Inspiration
Being from Boston and SF, and now in Miami, we all are excited about trying new places in the city and we also wanted to find a way to help businesses, especially as we come out of the recent COVID wave. We set out to build a new way for people to interact with restaurants and other city spots, in order to create more vibrant, interconnected cities.
What it does
Passport is a social, gamified city experience. It shows city experiences on a map, such as restaurants, parks, clubs, etc. and allows users to 1) like places and see what their friends like and 2) earn points to redeem an exclusive NFT as a "passport stamp" for each place. On their profile, users can showcase their passport NFTs and their lists of favorite places. Locales on Passport can supercharge their customer loyalty programs by offering access to rewards and events to their NFT holders.
Passport's curation and social aspects automate various tedious processes we go through today - tweeting for activity recommendations in a new city, spending an hour deciding where to go for a hangout / meal, trying to find out what places our friends usually go to. More broadly, it tackles increasing city loneliness among young people by encouraging friends to explore the city and their favorite places together. On the locale side, businesses and cities benefit from a steady stream of visitors, and the gamified aspects of Passport hook more loyal fans. Places like Burger King and Dave & Buster's have started offering NFTs, but there is still no unified, streamlined platform for places to offer these NFT reward programs.
How we built it
We used React Native for a responsive iOS/Android app with a Firebase DB. We also used:
- Google Maps SDK for a smooth, interactive map experience and location information
- DeSo Identity for secure user authentication and monetization potential for influencers/creators
- Google Cloud functions for automatic NFT airdrops
- Wallet integration for secure login and seamless NFT airdrops
Challenges we ran into
We thought a lot about how to build a smooth user signup/authentication experience with little friction while helping users make the most out of Passport. For example, we weren't sure how to make Passport accessible to both crypto-native and non-crypto-native users, but instead of automatically creating wallets for non-crypto-native users, we decided to build a user-friendly platform that would encourage crypto onboarding of users new to the space. We also decided to integrate DeSo and NFTs in order to make the most out of the web3 potential for collectible items, exclusivity, ownership, monetization, community reputation, etc., and learned a lot through the implementation challenges of these technologies.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Each of us has been to multiple hackathons but this is the hackathon in which we've been able to make the most progress on a functional version of our project vision, and we're super proud of that. We also dived into building in web3 for the first time, and had to do a ton of research and documentation reading in order to understand the unique benefits of web3 over web2 and how to integrate wallets, NFTs, and smart contracts seamlessly into a mobile app experience. We're so grateful we got this opportunity to focus fully on ramping up on these technologies.
What we learned
During this project we learned a lot about how to collaborate effectively, despite async/remote work and incompatibilities of our computers with certain tech components of the app. We were all able to unblock each other, prioritize constantly, and find ways around challenges in order to reach our MVP as quickly as possible.
We also learned a lot about the web3 space and what it looks like for authentication, transactions, etc. to be on chain, helping us understand the potential and limitations of web3 in transforming our digital societal infrastructure.
What's next for Passport
After finishing our MVP, we'll start reaching out to a few top favorite restaurants in SF and Boston in order to start a trial run with the cities that we're most familiar with. We'll grow our online presence through exciting NFT drops, a vibrant Discord channel of foodies and city folks, and restaurant promo events. Passport will become the go-to for GenZ and millennials to share their top city places, discover new ones, and get rewarded for supporting their favorite businesses.
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