Inspiration
The majority of North Americans live in debt, living paycheck to paycheck, repaying their loans. We wanted to find a solution that would disrupt this cycle and help regrow the economy.
What it does
Our solution, PeerPal, is a peer-to-peer money lending system. It enables people to lend cents to those in immediate need, distributing the weight of the loan off the shoulders of one and onto those of everyone. Returns have interest so that lenders benefit by sharing. But most importantly, as loaners accumulate their requested amounts, they too grow, becoming lenders themselves. We believe that thriving societies are ones where everyone shares and grows together.
How we built it
We started off breaking down the algorithmic theory behind using a peer-to-peer system as the model for our distribution system. We analyzed the most practical and efficient ways to implement a peer-to-peer system on a small-scale as a proof of concept for further and larger scalability. From there, we researched the technical details of what technologies we would use (VueJS, JavaScript, Socket.io, NodeJS) to implement this solution, as well as solving logistical issues like Resource Starvation (an imbalance in the fluidity of currency - imbalanced rates of lending and borrowing that caused an overall deficit to the system as a whole).
Challenges we ran into
- Communication between peers in an efficient manner
- Solving critical system faults, such as the aforementioned resource starvation
- Formulating an algorithm that has a balanced seeding-to-leeching rate
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Possible solutions for the resource starvation issue
- Utilizing the WebRTC to build a mock peer-to-peer network
What we learned
- The basics of peer-to-peer networking and emulation
- The complications of Distributed Systems
- New development stack (VueJS, socket.io)
What's next for PeerPal
We hope to take on this project and implement it in a fitting way with how we envision it fully functioning: as a fair monetary platform that benefits all economic classes!
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