Connexion

Inspiration

We wanted to create an easy way to communicate with ENS names. The end goal is to create a fluid messaging platform that all users of Metamask could access easily. Use cases include being able to message ENS names (companies, people, etc.) that you don't know personally and receive broadcasts in a decentralized way, all through Metamask itself.

What it does

Users can send a message to any address/ENS name. Their message will be put on IPFS with the hash uploaded to the smart contract. The message will pop up in Metamask's native UI and the recipient can access the message directly in Metamask.

Closing ceremony demo video: https://youtu.be/suS8nprnVk0?t=4829

How we built it

Dfuse was used to listen for updates to the smart contract, allowing us to update Metamask's UI to reflect incoming messages. Metamask's Plugin API was crucial to be able to add our messages to the list in the sidebar. ENS was used and resolved to allow our application to interact with human-readable names instead of raw addresses directly.

Challenges we ran into

None of us have ever used Metamask's Plugins or Dfuse's API, so working through the kinks took some time (but our mentors provided enormous help!!!). We were also all used to using React, so writing vanilla html and js again felt like an unfortunate blast to the past.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of getting the whole thing to work quite seamlessly!

What's next for Connexion

We feel that this is functionality that should be built into future versions of Metamask! We would happy to carry it forward and integrate more deeply with Metamask/Ethereum.

Built With

browserify
bulma
dfuse
ens
javascript
metamask
solidity
sweatandtears

Submitted to

ETHWaterloo
- Winner ETHWaterloo Finalists
- Winner ENS
- Winner dfuse
- Winner UX Prize by OST/Pepo
- Winner ConsenSys Grants

Created by

I set up the Dfuse to relay the messages to the frontend. I set up the IPFS node to store the messages, and helped debug the Metamask plugin.

Ryan Ouyang
I'm Ryan, a student developer passionate about blockchain. I try to make cool stuff.
I worked on taking the input to the recipient and message field and passing these to our smart contract. My javascript code first identifies the ethereum address of the sender. It then takes the ENS recipient and resolves this to an ethereum address. The code then puts these into an object and calls the IPFS API. Once returned from the API, our smart contract is called using the return value from the IPFS call. We faced challenges due to metamask's incompatibility with javascript frameworks, and thus had to use various workarounds.

Darcy Simmons
I mainly worked on the MetaMask plugin and building the base website which can talk to the plugin. Helped debug the IPFS API, and worked with Dan from Metamask to hack together our messages into MetaMask custom assets.

Haardik Haardik
I worked on handling messages on the smart contract side and built out the design and logo.

Jason Du
Founder of KingdomsBeyond, a blockchain MMORPG