Inspiration
Buying a gift card is one of the best ways to support small businesses during the pandemic. We wanted to utilize the power of economics to enable a regular person to support their local businesses. We were looking to create a method in which people can donate to businesses in the cheapest and most effective way possible.
What it does
We created a web app where users can bid on gift cards and put gift cards up for auction.
Key Terms
auctioneer: user who put up a gift card for auction
bidder: user who specifies a value they would like to buy the gift card for
highest bid: the highest value so far that any bidder wants to buy the gift card for
base bid: the minimum amount of money that the auctioneer will sell the gift card for
The Auctioneer
The auctioneer cannot bid on their own gift card to artificially increase the "highest bid" displayed.
Auctioneers can specify how long they want their auction to last.
The auctioneer can specify the base price for the bids. All other bids must be above the base bid to be registered.
The auctioneer can see the email of the highest bidder and the price they bid. Others can only see the highest price bid.
The gift cards do not display on the homepage if the current date is not between the start and end of the auction.
The Bidders
The highest price and the highest bidder will be updated if someone bids a value greater than the highest bid and greater than the base value.
The bidders can see the initial value of the gift card (how much the auctioneer bought it for) and the business it was bought from.
Bidders can also view the base price and the highest bid.
The site automatically updates after any changes.
System of Accountability
The auctioneer's email will be displayed to all potential bidders. This leaves the auctioneer accountable for their supposed gift card. Potential bidders can contact the auctioneer to confirm legitimacy of the gift card. If the auctioneer fails to provide this, bidders likely won't bid on the gift card. It benefits both parties if the auctioneer is honest about the gift card.
Example
Say I'm interested helping out my local business, Malmart. I go ahead and buy a $100 gift card from Malmart. However, I want to minimize the net cost of this gift card, so I go over to Mporio and create an account. I register my gift card and put it up for a ten-day-long auction. I specify the base bid to be $75, because I don't want to sell my $100 gift card for less than that. Over those ten days, I get a few emails from interested bidders. I let them know, in some form, that my gift card is, indeed, real. After the ten days, no one can bid on my gift card anymore. I see that the highest bidder bid $90 on my gift card. I go ahead an contact the highest bidder through their email provided on Mporio, and I close the deal with them. I sell my $100 gift card to them for $90. In the end, my net loss is only $10, but Malmart still has the $100 I gave them. Through Mporio, I was able to multiply the effect of the amount of money I "spent" by ten. I only lost $10, but I gave $100 of support to my local business Malmart.
How we built it
We used the firebase realtime database to store our data. We also used firebase authentication to incorporate an account system that supports two different methods of authentication.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into various different bugs with firebase as we were figuring out how to use it for the first time!
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're really proud of fully integrating a database into our project.
What we learned
This was our first time using firebase, so we learned a lot about the documentation and practicality of it.
What's next for Mporio
We're hoping to expand our web app to supporting more forms of currency. We might look into having an automatic converter. Once we get enough data, we may also want to add a feature using machine learning that predicts how much the gift card will sell for. This could help the auctioneer know what price to expect.
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