DeScholar

Inspiration

DeScholar was inspired by the challenges faced by researchers on platforms like ResearchGate, where publishing and funding research can be difficult and fragmented. The vision behind DeScholar is to empower researchers and educators by leveraging blockchain technology to create a decentralized ecosystem for research publishing, funding, and collaboration.

What it does

1. Decentralized Research Publishing: Researchers can publish their work as NFTs, ensuring they have full control over their intellectual property. Research is stored securely on IPFS via Pinata for immutable, decentralized access.
2. Tokenized Incentives with ICO: The ICO Smart Contract facilitates the distribution of tokens, which are rewarded to users participating in the platform. These tokens are used to incentivize contributions, such as funding proposals and peer reviews.
3. Decentralized Research Proposals: Researchers can create and manage research proposals, receiving funding contributions directly through smart contracts.
4. Community Collaboration: The Research Group Smart Contract enables users to form, manage, and interact in research groups with reputation-based roles, fostering a collaborative academic environment.
5. Academic Q&A Platform: The Question and Answer Smart Contract facilitates discussions, where users can ask questions, submit answers, and contribute to academic discourse.

How I built it

• Frontend: I used Vue.js to build a dynamic and responsive interface, with Tailwind CSS for styling. This allowed me to create a clean and intuitive design for users to interact with research publications, funding proposals, and academic discussions.
• Smart Contracts: Solidity was used to write the smart contracts deployed on the Electroneum blockchain. Key contracts include:
  • ICO Smart Contract: Facilitates token distribution as a reward to users on the platform.
  • Proposal Smart Contract: Manages decentralized research proposals and funding contributions.
  • Question and Answer Smart Contract: Enables a decentralized Q&A platform for academic discourse.
  • Research Group Smart Contract: Allows users to create and manage research groups with reputation-based roles and collaboration features.
  • Research Publishing Smart Contract: Allows researchers to publish their work as NFTs, providing them with full ownership and control over their intellectual property. This contract facilitates the minting of research publications as ERC721 NFTs and stores them securely on IPFS via Pinata.
• Blockchain: I deployed the smart contracts on the Electroneum blockchain, utilizing ERC20 for token functionality and ERC721 for creating unique research NFTs.
• Storage: I integrated Pinata with IPFS to store research materials securely in a decentralized manner, ensuring the permanence and accessibility of published research.

Challenges I ran into

• Smart Contract Security: Ensuring that all contracts were secure and performed as intended was a critical challenge. I took extra care with contract logic and performed multiple rounds of testing.
• IPFS Integration: Storing research materials on IPFS via Pinata required careful handling to ensure files were reliably uploaded, retrieved, and stored in a decentralized manner.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

• Decentralized Research Publishing: DeScholar enables researchers to publish their work as NFTs, giving them ownership and control over their intellectual property.
• Smart Contracts: Successfully deployed ICO and Proposal Smart Contracts on the Electroneum blockchain, creating a seamless, decentralized funding mechanism for research initiatives.
• IPFS Integration: Integrated Pinata with IPFS for the secure and decentralized storage of research materials, ensuring that all published research is accessible and immutable.
• Research Group Collaboration: Developed the Research Group Smart Contract, allowing researchers to create, manage, and interact in a decentralized manner, with reputation-based roles to foster trust and collaboration.

What I learned

• User-Centric Design: Designing an intuitive platform for researchers and educators has helped me understand the significance of user experience, especially when dealing with complex blockchain and decentralized technology.

What's next for DeScholar

• Enhanced Collaboration Tools: Expanding features to include AI-powered research matching, which will help researchers find collaborators and funding opportunities more easily.

Built With

• solidity
• vercel
• vue