ComFi

Inspiration

The process of raising capital is too institutionalized. The vast majority of financing agreements are between large businesses. Sole proprietorships (e.g. mom & pop shops, small businesses), contractors, and freelancers still have a hard time convincing big banks to take a great opportunity. Moreover, discriminatory redlining and abuse of power in the financial sector seems to be the rule, not the exception. So why remain beholden to big banks for startup capital? Why can't the colloquial "little guy", why can't individual people, trade their future earnings for money better used now? These are the questions that inspired ComFi.

What it does

ComFi makes capital radically more accessible for individuals. We provide a platform to trade rights to a percentage of future earnings via an NFT, in exchange for the price of minting said NFT.

Existent platforms such as KickStarter, Patreon, or GoFundMe provide a mechanism to support people and projects that are important to you, granted. The problem with these platforms is that they provide nominal benefits in return for capital. This state of affairs reduces the pool of people willing to support the individuals since it precludes everyone who is unable or unwilling to make what is essentially a charitable donation. ComFi offers an alternative where people can better support the causes they care about, since there is a financial incentive for them to invest. Ultimately, this will generate more capital for NFT issuers.

Note, unlike traditional stocks which confer a one-time gain to the issuer, ComFi tokens give the issuer a percentage of the token value paid each time a token is traded. This de-risks the position of the issuer since they can ensure the portion of their earnings they sold off is still generating new income.

Another de-risking aspect of ComFi tokens, not found in traditional assets or securities, is the powerful governance capabilities of token holders and "escrow" smart contract. Upon minting a ComFi token, 50% of the mint price is given to the issuer. The other 50% is stored in "escrow" until a majority of token holders vote to release it to the issuer. It is in the token holder's interest to do this since they will receive 100% more dividends after money is released. However, should holders find themselves disgruntled by the issuer, a majority vote to withdraw the escrow money back to holders' accounts can occur. This arrangement incentivizes transparent communication and accounting.

How I built it

ComFi is a lightweight React app that uses ethers.js to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. For the sake of rapid development, I wrote and tested all of ComFi's React and Javascript on VSCode and my local host, respectively. I wrote and deployed all of ComFi's Solidity smart contracts on Remix IDE for similar reasons (rapid testing and integration). Ethers.js was the API most integral in the project, as it is what facilitated users' Metamask wallet interactions with the contract on-chain. For the sake of publicly demonstrable functionality, I deployed my Sol contracts to the Rinkeby test net.

Challenges we ran into

ComFi was intended to be built in the Terra ecosystem. However, by Saturday afternoon it became apparent that I was very unfamiliar with Rust and my laptop could barely handle running a local Terra node. So much so, in fact, these road blocks threatened to keep me from deploying a product with full functionality. For the sake of preventing this, I pivoted to Sol and Eth, tech with which I am well versed. Whether this pivot was prudent is arguable in light of the exorbitantly long indexing times on the Rinkeby test net as of writing this. The newest iterations of the ComFi token contract has features that are currently inaccessible on Rinkeby, despite working on my local environment. Another, albeit smaller, challenge that I encountered was integrating ethers.js API data with backend POST requests to the database, when we had a database. This was an early roadblock I encountered while trying to create a login feature. Ultimately, I decided to try not to major in minors, and I dropped the backend altogether.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Developing a fully functional minimum-viable product in only 36 hours makes me happy. Moreover, doing my entire first hackathon by myself, and having a functional website to show for it is pretty cool.

What we learned

Technically, I learned a lot about Rust and COSMWASM. Businesswise, this hackathon repeatedly taught me that committing oneself to the function of a product rather than its implementation yields better results.

What's next for ComFi

ComFi is going to pursue goals simultaneously. Firstly, I am going to try to transition ComFi to the Terra Ecosystem for lower transaction fees and better security. Secondly, I am going to launch a beta of ComFi in the next two weeks on whichever main net I can accommodate. I know multiple people with interest in ICO'ing themselves. Perhaps I would even do it myself.

Built With

• ethers
• javascript
• react
• remix
• rinkeby
• solidity
• vultr