Inspiration
The Inspiration behind the project was to build a community that supports each other in their educational, financial, and sustainability goals. Data privacy can not be expected when browsing the internet, but with other like-minded individuals, it can be achieved. Students should always support each other, and with such a large community, sharing one's successes with others should not come with a cost. Which is why I built a decentralized framework where students can collaborate privately, advertise their applications, deploy them to the network, and even simplify crypto transactions for e-commerce. I believe that contributing to such a network should also reap benefits. Serving fellow students would also result in financial compensation.
What it does
The project helps college students to find live friends and chat with them privately to gain advice and tutoring. Students looking to get more involved can search the network for advertisements and find digital billboards. Club members and developers can deploy their advertisements and apps to the network and promote their work. The framework also focuses on distributing cryptocurrency and making crypto e-commerce simpler
How we built it
The back end uses Python to host the frontend through a Flask server. The device would then connect to the internet using an SSH tunnel to secure their public IP. Once the network is joined, they can scan the network to find live peers and anonymously chat with them. The peer can then scan the network for digital billboards and view them. The temporary SSH identity could then be used to transfer cryptocurrency through such billboards or send some directly to the peers, making transactions simpler.
Challenges we ran into
The initial plan to test the SSH tunnels was to run virtual machines and then host them on the Internet. When trying to run them, the network switches were not connecting the VMs to the physical network card. Tons of troubleshooting attempts were made, but a lot of time was spent on fixing that issue. So, to continue working, I abandoned that idea and built a prototype that simulated such an environment locally.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The fact that the MVP was completed on time, checking all of the boxes that I wanted, is something I have not accomplished before in the span of a day. Despite the UI being a bit poor, achieving close to full functionality is something I am proud of.
What we learned
This hackathon taught me a lot of skills, like using Flask, parsing JSONs into HTML tables, GET, and POST. The most valuable skill I learned was being open to helping others even when in a problem myself as it gave me a lot of context and ideas to further my project.
What's next for CNP
Going public and making an impact on American college campuses. I would like to polish the experience, improve the User Interface, and make the system really robust for use.
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