Welcome to Nous Market! Browse, invest and trade in digital investment contracts.
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Product listing - Nous Bond
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Nous

Amazon for Investors, built on web3.

Inspiration

Since 1995, the top 1% of the global population have generated 20x more wealth than the bottom 50%.

Exacerbated by a global pandemic and war, the wealth divide continues to grow - furthering global economic inequality. At Nous, we believe that web3 can offer a solution to this endemic problem - by creating a global marketplace for investment opportunities accessible to all, regardless of wealth, status or geolocation.

What it does

Nous is a marketplace for investment opportunities - pioneering a new use case for NFTs to serve as digital investment contracts.

1. Browse

Marketplaces succeed in markets which are highly fragmented and lack transparency. We feel DeFi and all of its yield-generating products, as well as the investment industry as a whole, is difficult to navigate and fragmented.

Nous solves the issue of finding the best investment opportunity by aggregating investment opportunities from a wide range of providers. Users can explore new projects who launch investment opportunities on our Listings page or purchase a second-hand investment contract off the market.

2. Mint

Users can mint investment contracts on our dApp. These NFTs are standard ERC721 contracts but we use the metadata that the user generates when minting as terms of the investment contract. e.g. investment amount, contract duration

Minting on Polygon is incredibly low cost allowing users to mint contracts for a fraction of a $.

3. Claim rewards

During the hackathon period, we added new utility to our Bond NFTs - interest payments. Interest payments are standard for typical bonds and investors are able to claim dividends from their investment on an annual or monthly basis.

We wanted to add this functionality to our on-chain bonds, so we have integrated rewards payments that users can claim in the app. Rewards payments are currently paid out in USDT.

4. Trade contracts

One critical need for investors is accessing liquidity as and when they need. By having picture-for-proof digital investment contracts, investors can sell unwanted contracts and the investments they contain to parties who want to buy them on an open marketplace. As Nous grows, we hope to expand our marketplace to accommodate a wide range of products and services.

How we built it

Nous is built on two fundamental pieces of innovation:

User-generated metadata
On-chain automation

User generated metadata

At Nous, NFTs form an immutable link between investors and their on-chain assets. The functionality of NFTs is in their metadata; chunks of code with the ability to execute financial contracts and manage investor funds autonomously – that is, without human intervention.

By operating both as a representation of a financial contract and a means to execute the terms therein, our NFTs possess a dual functionality, that far surpasses the utility of traditional paper-based contracts.

This pioneering application of NFTs provides users with an immutable proof of investment as well as utility such as the ability to claim interest. We’ve also taken care to make displaying metadata as simple and easy-to-read as possible, in order to keep managing portfolios fast and seamless.

	Normal NFT	Nous NFT
Metadata	`Preset`	`User generated`
Traits	`Visual descriptions`	`Terms of contract`
Claimable rewards	`No`	`Yes`
Dynamic	`No`	`Yes`

On-chain automation

Sponsor Integration: Use Chainlink to make a state change on-chain

We use Chainlink's Keeper service to automate rewards calculations and payments.

When a user claims rewards, the Keeper checks the time period for the rewards period and calculates the amount of rewards to send to the user. The Keeper then requests the funds and transfers the funds to the NFT contract, where the user can then claim. The Claimed Amount value in the contract is updated to keep track of remaining rewards.

Thanks to Chainlink Keepers, this all happens in a trustless and decentralised environement and without the need for counterparty intervention.

sequenceDiagram
User ->> Nous: Mints bond
Nous-->>Project: Funds sent to project
Nous--x User: User receives NFT
Keeper-->> User: Keeper monitors NFT
Keeper--> User: Time period expires
User -->> Nous: User requests rewards
Nous -->> Keeper: Triggers Keeper
Keeper -->> Project: Keeper requests rewards
Project -->> Keeper: Rewards transferred
Keeper ->> Nous: Keeper transfers rewards to NFT
Nous ->> User: User receives rewards

Challenges we ran into

We ran into a few challenges during the Hackathon period:

Working with Chainlink Keepers on Testnet
Minimising gas fees to enable low-cost minting for users
Simplifying our UI/UX to make Nous as simple to use as possible

Building with bleeding-edge blockchain technology is not always easy, but we're incredibly pleased to have been able to incorporate these new and exciting technologies into our development at Nous.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

During the Hackathon, we accomplished the following:

Contracts - Nous Bond update: claimable rewards, transferability, variable time periods
Contracts - Marketplace contract: list and buy functionality
Contracts - Audit of Nous Bond contract (Quillhash)
dApp - Nous Portfolio: claim rewards, contract UI, live + expired contracts
dApp - Nous Mint: preview NFT, checkout UX
dApp - Nous Marketplace: product pages, marketplace UI
Website - nousmarket.io - New website

To accomplish so much, in such a short period of time, is a testament to the hard work of the Nous development team - Kristijan Zivcec (CTO) and Ollie Francis (Developer).

What we learned

Over the Hackathon, we've grown considerably as a team working through terrible market conditions to develop a technically demanding MVP in a short timeline. Working with web3 architecture can at times be unpredictable and time intensive, so it has taken a big push to get to a fully functional MVP deployed on Polygon Mainnet.

What's next for Nous Market

With our MVP out of the way, we've got big plans for Q4:

1-click checkout (integrating a Fiat-to-Crypto payment provider like Wyre, Crossmint)
Profile - Mint your profile as an NFT, with KYC status
Newsfeed - (integrating Lens Protocol) - Follow projects and friends to stay updated on the hottest investments
Ventures - Smart contract release, first batch of Ventures minting
Bonds - Onboard our first few bond offerings
Funds - Release Nous A1 - our debut arbitrage fund
Marketplace - Offers, listing history