KYC Verified Crowdfunding Solution - Secure Patrons

Crowdfunding is the practice of raising money from large number of people, via the internet. In order to make online crowdfunding sustainable we developed a KYC based crowdfunding application.

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Inspiration

While decentralized crowdfunding has the potential to provide a new model for funding projects and businesses, it still has some significant drawbacks that need to be addressed.

1) Lack of Regulation: Decentralized crowdfunding systems operate outside of traditional regulatory frameworks, which can make it more challenging to enforce agreements and protect user rights.

2) Lack of Trust: Since the identity of the campaign creators and supporters is often anonymous, it can be difficult to build trust in the system, and there is a risk of fraud or misrepresentation.

Hence, to solve this problem, we got inspired to develop a Hybrid - KYC Verified Crowd Funding Application, having a centralized KYC System along with a decentralized Crowd Funding application. The application provides with various advantages -

1) Increased Security: The verification of the identity of all participants through a robust KYC process can minimize the risk of fraudulent activities, such as scams and money laundering.

2) Improved Trust: With the identity of campaign creators and supporters verified, it can be easier to build trust in the system, and users can have more confidence in the campaigns they support.

3) Better Regulation: By operating within a regulated framework, a KYC based crowdfunding system can provide additional protection for users and enforce agreements more effectively.

4) Lower Risk: The verification of identity can reduce the risk of scams and false representation, providing a safer environment for supporters to invest in campaigns.

5) Improved User Experience: A streamlined, user-friendly platform can make it easier for both campaign creators and supporters to participate in the crowdfunding process.

6) Increased Transparency: A KYC based system can provide increased transparency and accountability, with all necessary information readily available to all users.

7) Access to a Larger Pool of Investors: With a system that is secure, trustworthy, and user-friendly, more people may be willing to participate in crowdfunding campaigns, providing a larger pool of potential investors.

By incorporating a KYC verification process, a crowdfunding system can offer improved security, trust, and regulation, and provide a more user-friendly environment for crowdfunding activities.

What it does

A KYC (Know Your Customer) verified crowdfunding application is a platform that allows users to raise funds for projects or businesses through crowdfunding campaigns. The main difference from other crowdfunding platforms is that it requires all participants to go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process.

The KYC process typically involves verifying the identity of the users, including their name, address, and other personal information. This is done to ensure that all participants in the crowdfunding campaigns are legitimate, and to minimize the risk of fraudulent activities such as money laundering or scams.

Once the KYC verification process is completed, users can participate in crowdfunding campaigns as either campaign creators or supporters. Campaign creators can create campaigns, set fundraising goals, and offer rewards to supporters. Supporters can then donate money to the campaigns they support, and receive rewards based on the amount they donate.

A KYC verified crowdfunding application provides a secure and trustworthy platform for crowdfunding activities, and can offer benefits such as increased transparency, improved regulation, and reduced risk.

How we built it

We have divided the project into two main parts -

1) KYC Verification

In this section we the user will first register to the application. The registration is followed by an e-mail check and address pincode check using ApyHub APIs. Followed by registration, user will proceed to live video phase. Here the user is placed in front of a 30 seconds live window where face recognition and face matching takes place.

For face recognition and face matching we have used DeepFace Face Verification algorithm and for face extraction from an image HaarCascades are used.

2) CrowdFunding Application

This part is a complete decentralized application hosted on 5ire test net. The smart contracts are programmed using Solidity.

The KYC verified user gets whitelisted and upon successfully login is mapped with an address (metamask address). Here the user is given a functionality of contributing, donating to a fund, create a fund, make a withdraw request and many more.

Challenges we ran into

We came across many challenges while developing the project, from which we were able to overcome many of the challenges.

Some of the challenges were -

  • Library installation and function issues.

  • Understanding architecture of 5ire testnet as a beginer, initially it felt difficult but with the workshop, help from mentors we were able to overcome it successfully

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Major accomplishments we are proud of are -

1) Successfully deploying of smart contracts on 5ire test net. Working with 5ire testnet and ethereum faucets for decentralized transactions.

2) Integrating API services provided by ApyHub to have more verification checks of the user

3) Developing REST APIs and solidity contracts with proper testing.

4) Finally developing a machine learning model and successfully deploying it using Flask Framework.

What we learned

The project development was full of learnings, right from project development and programming to peer colloborations, team work and time management.

What's next for KYC Verified Crowdfunding Solution - Secure Patrons

The future scope includes adding following features -

Reward-based System: The system should provide rewards to supporters based on the amount they contribute. This will incentivize more people to support the campaign.

Collaboration: The system should encourage collaboration between different campaigns, users, and organizations. This will create a network effect and increase the chances of success for individual campaigns.

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