Careth

CarEth

Inspiration

My everyday morning routine starts with sipping coffee with a book in hand from my balcony. I usually see one particular car parked there almost everyday without any daily usage. Moreover, I was also just getting started with my crypto journey. I started to wonder if there was a possibility for a common ground. And then I started my research on the web where I found this startup called Turro where they let car owners rent out their cars directly to customers who are looking for car rental which is more personalized unlike the commercial car rentals available in the market. And that caught me thinking about using crypto here instead of the regular payment system. This could help us reduce the dependency on different currencies across geo locations by pivoting the payment structure to crypto.

What it does

The DApp enables one to rent cars directly from the car owners providing the city to pickup and the required dates. This would give the user a list of results available for them to choose where they can pick up the car at their nearest location given in the maps.

How we built it

We used React and JavaScript for the major part of the front end. Backed was built using Moralis and solidity for the smart contract with the help of Remix IDE. Initially we came up with a layout of the look and then started building the front end, after the look of the DApp came to being, we started building the smart contract for the DApp and then deployed it using Moralis and NFT.Storage for storing the related car rental images for accessing whenever required.

Challenges we ran into

I was very new to both the front end, having very little experience in HTML and CSS and the whole idea of building smart contracts in general as I was just a beginner into the blockchain world. I happened to look at a lot of resources and learn on the go and implement them as I envisioned them. The next challenge was initially, I wanted to use Matic as the mode of crypto for payment as it was very fast and had less gas fees. But I had to drop the whole plan last minute as there was an error in the faucet or my wallet where I wasn’t able to get the sample Matic tokens to test the transaction. This is the reason why I had to shift to Ether as the payment option. But, in future we would definitely include Matic as well.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The major accomplishment for us is we have gotten the opportunity to build a practical use case DApp and learn alongside it. I have always wanted to learn the front end of development for a few months and this gave me an opportunity to learn and execute at the same time. I am also an avid crypto enthusiast and always wanted to learn the inner workings of the blockchain and crypto. By learning solidity and putting those skills onto CarEth was a personal accomplishment in itself.

What we learned

Being a backend developer, I learnt that having overall knowledge on the full stack is essential and by working on CarEth gave me an opportunity to work on front end, backend and also on the decentralization part of the project for an overall personal development.

What's next for Careth

Next for CarEth is having an option for the users to select any mode of crypto payments. And also an option to rent out their own cars in the DApp for other customers as well including a private messaging system once the renter confirms the car, the owner and the renter can have access to private messages where they can interact about next steps for pickup. We would also expand to more cities worldwide for a better reach, mainly to cities where there is less availability of cabs or taxis specially in the developing countries.