Catch

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Our elevator pitch:

We are building a web3 lifestyle app to help crypto-curious people to break into web3. We believe the biggest problem is that people do not know where to start their journey.

And how do you start with something usually, if you don’t know anything about it? Ask friends.

We believe that exactly these social bonds are key to opening web3 to outsiders. It makes the journey more personal and keeps users attached to the ecosystem.

Hence, we are building an app that encourages web3 natives to invite crypto-curious friends to token-gated parties, events and other experiences while exposing them to web3 socially.

Inspiration

Mainstream people simply do not know where to start their journey into web3.

Many great developers and teams have set out to solve this problem. Most solutions are either an immersive learning journey, tokenized “how-to tutorials” or simply using youtube and other platforms to understand how web3 works. But these experiences are sometimes cumbersome, not really motivating and people churn after a while as the benefits diminish throughout time.

We want to do it differently. We believe the solutions are meaningful relationships that bring and keep you in the web3 community. Through friends and personal connections, we enable new users to break into web3 in a gamified way.

What does it do?

We are building a web3 lifestyle app that enables users easy and motivating access to web3 experiences IRL and online to help the next 1B dive into the crypto sphere.

• Invite only: We believe stronger communities form if the relationships that are created are meaningful. By getting invited by friends, you have a social component that motivates and supports you on your first steps while enjoying the perks of web3. This keeps people motivated and increases long-term interaction with the platform and the ecosystem as people stick to platforms where their friends are.

• Unique Experiences: To provide new joiners with enough utility to join our dApp, we will provide exclusive deals, secret events and other experiences. Things they can only get if they are part of our community.

• Find great deals IRL and online: Receive discounts in the coolest bars and restaurants or from businesses like Nike.

• Enjoy exclusive events and experiences: Get access to special parties, web3 meet-ups and other curated experiences with like-minded people from all over the world.

• Learn how web3 caters to your other interests: We'll provide access to projects that cater to the interests of our users. The interests (i.e. art, finance, social; see 0:55 in the video) can be indicated in the "sign up screen". The content displayed in the app is then filtered based on these preferences so that you only see what is relevant for you. This way, people not only learn that web3 is transactional but as well provides more benefits. I.e. they can learn as well how to make the world a better place by supporting tokenised projects in the Amazonas.

• Onboard to earn: Both, new and existing web3 users will earn by interacting with our app. New users will earn tokens for participating in any of the experiences we are hosting on our dApp. This might entail, i.e. getting catch tokens for attending 5 web3 related events in their area, supporting a good cause through our marketplace or just enjoying a drink in a bar with web3 friends. The "mentors" are rewarded with a share of all tokens earned by their "mentees". This also motivates existing users to encourage new members to explore as many aspects of web3 as possible.

How we built it

We created a number of smart contracts and handled the tokenization of events that can be collected. The project was split into two client dApps:

• one that handles content creation that can be tagged around the globe.

• one player client application.

Both dApps were constructed with the help of next.js, tailwind, redux and near-api-js as well as express framework for handling mutable data of project creation. We’ve hosted our client applications with Google Cloud Platform with dockerized containers. We generated our avatars with the help of Dall-e openAI and we’re aiming to automate this with their API integration over time.

Challenges we ran into

• Do we have the right product-market fit? We have started out as an application for scavenger hunts. But we quickly learned that this is not necessarily the biggest issue we have to solve. Throughout our journey, we have refined our idea and found a greater purpose: to bring more people into web3. A big shout out here to all the helping hands: Josh (Astro DAO), William (Nearverse), and many more.

• How do we onboard business partners and make it interesting for them? We believe that this is among the biggest bottlenecks of our two-sided marketplace. As we are facing the “chicken and egg” problem, like any B2C2B marketplace, we need to start with “guerilla marketing campaigns” to show traction on our platform. This traction then is our foot in the door to convince other partners to cooperate with us. Happy to discuss our strategy in more detail!

• From the user's perspective, it will be difficult to create a unique experience and keep them engaged in the platform. This is why we will start with an “invite only” approach to:

Keep control of the experience without growing faster than we should to remain in the driver's seat of providing high-quality experiences.

Keep interactions high and “meaningful”. This means that we do not want too many people so that "mentors" still can keep track of the progress of their "mentees".

Create a buzz that enables us to virally grow as soon as the processes are more hardened and we are ready to open it to the public. There is no worse experience than opening an app which is buggy and crashing all the time.

• We ran as well into the issue to solve the problem of inaccurate & unreliable GPS data. This is still something we need to fix.

• Currently NEAR web wallet doesn’t provide the best UX, some smart contract responses could be returned to the client earlier.

• Better data would be great. To define our market entry strategy, we need to understand where the biggest communities on the planet are located. This is then for us the natural point of entry. We would be happy if NEAR could provide us insights i.e. where most of their users are active.

• The biggest challenge to come is now to “battle test” our idea with real users and see if we have found product-market fit.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• We redefined the idea from a scavenger hunt to building a bridge from web2 to web3 for everyone. After having talked to many many people, we are now confident that we have a solid idea to present to the judges.

• We built a clickable prototype with an amazing design in just two days (thanks Patricia <3).

• We received strong (positive and negative) feedback from various people. Especially the negative feedback was important to help us to find blind spots and validate our idea. (THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE!!)

• We found various professionals from different backgrounds that are willing to help us with the next steps to rolling out our product.

• We have as well begun to establish relations with business partners from the NEAR ecosystem and outside that want to be launched on our dApp (and we are happy for any support to find more). To name some: Nearverse, Rehydr8, Legacy Forum (an Amazon rainforest project, link) and Zaya Ribeiro (model and indigenous activist).

What we've learned

• It's all about the team: The most important thing we have learned is that we - as a team - have amazing skills that are mutually reinforcing and hacking was daunting but very very much fun! For 2 out of 3 of us, it was our first hackathon and we love the experience!

• Mental flexibility is key: We have learned to use our “mental flexibility” to pivot our idea in a very short time to a new direction while having to perform towards a tight deadline.

• Focus is paramount: During the many iterations we had, our Northstar was always the problem we are eager to solve: how to onboard more people into web3. This has helped us to remain laser sharp and focused all the time.

• The NEAR network is amazing: For example, we have talked to Jason (AstroDAO) and he is happy to support us to scale our project together with AstroDAO once we're ready to enter new markets.

• The learning has just begun: The learning is not over! And we are curious to see what comes next.

What's next for Catch

• Find FRENS (from NEAR) to grow our network and our partnerships on the platform. Niche, Seatlab and AstroDAO - looking at you here!

• Raise 2M in pre-seed money. The funds will be used for: Personnel costs: team + new hires (Dev. + Marketing, runway 1 year), development costs, and ecosystem rewards.

• Start operations in Berlin + Lisbon

• Launch the genesis avatars (“Creators”).

• Find local & global partnerships

LFG

Built With

• dall-e
• gcp
• near
• next.js
• node.js
• rust
• typescript