Inspiration
We wanted to shift the focus of financial awareness from individuals to groups. One common issue among young people is the hesitation in making large purchases—especially when they are shared expenses—due to the perception that large purchases must be made all at once rather than gradually. CoinCache aims to change that mindset by turning financial decision-making into a collaborative and engaging experience.
What it does
CoinCache is a collection of multiplayer games designed for people contributing to a shared purchase. Players join a game where there are significant rewards for the winners and punishments for the losers. The twist is that anyone can purchase power-ups to gain an advantage, creating competition over who can leverage the microtransactions better. The desire to win and avoid punishment leads to microtransaction purchases which fund the shared purchase. The platform includes an interface where users can add others to a shared purchase, track each person’s contribution, and visualize progress toward funding the item.
How we built it
So CoinCache is a web application built using React.js & A Backend (Mostly) and Authentication using Firebase. Here we make use of Firebase’s Firestore to handle our Fund Data and Users Data as well as the storage blob for holding heavier files like Fund Images. Most of the UI components were from a library called ShadCN and the 3D-modeled Coin Jar was made in Blender and imported into a THREE.js scene (javascript library)
The other half of CoinCache is the games and Multiplayer Game Servers, Here we utilized webservers and Rust to build out a backend for handling WebSocket communication, in addition to a Python FastAPI backend to handle Firebase Data Management calls for the Games. The visuals for the game were done using the Canvas Javascript library inside of React Components. The App itself is hosted using Vercel and Github.
Challenges we ran into
Figuring out how bad spending habits can be leveraged to make good financial decisions. Manually programing a multiplayer snake game using web sockets and rust
Accomplishments that we're proud of
On a technical level, we were proud of our work in creating a fully functional Multiplayer Game Server as well as a Professional Frontend both using professional-grade authentication and security. Getting all these different parts to work together nicely was an even greater accomplishment. But even with a fully hosted app and working app, getting to make connections with new and old friends was a awesome experience that we all at CoinCache Enjoyed thoroughly. Especially given that we have A Senior, Junior, and Sophmore in college with Two HighSchool Freshman.
What we learned
Throughout our development process, We learned a lot about the collaborative process, how to best share Ideas and to make and take criticism. Sadly, a lot about git too.
What's next for CoinCache
Expanding the game selection to tailor towards an older audience, complete with their power-ups.
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