We dove into the intricacies of the Near protocol, where we learned to mint NFTs on Mintbase, deploy smart contracts using the Near CLI, and understand the foundational workings of sub-accounts. Our exploration led us to Mintbase's GraphQL indexer, a superior alternative to Pagoda's for handling NFT data, which became an integral part of our platform's architecture.

How We Built It

The blueprint of BarterHarbor was first visualized on Figma, followed by the construction of the webapp using React. We leveraged the robust infrastructure of Cloudflare for both the front-end and our serverless backend. Although we began with an open-source escrow contract with plans for customization, time constraints kept us from tailoring it as much as we had hoped. Nevertheless, it serves as a strong foundation for secure transactions on our platform.

Challenges Faced

Our voyage was not without its storms. We grappled with Pagoda's API, which failed to return critical NFT title data. This challenge turned into an opportunity when we discovered Mintbase's API, which became our beacon, providing the necessary data without the need for an API key. This allowed us to implement a seamless frontend experience. Despite our successes, we hit a bottleneck in development that left us with a functional 'Create Proposal' feature, but without the time to fully realize the 'Accept/Reject Trade' interface. This is a challenge we are eager to address as we continue to evolve BarterHarbor.

The Road Ahead

As we cast our sails forward, we remain committed to refining BarterHarbor, enhancing its features, and expanding its reach. Our voyage is far from over, and we are excited to navigate the uncharted waters of web3 trading with the community by our side.

Built With

• cloudflare
• figma
• github
• mintbase
• pagoda
• react