Covenant

Put your money where your goals are. Complete your commitments to earn it back, or watch it go to a cause you really don’t want to fund. Blockchain-verified accountability, powered by AI.

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Inspiration

We noticed that staying accountable to personal goals is hard. Reminders, to-do lists, and habit apps all rely on self-discipline alone. But people behave differently when real stakes are involved. We wanted to build a system that combines motivation through commitment with the transparency and fairness of blockchain. The result is Covenant: a decentralized way to make promises you’ll actually keep.

What it does

Covenant lets users create commitments to complete a goal by a deadline, with real money on the line.

  • You lock funds in an Ethereum smart contract.
  • You set a beneficiary wallet, a friend, charity, or even an “anti-charity,” to receive the stake if you fail.
  • When you complete your task, you upload a verification video.
  • The video is analyzed by Reka’s multimodal Video Q&A API, which checks for presence of the required actions, and your face.
  • If the model verifies success, the smart contract releases your stake back to you.
  • Otherwise, the funds go to the beneficiary.

It’s accountability made autonomous. No judges, no excuses, just code and proof.

How we built it

  • Frontend: Next.js web app for covenant creation, wallet connection, and video upload.
  • Blockchain: Solidity smart contracts deployed on Ethereum testnet using Hardhat.
  • Verification backend: Next.js API routes that upload videos to Reka’s video indexing endpoint and call its Video Q&A API for commitment verification.
  • Integration: WalletConnect + Wagmi for on-chain interactions, and secure server-side Reka API calls for video processing.

Challenges we ran into

  • Multi-stage video uploads: We had to design a pipeline that passed each uploaded video from the frontend, through a Next.js API route, to Reka’s upload endpoint using FormData, ensuring the file persisted correctly across each layer.
  • Smart contract integration: Getting our Solidity contracts to deploy and communicate smoothly with the frontend required debugging ABI mismatches and transaction confirmation issues.
  • Syncing AI verification with on-chain logic: Coordinating Reka’s verification responses with blockchain state changes demanded careful timing and error handling.
  • Merging separate components: Integrating independently built blockchain, AI, and frontend modules into a unified app took close coordination and a lot of testing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a working end-to-end system that connects AI-based proof-of-work with Ethereum smart contracts in under 48 hours.
  • Successfully verified real videos through Reka Video Q&A and used that verification to trigger blockchain contract actions.
  • Created a user experience that feels fun and motivating while demonstrating real Web3 accountability infrastructure.

What we learned

  • How to combine AI verification with on-chain logic to create meaningful, human-centered dApps.
  • The nuances of multipart uploads and serverless video handling in Next.js.
  • Practical experience using Reka’s multimodal models beyond standard text or image tasks.
  • That incentives, both social and financial, can make technology a powerful force for personal growth.

What's next for Covenant

  • Refining AI verification: Improve fairness and accuracy by fine-tuning prompts, using multimodal reasoning (video + audio + text), and introducing confidence thresholds before funds are released.
  • Social accountability layer: Add friends, group challenges, and public covenant feeds to create social pressure and community-driven motivation.
  • Mobile app: Build a lightweight mobile app for recording and uploading verification videos directly from your phone, streamlining the entire covenant flow.
  • Gamification: Add progress tracking, streaks, and rewards for consistent goal completion to make accountability fun.
  • Expanded blockchain support: Deploy on faster, cheaper chains like Base or Polygon, and integrate stablecoins for easier on-ramping.
  • Covenant marketplace: Let users browse and sponsor other people’s covenants, turning accountability into a social investment ecosystem.
  • Privacy-preserving verification: Explore zero-knowledge proof methods so users can prove goal completion without revealing sensitive video details.

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