Landing page
Presage logging quiz behavior
Badge NFT encryption with Solana
3D mascot like Talking Angela Cat
Storybook bedtime stories told using ElevenLabs
Piggy initial design and mascot

🐷 Piggy – A Talking Finance Companion for Kids

Inspiration

Piggy was inspired by the Wealthsimple Challenge: Best Financial Literacy Hack for Kids, which asked for creative and engaging ways to teach money concepts to young audiences (ages 7–12).

We noticed that most financial education tools for kids are either:

too text-heavy,
too boring,
or just repackaged adult finance apps.

At the same time, kids already love interactive characters like Talking Tom and story-based learning. So we asked:

What if learning about money felt like talking to a friendly character instead of reading a lesson?

That became Piggy.

What it does

Piggy is a talking, interactive finance companion for kids powered by advanced conversational AI.

Kids talk to Piggy through simple, guided interactions and help Piggy make everyday money decisions, such as:

saving allowance,
spending on wants vs needs,
sharing with others,
preparing for emergencies.

Instead of just clicking buttons, kids can actually speak to Piggy, and he responds back in an adorable, kid-friendly voice.

Core features include:

Interactive Story Mode: Piggy presents scenarios like saving allowance or spending on wants vs. needs.
Real-time Voice Chat: Kids can ask Piggy questions and get instant, safe responses.
Emotional Learning: Piggy reacts with animations and voice changes, making financial literacy feel fun and emotional rather than intimidating.

Piggy presents short scenarios and asks the user to choose what to do. Based on their choices, Piggy reacts with animations and explanations, teaching core financial concepts through conversation and consequences, not lectures.

The experience is:

age-appropriate,
safe (no open chat),
and designed to make financial literacy feel fun and emotional rather than intimidating.

How we built it

We built Piggy as an interactive web app with:

A 3D animated avatar for Piggy
A scripted conversation engine for guided scenarios
A simple frontend interface for choices and feedback
Solana integration to experiment with tracking learning progress and achievements on-chain
Presage to analyze user choices, predict learning patterns, and personalize future scenarios
Gemini models Gemini 2.5 Flash TTS, Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio Dialog, Gemini 3 Flash, and Nano Banana for dynamic scenarios
ElevenLabs Conversational Agent with a baby-cute voice profile

The system uses predefined conversation flows instead of open-ended AI, ensuring the experience is safe and controlled for kids.

Challenges we ran into

Creating the 3D avatar
Designing and animating a character that feels friendly, expressive, and responsive was more complex than expected.
Setting up Solana
Integrating blockchain for learning progress required understanding wallets, transactions, and on-chain data models.
Latency Optimization Ensuring the voice response was fast enough to keep a 7-year-old engaged.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Building a fully interactive character-based learning experience in a short hackathon
Successfully integrating 3D, authentication, and blockchain in one product
Designing a concept that is:
- engaging for kids,
- understandable for parents,
- and as realistic as a real product

Most importantly, we created something that makes financial literacy feel friendly, not scary.

What we learned

Kids learn better through stories and characters than through raw information
Simplicity in UX is critical for younger users
Educational products need to balance:
- engagement,
- safety,
- and real learning outcomes
Technical integrations (3D, auth, blockchain) take much more time than expected when combined

What's next for Piggy

If we continued Piggy, we would:

Add more scenarios (budgeting, investing basics, credit, goal-setting)
Introduce multiple characters with different personalities (spender, saver, planner)
Build a parent/teacher dashboard to track learning progress
Expand accessibility with:
- multiple languages,
- audio-first mode,
- and offline-friendly experiences

Our long-term vision is for Piggy to become: