Anchor

Trust you can carry.

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Inspiration

Most housing solutions ask how we help people find housing opportunities, but for many people facing housing insecurity, the deeper problem is not finding the opportunity — it is getting the opportunity. Landlords often ask for credit scores, rental history, referrals, proof of income, and other documents that people exiting homelessness, young renters, immigrants, or people with informal housing histories may not have, so we built Anchor to close that trust gap.

What it does

Anchor is a standardized, decentralized trust protocol that helps tenants prove housing reliability without being reduced to a black-box score. Tenants can add verified housing experiences, ask landlords, housing providers, caseworkers, or other trusted parties to vouch for them, and bundle those credentials into a portable case file that landlords can review and cryptographically verify.

How we built it

We built Anchor with a Next.js and React frontend, using a sleek tenant dashboard where users can create housing experiences, send verification links by email or text, and manage their trust profile. On the technical side, each user’s identity is represented by an elliptic curve keypair and hash fingerprint, while signed credentials and linked digital signatures allow landlords to validate the integrity and authenticity of a tenant’s case file without relying on a centralized database.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge was designing a system that felt simple and human-centered while still being technically rigorous enough to support cryptographic verification and decentralized trust. We also had to balance landlord confidence with tenant privacy, making sure users stay in control of what they share, who verifies them, and how their information is revealed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that Anchor is not just another housing search tool — it goes directly to the trust problem that prevents many people from accessing housing even when opportunities exist. We are also proud of building a privacy-preserving system that stores almost no personal information on platform servers, works offline or through portable files, and gives tenants dignity, portability, and control.

What we learned

We learned that housing insecurity is not only a supply problem or a search problem; it is also a trust problem. We also learned how powerful decentralized identity, digital signatures, and user-controlled credentials can be when applied to real-world systems where people need to prove credibility without traditional documentation.

What's next for Milpitas Hacks

Next, we want to expand Anchor beyond the prototype by adding stronger verifier workflows, more granular landlord trust settings, better mobile support, and integrations with housing nonprofits and transitional housing programs. In the future, this same trust layer could also apply to loans, employment, financial services, and any system where people need to carry verified credibility with them.

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